of slumbering
Uncle Pasco. Uncle Pasco was quite aware of all this. "I wouldn't take
another lonesome job so soon," pursued Drake, "but I want the money.
I've been working eleven months along the Owyhee as a sort of junior
boss, and I'd earned my vacation. Just got it started hot in Portland,
when biff! old Vogel telegraphs me. Well, I'll be saving instead of
squandering. But it feels so good to squander!"

"I have never had anything to squander," said Bolles, rather sadly.

"You don't say! Well, old man, I hope you will. It gives a man a lot
he'll never get out of spelling-books. Are you cold? Here." And despite
the school-master's protest, Dean Drake tucked his buffalo coat round
and over him. "Some day, when I'm old," he went on, "I mean to live
respectable under my own cabin and vine. Wife and everything. But not,
anyway, till I'm thirty-five."

He dropped into his opera tunes for a while; but evidently it was
not "Fatinitza" and his vanished holiday over which he was chiefly
meditating, for presently he exclaimed: "I'll give them a shooting-match
in the morning. You shoot?"

Bolles hoped he was going to learn in this country, and exhibited a
Smith & Wesson revolver.

Drake grieved over it. "Wrap it up warm," said he. "I'll lend you a
real one when we get to the Malheur Agency. But you can eat, anyhow.
Christmas being next week, you see, my programme is, shoot all A.M. and
eat all P.M. I wish you could light on a notion what prizes to give my
buccaroos."

"Buccaroos?" said Bolles.

"Yep. Cow-punchers. Vaqueros. Buccaroos in Oregon. Bastard Spanish word,
you see, drifted up from Mexico. Vogel would not care to have me give
'em money as prizes."

At this Uncle Pasco opened an eye.

"How many buccaroos will there be?" Bolles inquired.

"At the Malheur Agency? It's the headquarters of five of our ranches.
There ought to be quite a crowd. A dozen, probably, at this time of
year."

Uncle Pasco opened his other eye. "Here, you!" he said, dragging at his
box under the seat. "Pull it, can't you? There. Just what you're after.
There's your prizes." Querulous and watchful, like some aged, rickety
ape, the old man drew out his trinkets in shallow shelves.

"Sooner give 'em nothing," said Dean Drake.

"What's that? What's the matter with them?"

"Guess the boys have had all the brass rings and glass diamonds they
want."

"That's all you know, then. I sold that box clean empty through the
Palouse country last