And the hosses and wagon was now in the livery stable next to Smith's Palace Hotel, which Jake run that too.
Well, I thinks to myself, it IS a dern shame, and I felt sorry fur them two fellers. Fur our town was jest as good as stealing that property. And Ifelt kind o' shamed of belonging to such a town, too.
And I thinks to myself, I'd like to help 'em out of that scrape. And then I seen how I could do it, and not get took up fur it, neither. So, without thinking, all of a sudden I jumps up and says:
"Say, Doctor Kirby, I got a scheme!"
They jumps up too, and they looks at me startled.
Then the doctor kind o' laughs and says:
"Why, it's the young blacksmith!"
Looey, he says, looking at me hard and suspicious:
"What kind of a scheme are you talking about?""Why," says I, "to get that outfit of yourn.""You've been listening to us," says Looey.
Looey was one of them quiet-looking fellers that never laughed much nor talked much. Looey, he never made fun of nobody, which the doctor was always doing, and I wouldn't of cared to make fun of Looey much, either.
"Yes," I says, "I been laying here fur quite a spell, and quite natcheral I listened to you, as any one else would of done. And mebby I can get that team and wagon of yourn without it costing you a cent."Well, they didn't know what to say. They asts me how, but I says to leave it all to me. "Walk right along down this here crick," I says, "till you get to where it comes out'n the woods and runs acrost the road in under an iron bridge. That's about a half a mile east. Jest after the road crosses the bridge it forks. Take the right fork and walk another half a mile and you'll see a little yaller-painted schoolhouse setting lonesome on a sand hill. They ain't no school in it now. You wait there fur me," I says, "fur a couple of hours. After that if I ain't there you'll know I can't make it.
But I think I'll make it."
They looks at each other and they looks at me, and then they go off a little piece and talk low, and then the doctor says to me:
"Rube," he says, "I don't know how you can work anything on us that hasn't been worked already. We've got nothing more we can lose.
You go to it, Rube." And they started off.
So I went over town. Jake Smith was setting on the piazza in front of his hotel, chawing and spitting tobacco, with his feet agin the railing like he always done, and one of his eyes squinched up and his hat over the other one.
"Jake," I says, "where's that there doctor?"
Jake, he spit careful afore he answered, and he pulled his long, scraggly moustache careful, and he squinched his eyes at me. Jake was a careful man in everything he done.
"I dunno, Danny," he says. "Why?"
"Well," I says, "Hank sent me over to get that wagon and them hosses of theirn and finish that job.""That there wagon," says Jake, "is in my barn, with Si Emery watching her, and she has got to stay there till the law lets her loose." I figgered to myself Jake could use that team and wagon in his business, and was going to buy her cheap offn the town, what share of her he didn't figger he owned already.
"Why, Jake," I says, "I hope they ain't been no trouble of no kind that has drug the law into your barn!""Well, Danny," he says, "they HAS been a little trouble. But it's about over, now, I guess. And that there outfit belongs to the town now.""You don't say so!" says I, surprised-like.
