Free Shaking the Nickel Bush by Ralph Moody

rustle, and no one could feel them in there.
    That seven hours I had to wait in Wickenburg seemed like a week. Even when I didn’t have to worry about being robbed I couldn’t rest comfortably on my bed, and it wasn’t much more comfortable to hobble around the streets. I went to all three restaurants to see if any of them had stewed chicken or poached fish, but they didn’t so I bought a can of salmon and a quart of milk in a grocery store and took them back to my room. Then I went to the depot and bought my ticket, just to kill time. While the agent was stamping the back of it I asked, “Is the bowlegged freight conductor who runs between here and Phoenix due in this afternoon?”
    â€œYep! Yep!” he told me. “That’ll be Jim Magee, and he ought to pull in ’long about three o’clock. How come you to ask?”
    â€œHe did me a good turn once,” I said, “and I just thought I’d like to say hello if I could find him again.”
    â€œYou ain’t alone,” the agent told me as he took my two dollars and picked the change out of the till. “Jim, he’s got a soft spot for down-an’-out cowhands—specially them that’s kids and a long ways from home. He didn’t get them bowlegs of his railroading. Didn’t go to braking freight till . . . ’98, if I recollect right . . . not till he was pretty well stove up. Time he was your age he was the bronc peelin’est cowhand in these parts. What did he, lend you a five?”
    â€œNo,” I said, “just did me a good turn when I needed it.”
    If the agent hadn’t asked me about the five I’d have hung around the depot till the freight came in, then thanked Jim Magee again for bringing me out from Phoenix. But I got the idea that the old fellow must have lent many a five to boys who hadn’t been as lucky as I, and who had never been able to come back and repay him. I walked up and down the platform three or four times, just thinking about it, and the more I thought, the more I wanted to pay back the debt for one of those boys. But you couldn’t walk up to a man like Jim Magee and hand him a five-dollar bill, along with some goody-goody talk about wanting to pay somebody else’s debt. There was only one thing I could think of to do, so I went up to the main street, bought a box of ten-cent cigars, and was leaning against the end of the depot when Jim’s freight pulled in on the siding.
    I stayed where I was until the engine had been uncoupled, then started across the tracks. The old man recognized me before I was halfway to him and called out, “Hi there, bub! See you done some ridin’ and come out all in one piece. Do any good?”
    â€œYep,” I said, “I was lucky, so I won’t be needing that straw car; I’m going to ride the cushions. Just came over to thank you for giving me a lift, and I brought along a few cigars I don’t have any use for. That one of yours looks kind of worn down.”
    It looked as though the stump old Jim had clenched in his teeth was the same one he’d had when he brought me out from Phoenix. He took it out, tossed it away, and said, “Now that was right kindly of you, but you needn’t to have fetched along no cigars. Most generally the boys don’t bother to come back less’n they need another lift, and you a’ready thanked me once.”
    The cigar box wasn’t wrapped, and I guess Jim had thought there’d be only two or three in it. When he took it he looked up quickly and said, “Lord A’mighty! A whole boxful! You didn’t go buy ’em, did you?”
    I thought it would be better to tell him a white lie, so I just said, “Side bet, and I don’t smoke.”
    â€œLord! Lord!” he said as he looked the box over. “Ten-centers! Who’d you bet with—one of them Hollywood dudes? You must’a done all