Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/148

 Comment seeming unnecessary, Tom didn't attempt any. He rode along on the load of bones, his seat being a masculine skull with particularly broad forehead, wondering who the fellow could be and what he was about.

"Well, Simpson, I come by to git my saddle," the stranger said, repressing both laughter and tears, coming back to normal state as he spoke.

"What saddle?"

"The one you borryed from Sid Coburn with a gun. You don't suppose Sid Coburn'd hand over a saddle of his own under them circumstances if he could lay hands on somebody else's, do you?"

"From the little I know of him I'd say he wouldn't. But how come your saddle? Do you belong to that outfit?"

"No, I'm on the drift. Wel-l-l, I did belong over there, but Sid fired me. I was up in Kansas City with him. I missed the train."

"Oh," said Tom, very much enlightened, his manner almost eager in its sudden change of friendliness. "I rode down in your place, then. You must be Waco Johnson?"

"I'm the rep-tile," Waco admitted, beginning to fix his face in that alarming smile again.

Tom offered his hand, to be met more than half way by Waco Johnson's broad paw, heartily and honestly, as a man without eyes would have known at the first grip.

"I'm glad to know you—I'm dev'lish glad to know you," Tom said. "I liked your name the first time I heard it."

Waco shook his head, as if to say it wouldn't do to go too far on names, unstable things that they were.

"You can have it," he said. "It never brought me no luck."