Baggs

“ And Aunt Lydia, who had previously thought she would be so glad to find Baggs, was just as glad now that this occupant of the tool closet was not Baggs, and went into the house thoroughly satisfied. The others still kept up the pursuit. Squire Tuck roused The Harbor after a fashion not known for years. Uncle Boardman stirred up every farmhouse on his road. Walter and Don Pedro searched the woods, but in silence. ”

“ I..."
"Pray calm yourself," broke in my Lord haughtily. "I admire the fellow's acting ... the Man himself does not exist for me."
"You are most gracious, my Lord," murmured Mr. Baggs promptly, whilst I could have struck him for his obsequiousness and his Lordship for his arrogance.
It seems that the matter which had brought Lord Stour to Mr. Baggs' office was one of monies connected with the winding-up of the affairs of the late Earl, uncle of the present Peer. I was busy with my work during the time that these affairs were being discussed and did not pay much heed to the conversation. ”

“ There were those who averred that after his experience with Iron Hand he always ran faster across the forbidden bridge than anywhere else. On this occasion Baggs bowled merrily along the trestle and was getting toward the middle of the river when the pony trucks jumped the rail and the drivers dropped on the ties. Dan Baggs yelled to his fireman.
It was unnecessary. Delaroo, the fireman, a quiet but prudent fellow, was already standing in the gangway prepared for an emergency. He sprang, not a minute too soon, from the engine and lighted in the sand. ”

“ Within the office, the despatcher found Bucks talking to Callahan, while Baggs was trying to explain to Bill Dancing how the confidence men had tried to inveigle him into a “shell” game and, when they found they could not rob him of his month’s pay in any other way, had knocked him down to pick his pockets. ”

“ CHAPTER V
"I find myself," said the Driver, at the next session of the Scheherazade Society, as Colonel Baggs called their camp-fires, "in a whale of a dilemmer. I have never had nothin' happen to me worth tellin'. I have punched cows till this dry farmin' made it necessary to take to some more humble callin', and there's nothin' to cow-punchin' that is interestin'. ”

“ The company wanted to give a check and redeem, but the clerk stood out for currency, and it was too late to get it. He got the mine, and Lucy, and is the big Mr. Addison, now. No, me for where you can carry off things that are too big for the grand larceny statutes. This business of farming is too much like chicken-feed for me!"
CHAPTER VIII
"I came on this trip," said Colonel Baggs, "to rest my vocal organs, and not to talk. In this ambition I have been greatly aided by the willingness of Professor Boggs to assume the conversational burden in our seat. ”

“ It was very beautiful out there; mountains, 193 hills, bushes, all a study in absolute stillness. The only sound that came to her ears was the howl of a wolf in the distance.
“Coming in at just the right moment,” smiled the girl. “What a country for effects! Oh dear, I believe I could sleep out there in the hammock if it wasn’t too chilly.”
Taking the couch cover over her arm she crept softly out of the door and out on to the veranda where the hammock swayed gently in the breeze. Polly adjusted herself in it with care; a fall would bring all the occupants of the house out with a bound. ”

“ Bagnet draws a long breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench, unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable. ”

“ Mrs Bagg was a fine woman of about forty-five, fresh for her age, with an aquiline nose, fine dark eyes, her hair, parted on one side, was drawn over to the other; a tidy woman, who kept her cottage scrupulously clean, and her person scrupulously neat. Folks said she had a temper, but tidy women, and good housewives generally have tempers, there is energy, go, in them; they have no patience with slovenly people, and work half done.
‘Mrs Bagg,’ said Tapp, ‘I’ve come to call you to task. ”

“ I’m the real boss.”
“Oh, as the sheriff, of course,” replied Polly, hastily. “Anybody could see that you ran this hotel. It’s much too well handled to be a man’s job.”
“Well,” the tall girl unbent a trifle, “I don’t mind telling you that I think so myself. Of course, as a sheriff Papa is all right. You wait here and I’ll fetch him and look after the office till you’re through with him.”
In a moment or two Sam Penhallow entered the dining-room, his good-natured face a trifle puzzled.
“Mabel said——” he began.
Polly smiled. “Yes, isn’t she clever at managing things? You see, Mr. ”

“ Bill knows of a fox there."
"I hope he does this time, James," replies Sir John; "but I am going to draw the big wood, and then the Osiers."
"Very good, Sir John; of course you [Pg 190] knows best," remarks Mr. James, and then hurries off, thinking how deuced lucky it is that he had a bagman down on the chance.
When they arrive at the bottom of the wood they find the great man standing at the gate full of importance, and with an air of self-satisfaction on his face. "I'm sure there's summut up, sir," says old Tom to Sir John, as the hounds dash into cover. ”

“ Mrs. Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be got into action. “If that don’t bring you round, George,” says she, “just throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and the two together must do it.”
“You ought to do it of yourself,” George answers; “I know that very well, Mrs. Bagnet. I’ll tell you how, one way and another, the blues have got to be too many for me. ”

“ Bagnet’s face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies, the highest approbation and acquiescence.
“The time will come, my boy,” pursues the trooper, “when this hair of your mother’s will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she’ll be then. Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, ‘I never whitened a hair of her dear head—I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!’ For of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have that by you, Woolwich!” ”

“ Then the thought came to him of Polly—alone on the trail above him. A sickening fear shook him; how could she possibly have escaped those men? In a blind fury he started to climb the ravine. It had been hard going before—now, in spite of his body, stiff and shaken, he did not feel the effort. His face was purple with heat and exertion, his hands were bloody with the cactus he had clutched when falling, but his terror for the girl dwarfed all physical discomfort. ”

“ And automobiles ain’t so common round here that you can pick one up every time you feel like hunting treasure, either. I own the only one in town and I loaned it to-day to a good-for-nothing guy that’s courtin’ Mabel, worse luck!”
“We’ve got Mendoza and his Ford,” said Polly, eagerly. “If I run up and get my hat and coat, will you slip down and pry him out of that saloon and the three of us run out to Wildcat Canyon before those Mexicans can get there?”
“You bet I will,” replied the willing Sam.
“Oh, Mr. Penhallow, you’re the kind of man that I admire!” ”

“ Bagnet, something shrilly. “But what satisfaction will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have tempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or Australey?”
Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large- boned, a little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from forty-five to fifty. ”

“ Horses must have got scared and bolted round the curve,” said the engineer, meditatively. “Nothin’ in the wagon. Looks bad to me; don’t it to you, Mendoza?”
“Si,” responded Mendoza. “We go by Soria’s place. He know mebbe what happen.”
“All right,” assented Tom, sadly. “If they’d got away on the horses seems to me we’d have seen or heard somethin’ of them on the road. Unless they went by the trail—in that case them fellers on horseback would have met ’em. Well, step on your gas, Mendoza, and let’s get to Soria’s.”
Soria’s place was empty. Not a child, nor a dog, 250 nor a burro. ”

“ Even, to give me a liking for the place, that I might mark it down in my line of hunt, he tied an old Cow there for my first Kill. I was the making of that Man," declared Bagh, sitting down and smoothing his big coarse mustache with his velvet paw—"the making of him, for he had a splendid crop of raji, and I, why I must have killed a dozen Pigs in and about his field."
"Oh, dear me!" cried Magh. "Sugared peanuts! Every Jungle Dweller is growing into a benefactor of the Men; even Pig is a much abused, innocent chap; and here's Bagh a protector of the poor ryot." ”

“ George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an apple.
“The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet in reply, “is a thoroughly fine woman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as she gets on. I never saw the old girl’s equal. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained!”
Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs. Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. ”

“ Around it lay a half dozen or so recumbent shapes wrapped in blankets. How many more might be lying beyond the light circle we could not tell. Beyond them we saw dimly the forms of dozing horses. Obeying a signal from the old trapper, we circled the camp until we were on the same side as the animals. They raised their heads and blew softly at us; but we lay still, and shortly they quieted down.
“Now,” breathed Bagsby, “when I give the word, fire. And each man grab a horse by the picket rope, stampede the rest, and hustle back to Vasquez. Ready!” ”

“ The badger will come out, take a look round, and sit awhile close to the mouth of the hole. [49] He will then shuffle about and get further from the hole. You will watch him descend into some bracken-covered hollow, and will see nothing more of him for awhile. Then you will hear him gently pushing and shoving and grunting, and know that he is very busy over something. He will reappear bumping along backwards, a heap of bracken and of grass or old straw, left from a pheasant feed, under his belly, and encircled by his arms and fore-feet. ”

“ A few fields farther on a labourer hollos him, and in the meadow before the house the hounds view, and they run into him almost in the garden.
"Who-whoop," yells the old man, as pleased as Punch. "Now then, missus," as Mrs. Simms comes out to see the end of the [Pg 56] destroyer of her chickens, "ale and beer and anything you have. What is it, gentlemen? Give it a name," as the field one by one jump off their smoking horses. "We must drink the health of this one; it's, as Sir John says, a family fox. Oh, bother the turkeys, missus," as Mrs. S. mutters something about feeding the fox ”

“ Among the tribes or clans visited by me in such seasons, I do not remember any whose intercourse afforded more pleasure, or exhibited nobler traits, than the Bagers, who dwell on the solitary margins of these shallow rivulets, and subsist by boiling salt in the dry season and making palm-oil in the wet. I have never read an account of these worthy blacks, whose civility, kindness, and honesty will compare favorably with those of more civilized people.
The Bagers live very much apart from the great African tribes, and keep up their race by intermarriage. ”

“ They dug in, weary as they were, making small progress, but with hopeful eyes bent upon the distant arroyo. At least they were going in a different direction from the riders. Hard limped painfully. His face was set in lines of determination—or was it pain? Clara wondered. She stopped suddenly.
“Henry,” she said, firmly, “this is folly. Those men must have seen us. They’re able to overtake us if they want to, and if they want to do anything to us, they will. We can’t help ourselves. ”

“ Having shewn that they not only live in Winter, but asserted that to be the best Season for their total Destruction, I must further observe, that few People caring to trouble themselves about Buggs but when they themselves are troubled by them, [31] having confin’d the Attempts for their Destruction chiefly to the Breeding-Season, has been the sole Reason why the best Efforts for their Destruction have fail’d. ”

“ I in the meantime shall ostensibly take my departure, and so leave the ground clear for Bagwell. He is evidently rather afraid of me. My going will throw him completely off his guard; but I shall in reality only leave the train at the next station and return here after dark. You will have to see that the conservatory door leading on to the terrace is left unlocked. I shall steal in, and, hiding myself in the conservatory, shall await Bagwell. You in the meantime will be in the gallery with Thesiger. When you hear me call out, come in at once. Our only hope is to take that wretch red-handed. ”