Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/130

 Chianti wine. A single bottle of Chianti wine is very little. That is the trouble—it is very little. After three weeks of abstinence it is very little indeed—so little that it is positively tantalizing.

The afternoon waned rapidly—and so did the Chianti. Outside, the storm instead of abating grew worse—the thunder racketing through the mountains, the lightning cutting jagged streaks in the black sky, the rain coming down in sheets that set the culverts and sluiceways running full. It was settling down for a bad night in the mountains, which, in the Rockies, is not a thing to be ignored.

Tis no wonder McCann found it lonely," muttered Shanley, as he squeezed the last drop from the bottle. Tis very lonely, indeed"—he held the bottle upside down to make sure that it was thoroughly drained—"most uncommon lonely. It is that. Maybe those Eyetalians'll be thinkin' I'm stuck up, perhaps—which I am not. It's a queer name the stuff has, though it's against the rules, an' I can't get my tongue around it, but I've tasted worse. For the sake of courtesy I'll look in on the birthday party."

He incased himself in a pair of McCann's rubber boots, put on McCann's rubber coat, and started out.

"An' to think," said he, as he sloshed and buffeted his way up the two hundred yards of track to the construction shanties, "to think that Pietro came out in cruel bad weather like this all for to present his compliments an' ask me over! 'Twould be ungracious to refuse the invitation; besides my presence will keep them in due bounds an' restraint. I've heard that