The weekly mail had just arrived at the Flying U ranch. Shorty, who had made the trip to Dry Lake on horseback that afternoon, tossed the bundle to the “Old Man” and was halfway to the stable when he was called back peremptorily.
“Shorty! O-h-h, Shorty! Hi!”
Shorty kicked his steaming horse in the ribs and swung round in the path, bringing up before the porch with a jerk.
“Where’s this letter been?” demanded the Old Man, with some excitement. James G. Whitmore, cattleman, would have been greatly surprised had he known that his cowboys were in the habit of calling him the Old Man behind his back. James G. Whitmore did not consider himself old, though he was constrained to admit, after several hours in the saddle, that rheumatism had searched him out—because of his fourteen years of roughing it, he said. Also, there was a place on the crown of his head where the hair was thin, and growing thinner every day of his life, though he did not realize it. The thin spot showed now as he stood in the path, waving a square envelope aloft before Shorty, who regarded it with supreme indifference.
Not so Shorty’s horse. He rolled his eyes till the whites showed, snorted and backed away from the fluttering, white object.
“Doggone it, where’s this been?” reiterated James G., accusingly.
“How the devil do I know?” retorted Shorty, forcing his horse nearer. “In the office, most likely. I got it with the rest to-day.”
“It’s two weeks old,” stormed the Old Man. “I never knew it to fail—if a letter says anybody’s coming, or you’re to hurry up and go somewhere to meet somebody, that letter’s the one that monkeys around and comes when the last dog’s hung. A letter asking yuh if yuh don’t want to get rich in ten days sellin’ books, or something, ‘ll hike along out here in no time. Doggone it!”
“You got a hurry-up order to go somewhere?” queried Shorty, mildly sympathetic.
“Worse than that,” groaned James G. “My sister’s coming out to spend the summer—t’-morrow. And no cook but Patsy—and she can’t eat in the mess house—and the house like a junk shop!”
“It looks like you was up against it, all right,” grinned Shorty. Shorty was a sort of foreman, and was allowed much freedom of speech.
“Somebody’s got to meet her—you have Chip catch up the creams so he can go. And send some of the boys up here to help me hoe out a little. Dell ain’t used to roughing it; she’s just out of a medical school—got her diploma, she was telling me in the last letter before this. She’ll be finding microbes by the million in this old shack. You tell Patsy I’ll be late to supper—and tell him to brace up and cook something ladies like—cake and stuff. Patsy’ll know. I’d give a dollar to get that little runt in the office—”
But Shorty, having heard all that it was important to know, was clattering down the long slope again to the stable. It was supper time, and Shorty was hungry. Also, there was news to tell, and he was curious to see how the boys would take it. He was just turning loose the horse when supper was called. He hurried back up the hill to the mess house, performed hasty ablutions in the tin wash basin on the bench beside the door, scrubbed his face dry on the roller towel, and took his place at the long table within.
“Any mail for me?” Jack Bates looked up from emptying the third spoon of sugar into his coffee.
“Naw—she didn’t write this time, Jack.” Shorty reached a long arm for the “Mulligan stew.”
“How’s the dance coming on?” asked Cal Emmett.
“I guess it’s a go, all right. They’ve got them coons engaged to play. The hotel’s fixing for a big crowd, if the weather holds like this. Chip, Old Man wants you to catch up the creams, after supper; you’ve got to meet the train to-morrow.”
“Which train?” demanded Chip, looking up. “Is old Dunk coming?”
“The noon train. No, he didn’t say nothing about Dunk. He wants a bunch of you fellows to go up and hoe out the White House and slick it up for comp’ny—got to be done t’-night. And Patsy, Old Man says for you t’ git a move on and cook something fit to eat; something that ain’t plum full uh microbes.”
Shorty became suddenly engaged in cooling his coffee, enjoying the varied emotions depicted on the faces of the boys.
“Who’s coming?”
“What’s up?”
Shorty took two leisurely gulps before he answered:
“Old Man’s sister’s coming out to stay all summer—and then some, maybe. Be here to-morrow, he said.”
“Gee whiz! Is she pretty?” This from Cal Emmett.
“Hope she ain’t over fifty.” This from Jack Bates.
“Hope she ain’t one of them four-eyed school-ma’ams,” added Happy Jack—so called to distinguish him from Jack Bates, and also because of his dolorous visage.
“Why can’t some one else haul her out?” began Chip. “Cal would like that job—and he’s sure welcome to it.”
“Cal’s too dangerous. He’d have the old girl dead in love before he got her over the first ridge, with them blue eyes and that pretty smile of his’n. It’s up to you, Splinter—Old Man said so.”
“She’ll be dead safe with Chip. HE won’t make love to her,” retorted Cal.
“Wonder how old she is,” repeated Jack Bates, half emptying the syrup pitcher into his plate. Patsy had hot biscuits for supper, and Jack’s especial weakness was hot biscuits and maple syrup.
“As to her age,” remarked Shorty, “it’s a cinch she ain’t no spring chicken, seeing she’s the Old Man’s sister.”
“Is she a schoolma’am?” Happy Jack’s distaste for schoolma’ams dated from his tempestuous introduction to the A B C’s, with their daily accompaniment of a long, thin ruler.
“No, she ain’t a schoolma’am. She’s a darn sight worse. She’s a doctor.”
“Aw, come off!” Cal Emmett was plainly incredulous.
“That’s right. Old Man said she’s just finished taking a course uh medicine—what’d yuh call that?”
“Consumption, maybe—or snakes.” Weary smiled blandly across the table.
“She got a diploma, though. Now where do you get off at?”
“Yeah—that sure means she’s a doctor,” groaned Cal.
“By golly, she needn’t try t’ pour any dope down ME,” cried a short, fat man who took life seriously—a man they called Slim, in fine irony.
“Gosh, I’d like to give her a real warm reception,” said Jack Bates, who had a reputation for mischief. “I know them Eastern folks, down t’ the ground. They think cow-punchers wear horns. Yes, they do. They think we’re holy terrors that eat with our six-guns beside our plates—and the like of that. They make me plum tired. I’d like to—wish we knew her brand.”
“I can tell you that,” said Chip, cynically. “There’s just two bunches to choose from. There’s the Sweet Young Things, that faint away at sight of a six-shooter, and squawk and catch at your arm if they see a garter snake, and blush if you happen to catch their eye suddenly, and cry if you don’t take off your hat every time you see them a mile off.” Chip held out his cup for Patsy to refill.
“Yeah—I’ve run up against that brand—and they’re sure all right. They suit ME,” remarked Cal.
“That don’t seem to line up with the doctor’s diploma,” commented Weary.
“Well, she’s the other kind then—and if she is, the Lord have mercy on the Flying U! She’ll buy her some spurs and try to rope and cut out and help brand. Maybe she’ll wear double-barreled skirts and ride a man’s saddle and smoke cigarettes. She’ll try to go the men one better in everything, and wind up by making a darn fool of herself. Either kind’s bad enough.”
“I’ll bet she don’t run in either bunch,” began Weary. “I’ll bet she’s a skinny old maid with a peaked nose and glasses, that’ll round us up every Sunday and read tracts at our heads, and come down on us with both feet about tobacco hearts and whisky livers, and the evils and devils wrapped up in a cigarette paper. I seen a woman doctor, once—she was stopping at the T Down when I was line-riding for them—and say, she was a holy fright! She had us fellows going South before a week. I stampeded clean off the range, soon as my month was up.”
“Say,” interrupted Cal, “don’t yuh remember that picture the Old Man got last fall, of his sister? She was the image of the Old Man—and mighty near as old.”
Chip, thinking of the morrow’s drive, groaned in real anguish of spirit.
“You won’t dast t’ roll a cigarette comin’ home, Chip,” predicted Happy Jack, mournfully. “Yuh want t’ smoke double goin’ in.”
“I don’t THINK I’ll smoke double going in,” returned Chip, dryly. “If the old girl don’t like my style, why the walking isn’t all taken up.”
“Say, Chip,” suggested Jack Bates, “you size her up at the depot, and, if she don’t look promising, just slack the lines on Antelope Hill. The creams ‘ll do the rest. If they don’t, we’ll finish the job here.”
Shorty tactfully pushed back his chair and rose. “You fellows don’t want to git too gay,” he warned. “The Old Man’s just beginning to forget about the calf-shed deal.” Then he went out and shut the door after him. The boys liked Shorty; he believed in the old adage about wisdom being bliss at certain times, and the boys were all the better for his living up to his belief. He knew the Happy Family would stop inside the limit—at least, they always had, so far.
“What’s the game?” demanded Cal, when the door closed behind their indulgent foreman.
“Why, it’s this. (Pass the syrup, Happy.) T’morrow’s Sunday, so we’ll have time t’ burn. We’ll dig up all the guns we can find, and catch up the orneriest cayuses in our strings, and have a real, old lynching bee—sabe?”
“Who yuh goin’ t’ hang?” asked Slim, apprehensively. “Yuh needn’t think I’LL stand for it.”
“Aw, don’t get nervous. There ain’t power enough on the ranch t’ pull yuh clear of the ground. We ain’t going to build no derrick,” said Jack, witheringly. “We’ll have a dummy rigged up in the bunk house. When Chip and the doctor heave in sight on top of the grade, we’ll break loose down here with our bronks and our guns, and smoke up the ranch in style. We’ll drag out Mr. Strawman, and lynch him to the big gate before they get along. We’ll be ‘riddling him with bullets’ when they arrive—and by that time she’ll be so rattled she won’t know whether it’s a man or a mule we’ve got strung up.”
“You’ll have to cut down your victim before I get there,” grinned Chip. “I never could get the creams through the gate, with a man hung to the frame; they’d spill us into the washout by the old shed, sure as fate.”
“That’d be all right. The old maid would sure know she was out West—we need something to add to the excitement, anyway.”
“If the Old Man’s new buggy is piled in a heap, you’ll wish you had cut out some of the excitement,” retorted Chip.
“All right, Splinter. We won’t hang him there at all. That old cottonwood down by the creek would do fine. It’ll curdle her blood like Dutch cheese to see us marching him down there—and she can’t see the hay sticking out of his sleeves, that far off.”
“What if she wants to hold an autopsy?” bantered Chip.
“By golly, we’ll stake her to a hay knife and tell her to go after him!” cried Slim, suddenly waking up to the situation.
The noon train slid away from the little, red depot at Dry Lake and curled out of sight around a hill. The only arrival looked expectantly into the cheerless waiting room, gazed after the train, which seemed the last link between her and civilization, and walked to the edge of the platform with a distinct frown upon the bit of forehead visible under her felt hat.
A fat young man threw the mail sack into a weather-beaten buggy and drove leisurely down the track to the post office. The girl watched him out of sight and sighed disconsolately. All about her stretched the rolling grass land, faintly green in the hollows, brownly barren on the hilltops. Save the water tank and depot, not a house was to be seen, and the silence and loneliness oppressed her.
The agent was dragging some boxes off the platform. She turned and walked determinedly up to him, and the agent became embarrassed under her level look.
“Isn’t there anyone here to meet me?” she demanded, quite needlessly. “I am Miss Whitmore, and my brother owns a ranch, somewhere near here. I wrote him, two weeks ago, that I was coming, and I certainly expected him to meet me.” She tucked a wind-blown lock of brown hair under her hat crown and looked at the agent reproachfully, as if he were to blame, and the agent, feeling suddenly that somehow the fault was his, blushed guiltily and kicked at a box of oranges.
“Whitmore’s rig is in town,” he said, hastily. “I saw his man at dinner. The train was reported late, but she made up time.” Grasping desperately at his dignity, he swallowed an abject apology and retreated into the office.
Miss Whitmore followed him a few steps, thought better of it, and paced the platform self-pityingly for ten minutes, at the end of which the Flying U rig whirled up in a cloud of dust, and the agent hurried out to help with the two trunks, and the mandolin and guitar in their canvas cases.
The creams circled fearsomely up to the platform and stood quivering with eagerness to be off, their great eyes rolling nervously. Miss Whitmore took her place beside Chip with some inward trepidation mingled with her relief. When they were quite ready and the reins loosened suggestively, Pet stood upon her hind feet with delight and Polly lunged forward precipitately.
The girl caught her breath, and Chip eyed her sharply from the corner of his eye. He hoped she was not going to scream—he detested screaming women. She looked young to be a doctor, he decided, after that lightning survey. He hoped to goodness she wasn’t of the Sweet Young Thing order; he had no patience with that sort of woman. Truth to tell, he had no patience with ANY sort of woman.
He spoke to the horses authoritatively, and they obeyed and settled to a long, swinging trot that knew no weariness, and the girl’s heart returned to its normal action.
Two miles were covered in swift silence, then Miss Whitmore brought herself to think of the present and realized that the young man beside her had not opened his lips except to speak once to his team. She turned her head and regarded him curiously, and Chip, feeling the scrutiny, grew inwardly defiant.
Miss Whitmore decided, after a close inspection, that she rather liked his looks, though he did not strike her as a very amiable young man. Perhaps she was a bit tired of amiable young men. His face was thin, and refined, and strong—the strength of level brows, straight nose and square chin, with a pair of paradoxical lips, which were curved and womanish in their sensitiveness; the refinement was an intangible expression which belonged to no particular feature but pervaded the whole face. As to his eyes, she was left to speculate upon their color, since she had not seen them, but she reflected that many a girl would give a good deal to own his lashes.
Of a sudden he turned his eyes from the trail and met her look squarely. If he meant to confuse her, he failed—for she only smiled and said to herself: “They’re hazel.”
“Don’t you think we ought to introduce ourselves?” she asked, composedly, when she was quite sure the eyes were not brown.
“Maybe.” Chip’s tone was neutrally polite.
Miss Whitmore had suspected that he was painfully bashful, after the manner of country young men. She now decided that he was not; he was passively antagonistic.
“Of course you know that I’m Della Whitmore,” she said.
Chip carefully brushed a fly off Polly’s flank with the whip.
“I took it for granted. I was sent to meet a Miss Whitmore at the train, and I took the only lady in sight.”
“You took the right one—but I’m not—I haven’t the faintest idea who you are.”
“My name is Claude Bennett, and I’m happy to make your acquaintance.”
“I don’t believe it—you don’t look happy,” said Miss Whitmore, inwardly amused.
“That’s the proper thing to say when you’ve been introduced to a lady,” remarked Chip, noncommittally, though his lips twitched at the corners.
Miss Whitmore, finding no ready reply to this truthful statement, remarked, after a pause, that it was windy. Chip agreed that it was, and conversation languished.
Miss Whitmore sighed and took to studying the landscape, which had become a succession of sharp ridges and narrow coulees, water-worn and bleak, with a purplish line of mountains off to the left. After several miles she spoke.
“What is that animal over there? Do dogs wander over this wilderness alone?”
Chip’s eyes followed her pointing finger.
“That’s a coyote. I wish I could get a shot at him—they’re an awful pest, out here, you know.” He looked longingly at the rifle under his feet. “If I thought you could hold the horses a minute—”
“Oh, I can’t! I—I’m not accustomed to horses—but I can shoot a little.”
Chip gave her a quick, measuring glance. The coyote had halted and was squatting upon his haunches, his sharp nose pointed inquisitively toward them. Chip slowed the creams to a walk, raised the gun and laid it across his knees, threw a shell into position and adjusted the sight.
“Here, you can try, if you like,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready I’ll stop. You had better stand up—I’ll watch that you don’t fall. Ready? Whoa, Pet!”
Miss Whitmore did not much like the skepticism in his tone, but she stood up, took quick, careful aim and fired.
Pet jumped her full length and reared, but Chip was watching for some such performance and had them well under control, even though he was compelled to catch Miss Whitmore from lurching backward upon her baggage behind the seat—which would have been bad for the guitar and mandolin, if not for the young woman.
The coyote had sprung high in air, whirled dizzily and darted over the hill.
“You hit him,” cried Chip, forgetting his prejudice for a moment. He turned the creams from the road, filled with the spirit of the chase. Miss Whitmore will long remember that mad dash over the hilltops and into the hollows, in which she could only cling to the rifle and to the seat as best she might, and hope that the driver knew what he was about—which he certainly did.
“There he goes, sneaking down that coulee! He’ll get into one of those washouts and hide, if we don’t head him off. I’ll drive around so you can get another shot at him,” cried Chip. He headed up the hill again until the coyote, crouching low, was fully revealed.
“That’s a fine shot. Throw another shell in, quick! You better kneel on the seat, this time—the horses know what’s coming. Steady, Polly, my girl!”
Miss Whitmore glanced down the hill, and then, apprehensively, at the creams, who were clanking their bits, wild-eyed and quivering. Only their master’s familiar voice and firm grip on the reins held them there at all. Chip saw and interpreted the glance, somewhat contemptuously.
“Oh, of course if you’re AFRAID—”
Miss Whitmore set her teeth savagely, knelt and fired, cutting the sentence short in his teeth and forcing his undivided attention to the horses, which showed a strong inclination to bolt.
“I think I got him that time,” said she, nonchalantly, setting her hat straight—though Chip, with one of his quick glances, observed that she was rather white around the mouth.
He brought the horses dexterously into the road and quieted them.
“Aren’t you going to get my coyote?” she ventured to ask.
“Certainly. The road swings back, down that same coulee, and we’ll pass right by it. Then I’ll get out and pick him up, while you hold the horses.”
“You’ll hold those horses yourself,” returned Miss Whitmore, with considerable spirit. “I’d much rather pick up the coyote, thank you.”
Chip said nothing to this, whatever he may have thought. He drove up to the coyote with much coaxing of Pet and Polly, who eyed the gray object askance. Miss Whitmore sprang out and seized the animal by its coarse, bushy tail.
“Gracious, he’s heavy!” she exclaimed, after one tug.
“He’s been fattening up on Flying U calves,” remarked Chip, his foot upon the brake.
Miss Whitmore knelt and examined the cattle thief curiously.
“Look,” she said, “here’s where I hit him the first time; the bullet took a diagonal course from the shoulder back to the other side. It must have gone within an inch of his heart, and would have finished him in a short time, without that other shot—that penetrated his brain, you see; death was instantaneous.”
Chip had taken advantage of the halt to roll a cigarette, holding the reins tightly between his knees while he did so. He passed the loose edge of the paper across the tip of his tongue, eying the young woman curiously the while.
“You seem to be pretty well onto your job,” he remarked, dryly.
“I ought to be,” she said, laughing a little. “I’ve been learning the trade ever since I was sixteen.”
“Yes? You began early.”
“My Uncle John is a doctor. I helped him in the office till he got me into the medical school. I was brought up in an atmosphere of antiseptics and learned all the bones in Uncle John’s ‘Boneparte’—the skeleton, you know—before I knew all my letters.” She dragged the coyote close to the wheel.
“Let me get hold of the tail.” Chip carefully pinched out the blaze of his match and threw it away before he leaned over to help. With a quick lift he landed the animal, limp and bloody, squarely upon the top of Miss Whitmore’s largest trunk. The pointed nose hung down the side, the white fangs exposed in a sinister grin. The girl gazed upon him proudly at first, then in dismay.
“Oh, he’s dripping blood all over my mandolin case—and I just know it won’t come out!” She tugged frantically at the instrument.
“‘Out, damned spot!’” quoted Chip in a sepulchral tone before he turned to assist her.
Miss Whitmore let go the mandolin and stared blankly up at him, and Chip, offended at her frank surprise that he should quote Shakespeare, shut his lips tightly and relapsed into silence.
Miss Della Whitmore gazed meditatively down the hill at the bunk house. The boys were all at work, she knew. She had heard J. G. tell two of them to “ride the sheep coulee fence,” and had been consumed with amazed curiosity at the order. Wherefore should two sturdy young men be commanded to ride a fence, when there were horses that assuredly needed exercise—judging by their antics—and needed it badly? She resolved to ask J. G. at the first opportunity.
The others were down at the corrals, branding a few calves which belonged on the home ranch. She had announced her intention of going to look on, and her brother, knowing how the boys would regard her presence, had told her plainly that they did not want her. He said it was no place for girls, anyway. Then he had put on a very dirty pair of overalls and hurried down to help for he was not above lending a hand when there was extra work to be done.
Miss Della Whitmore tidied the kitchen and dusted the sitting room, and then, having a pair of mischievously idle hands and a very feminine curiosity, conceived an irrepressible desire to inspect the bunk house.
J. G. would tell her that, also, was no place for girls, she supposed, but J. G. was not present, so his opinion did not concern her. She had been at the Flying U ranch a whole week, and was beginning to feel that its resources for entertainment—aside from the masculine contingent, which held some promising material—were about exhausted. She had climbed the bluffs which hemmed the coulee on either side, had selected her own private saddle horse, a little sorrel named Concho, and had made friends with Patsy, the cook. She had dazzled Cal Emmett with her wiles and had found occasion to show Chip how little she thought of him; a highly unsatisfactory achievement, since Chip calmly over-looked her whenever common politeness permitted him.
There yet remained the unexplored mystery of that little cabin down the slope, from which sounded so much boylike laughter of an evening. She watched and waited till she was positive the coast was clear, then clapped an old hat of J. G.‘s upon her head and ran lightly down the hill.
With her hand upon the knob, she ran her eye critically along the outer wall and decided that it had, at some remote date, been treated to a coat of whitewash; gave the knob a sudden twist, with a backward glance like a child stealing cookies, stepped in and came near falling headlong. She had not expected that remoteness of floor common to cabins built on a side hill.
“Well!” She pulled herself together and looked curiously about her. What struck her at first was the total absence of bunks. There were a couple of plain, iron bedsteads and two wooden ones made of rough planks. There was a funny-looking table made of an inverted coffee box with legs of two-by-four, and littered with a characteristic collection of bachelor trinkets. There was a glass lamp with a badly smoked chimney, a pack of cards, a sack of smoking tobacco and a box of matches. There was a tin box with spools of very coarse thread, some equally coarse needles and a pair of scissors. There was also—and Miss Whitmore gasped when she saw it—a pile of much-read magazines with the latest number of her favorite upon the top. She went closer and examined them, and glanced around the room with doubting eyes. There were spurs, quirts, chaps and queer-looking bits upon the walls; there were cigarette stubs and burned matches innumerable upon the rough, board floor, and here in her hand—she turned the pages of her favorite abstractedly and a paper fluttered out and fell, face upward, on the floor. She stooped and recovered it, glanced and gasped.
“Well!”
It was only a pencil sketch done on cheap, unruled tablet paper, but her mind dissolved into a chaos of interrogation marks and exclamation points—with the latter predominating more and more the longer she looked.
It showed blunt-topped hills and a shallow coulee which she remembered perfectly. In the foreground a young woman in a smart tailored costume, the accuracy of which was something amazing, stood proudly surveying a dead coyote at her feet. In a corner of the picture stood a weather-beaten stump with a long, thin splinter beside it on the ground. Underneath was written in characters beautifully symmetrical: “The old maid’s credential card.”
There was no gainsaying the likeness; even the rakish tilt of the jaunty felt hat, caused by the wind and that wild dash across country, was painstakingly reproduced. And the fanciful tucks on the sleeve of the gown—“and I didn’t suppose he had deigned so much as a glance!” was her first coherent thought.
Miss Whitmore’s soul burned with resentment. No woman, even at twenty-three, loves to be called “the old maid”—especially by a keen-witted young man with square chin and lips with a pronounced curve to them. And whoever supposed the fellow could draw like that—and notice every tiny little detail without really looking once? Of course, she knew her hat was crooked, with the wind blowing one’s head off, almost, but he had no business: “The old maid’s credential card!”—“Old maid,” indeed!
“The audacity of him!”
“Beg pardon?”
Miss Whitmore wheeled quickly, her heart in the upper part of her throat, judging by the feel of it. Chip himself stood just inside the door, eying her coldly.
“I was not speaking,” said Miss Whitmore, haughtily, in futile denial.
To this surprising statement Chip had nothing to say. He went to one of the iron beds, stooped and drew out a bundle which, had Miss Whitmore asked him what it was, he would probably have called his “war sack.” She did not ask; she stood and watched him, though her conscience assured her it was a dreadfully rude thing to do, and that her place was up at the house. Miss Whitmore was frequently at odds with her conscience; at this time she stood her ground, backed by her pride, which was her chiefest ally in such emergencies.
When he drew a huge, murderous-looking revolver from its scabbard and proceeded calmly to insert cartridge after cartridge, Miss Whitmore was constrained to speech.
“Are you—going to—SHOOT something?”
The question struck them both as particularly inane, in view of his actions.
“I am,” replied he, without looking up. He whirled the cylinder into place, pushed the bundle back under the bed and rose, polishing the barrel of the gun with a silk handkerchief.
Miss Whitmore hoped he wasn’t going to murder anyone; he looked keyed up to almost any desperate deed.
“Who—what are you going to shoot?” Really, the question asked itself.
Chip raised his eyes for a fleeting glance which took in the pencil sketch in her hand. Miss Whitmore observed that his eyes were much darker than hazel; they were almost black. And there was, strangely enough, not a particle of curve to his lips; they were thin, and straight, and stern.
“Silver. He broke his leg.”
“Oh!” There was real horror in her tone. Miss Whitmore knew all about Silver from garrulous Patsy. Chip had rescued a pretty, brown colt from starving on the range, had bought him of the owner, petted and cared for him until he was now one of the best saddle horses on the ranch. He was a dark chestnut, with beautiful white, crinkly mane and tail and white feet. Miss Whitmore had seen Chip riding him down the coulee trail only yesterday, and now—Her heart ached with the pity of it.
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t know. He was in the little pasture. Got kicked, maybe.” Chip jerked open the door with a force greatly in excess of the need of it.
Miss Whitmore started impulsively toward him. Her eyes were not quite clear.
“Don’t—not yet! Let me go. If it’s a straight break I can set the bone and save him.”
Chip, savage in his misery, regarded her over one square shoulder.
“Are you a veterinary surgeon, may I ask?”
Miss Whitmore felt her cheeks grow hot, but she stood her ground.
“I am not. But a broken bone is a broken bone, whether it belongs to a man—or some OTHER beast!”
“Y—e-s?”
Chip’s way of saying yes was one of his chief weapons of annihilation. He had a peculiar, taunting inflection which he could give to it, upon occasion, which caused prickles of flesh upon the victim. To say that Miss Whitmore was not utterly quenched argues well for her courage. She only gasped, as though treated to an unexpected dash of cold water, and went on.
“I’m sure I might save him if you’d let me try. Or are you really eager to shoot him?”
Chip’s muscles shrank. Eager to shoot him—Silver, the only thing that loved and understood him?
“You may come and look at him, if you like,” he said, after a breath or two.
Miss Whitmore overlooked the tolerance of the tone and stepped to his side, mechanically clutching the sketch in her fingers. It was Chip, looking down at her from his extra foot of height, who called her attention to it.
“Are you thinking of using that for a plaster?”
Miss Whitmore started and blushed, then, with an uptilt of chin:
“If I need a strong irritant, yes!” She calmly rolled the paper into a tiny tube and thrust it into the front of her pink shirt-waist for want of a pocket—and Chip, watching her surreptitiously, felt a queer grip in his chest, which he thought it best to set down as anger.
Silently they hurried down where Silver lay, his beautiful, gleaming mane brushing the tender green of the young grass blades. He lifted his head when he heard Chip’s step, and neighed wistfully. Chip bent over him, black agony in his eyes. Miss Whitmore, looking on, realized for the first time that the suffering of the horse was a mere trifle compared to that of his master. Her eyes wandered to the loaded revolver which bulged his pocket behind, and she shuddered—but not for Silver. She went closer and laid her hand upon the shimmery mane. The horse snorted nervously and struggled to rise.
“He’s not used to a woman,” said Chip, with a certain accent of pride. “I guess this is the closest he’s ever been to one. You see, he’s never had any one handle him but me.”
“Then he certainly is no lady’s horse,” said Miss Whitmore, good-naturedly. Somehow, in the last moment, her attitude toward Chip had changed considerably. “Try and make him let me feel the break.”
With much coaxing and soothing words it was accomplished, and it did not take long, for it was a front leg, broken straight across, just above the fetlock. Miss Whitmore stood up and smiled into the young man’s eyes, conscious of a desire to bring the curve back into his lips.
“It’s very simple,” she declared, cheerfully. “I know I can cure him. We had a colt at home with his leg broken the same way, and he was entirely cured—and doesn’t even limp. Of course,” she added, honestly, “Uncle John doctored him—but I helped.”
Chip drew the back of his gloved hand quickly across his eyes and swallowed.
“Miss Whitmore—if you could save old Silver—”
Miss Whitmore, the self-contained young medical graduate, blinked rapidly and found urgent need of tucking in wind-blown, brown locks, with her back to the tall cow-puncher who had unwittingly dropped his mask for an instant. She took off J. G.‘s old hat, turned it clean around twice and put it back exactly as it was before; unless the tilt over her left ear was a trifle more pronounced. Show me the woman who can set a hat straight upon her head without aid of a mirror!
“We must get him up from there and into a box stall. There is one, isn’t there?”
“Y—e-s—” Chip hesitated. “I wouldn’t ask the Old—your brother, for the use of it, though; not even for Silver.”
“I will,” returned she, promptly. “I never feel any compunction about asking for what I want—if I can’t get it any other way. I can’t understand why you wanted to shoot—you must have known this bone could be set.”
“I didn’t WANT to—” Chip bent over and drove a fly from Silver’s shoulder. “When a horse belonging to the outfit gets crippled like that, he makes coyote bait. A forty-dollar cow-puncher can’t expect any better for his own horse.”
“He’ll GET better, whatever he may expect. I’m just spoiling for something to practice on, anyway—and he’s such a beauty. If you can get him up, lead him to the stable while I go and tell J. G. and get some one to help.” She started away.
“Whom shall I get?” she called back.
“Weary, if you can—and Slim’s a good hand with horses, too.”
“Slim—is that the tall, lanky man?”
“No—he’s the short, fat one. That bean-pole is Shorty.”
Miss Whitmore fixed these facts firmly in her memory and ran swiftly to where rose all the dust and noise from the further corral. She climbed up until she could look conveniently over the top rail. The fence seemed to her dreadfully high—a clear waste of straight, sturdy poles.
“J. G—e-e-e!”
“Baw—h-h-h!” came answer from a wholly unexpected source as a big, red cow charged and struck the fence under her feet a blow which nearly dislodged her from her perch. The cow recoiled a few steps and lowered her head truculently.
“Scat! Shoo, there! Go on away, you horrid old thing you! Oh, J. G—e-e-e!”
Weary, who was roping, had just dragged a calf up to the fire and was making a loop to catch another when the cow made a second charge at the fence. He dashed in ahead of her, his horse narrowly escaping an ugly gash from her long, wicked horns. As he dodged he threw his rope with the peculiar, back-hand twist of the practiced roper, catching her by the head and one front foot. Straight across the corral he shot to the end of a forty-foot rope tied fast to the saddle horn. The red cow flopped with a thump which knocked all desire for trouble out of her for the time. Shorty slipped the rope off and climbed the fence, but the cow only shook her aching sides and limped sullenly away to the far side of the corral. J. G. and the boys had shinned up the fence like scared cats up a tree when the trouble began, and perched in a row upon the top. The Old Man looked across and espied his sister, wide-eyed and undignified, watching the outcome.
“Dell! What in thunder the YOU doing on that fence?” he shouted across the corral.
“What in thunder are you doing on the fence, J. G.?” she flung back at him.
The Old Man climbed shamefacedly down, followed by the others. “Is that what you call ‘getting put in the clear’?” asked she, genially. “I see now—it means clear on the top rail.”
“You go back to the house and stay there!” commanded J. G., wrathfully. The boys were showing unmistakable symptoms of mirth, and the laugh was plainly against the Old Man.
“Oh, no,” came her voice, honey-sweet and calm. “Shoo that cow this way again, will you, Mr..Weary? I like to watch J. G. shin up the fence. It’s good for him; it makes one supple, and J. G.‘s actually getting fat.”
“Hurry along with that calf!” shouted the Old Man, recovering the branding iron and turning his back on his tormentor.
The boys, beyond grinning furtively at one another, behaved with quite praiseworthy gravity. Miss Whitmore watched while Weary dragged a spotted calf up to the fire and the boys threw it to the ground and held it until the Old Man had stamped it artistically with a smoking U.
“Oh, J. G.!”
“Ain’t you gone yet? What d’yuh want?”
“Silver broke his leg.”
“Huh. I knew that long ago. Chip’s gone to shoot him. You go on to the house, doggone it! You’ll have every cow in the corral on the fight. That red waist of yours—”
“It isn’t red, it’s pink—a beautiful rose pink. If your cows don’t like it, they’ll have to be educated up to it. Chip isn’t either going to shoot that horse, J. G. I’m going to set his leg and cure him—and I’m going to keep him in one of your box stalls. There, now!”
Cal Emmett took a sudden fit of coughing and leaned his forehead weakly against a rail, and Weary got into some unnecessary argument with his horse and bolted across to the gate, where his shoulders were seen to shake—possibly with a nervous chill; the bravest riders are sometimes so affected. Nobody laughed, however. Indeed, Slim seemed unusually serious, even for him, while Happy Jack looked positively in pain.
“I want that short, fat man to help” (Slim squirmed at this blunt identification of himself) “and Mr. Weary, also.” Miss Whitmore might have spoken with a greater effect of dignity had she not been clinging to the top of the fence with two dainty slipper toes thrust between the rails not so very far below. Under the circumstances, she looked like a pretty, spoiled little schoolgirl.
“Oh. You’ve turned horse doctor, have yuh?” J. G. leaned suddenly upon his branding iron and laughed. “Doggone it, that ain’t a bad idea. I’ve got two box stalls, and there’s an old gray horse in the pasture—the same old gray horse that come out uh the wilderness—with a bad case uh string-halt. I’ll have some uh the boys ketch him up and you can start a horsepital!”
“Is that supposed to be a joke, J. G.? I never can tell YOUR jokes by ear. If it is, I’ll laugh. I’m going to use whatever I need and you can do without Mr.—er—those two men.”
“Oh, go ahead. The horse don’t belong to ME, so I’m willing you should practice on him a while. Say! Dell! Give him that truck you’ve been pouring down me for the last week. Maybe he’ll relish the taste of the doggone stuff—I don’t.”
“I suppose you’ve labeled THAT a ‘Joke—please laugh here,’” sighed Miss Whitmore, plaintively, climbing gingerly down.
An electrical undercurrent of expectation pervaded the very atmosphere of Flying U ranch. The musicians, two supercilious but undeniably efficient young men from Great Falls, had arrived two hours before and were being graciously entertained by the Little Doctor up at the house. The sandwiches stood waiting, the coffee was ready for the boiling water, and the dining-room floor was smooth as wax could make it.
For some reason unknown to himself, Chip was “in the deeps.” He even threatened to stop in the bunk house and said he didn’t feel like dancing, but was brought into line by weight of numbers. He hated Dick Brown, anyway, for his cute, little yellow mustache that curled up at the ends like the tail of a drake. He had snubbed him all the way out from town and handled Dick’s guitar with a recklessness that invited disaster. And the way Dick smirked when the Old Man introduced him to the Little Doctor—a girl with a fellow in the East oughtn’t to let her eyes smile that way at a pin-headed little dude like Dick Brown, anyway. And he—Chip—had given, her a letter postmarked blatantly: “Gilroy, Ohio, 10:30 P. M.”—and she had been so taken up with those cussed musicians that she couldn’t even thank him, and only just glanced at the letter before she stuck it inside her belt. Probably she wouldn’t even read it till after the dance. He wondered if Dr. Cecil Granthum cared—oh, hell! Of COURSE he cared—that is, if he had any sense at all. But the Little Doctor—she wasn’t above flirting, he noticed. If HE ever fell in love with a girl—which the Lord forbid—he’d take mighty good care she didn’t get time to make dimples and smiles for some other fellow to go to heaven looking at.
There, that was her, laughing like she always laughed—it reminded him of pines nodding in a canyon and looking wise and whispering things they’d seen and heard before you were born, and of water falling over rocks, somehow. Queer, maybe—but it did. He wondered if Dick Brown had been trying to say something funny. He didn’t see, for the life of him, how the Little Doctor could laugh at that little imitation man. Girls are—well, they’re easy pleased, most of them.
Down in the bunk house the boys were hurrying into their “war togs”—which is, being interpreted, their best clothes. There was a nervous scramble over the cracked piece of a bar mirror—which had a history—and cries of “Get out!” “Let me there a minute, can’t yuh?” and “Get up off my coat!” were painfully frequent.
Happy Jack struggled blindly with a refractory red tie, which his face rivaled in hue and sheen—for he had been generous of soap.
Weary had possessed himself of the glass and was shaving as leisurely as though four restive cow-punchers were not waiting anxiously their turn.
“For the Lord’s sake, Weary!” spluttered Jack Bates. “Your whiskers grow faster’n you can shave ‘em off, at that gait. Get a move on, can’t yuh?”
Weary turned his belathered face sweetly upon Jack. “Getting in a hurry, Jacky? YOUR girl won’t be there, and nobody else’s girl is going to have time to see whether you shaved to-day or last Christmas. You don’t want to worry so much about your looks, none of you. I hate to say it, but you act vain, all of you kids. Honest, I’m ashamed. Look at that gaudy countenance Happy’s got on—and his necktie’s most as bad.” He stropped his razor with exasperating nicety, stopping now and then to test its edge upon a hair from his own brown head.
Happy Jack, grown desperate over his tie and purple over Weary’s remarks, craned his neck over the shoulder of that gentleman and leered into the mirror. When Happy liked, he could contort his naturally plain features into a diabolical grin which sent prickly waves creeping along the spine of the beholder.
Weary looked, stared, half rose from his chair.
“Holy smithereens! Quit it, Happy! You look like the devil by lightning.”
Happy, watching, seized the hand that held the razor; Cal, like a cat, pounced upon the mirror, and Jack Bates deftly wrenched the razor from Weary’s fingers.
“Whoopee, boys! Some of you tie Weary down and set on him while I shave,” cried Cal, jubilant over the mutiny. “We’ll make short work of this toilet business.”
Whereupon Weary was borne to the floor, bound hand and foot with silk handkerchiefs, carried bodily and laid upon his bed.
“Oh, the things I won’t do to you for this!” he asserted, darkly. “There won’t nary a son-of-a-gun uh yuh get a dance from my little schoolma’am—you’ll see!” He grinned prophetically, closed his eyes and murmured: “Call me early, mother dear,” and straightway fell away into slumber and peaceful snoring, while the lather dried upon his face.
“Better turn Weary loose and wake him up, Chip,” suggested Jack Bates, half an hour later, shoving the stopper into his cologne bottle and making for the door. “At the rate the rigs are rolling in, it’ll take us all to put up the teams.” The door slammed behind him as it had done behind the others as they hurried away.
“Here!” Chip untied Weary’s hands and feet and took him by the shoulder. “Wake up, Willie, if you want to be Queen o’ the May.”
Weary sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Confound them two Jacks! What time is it?”
“A little after eight. YOUR crowd hasn’t, come yet, so you needn’t worry. I’m not going up yet for a while, myself.”
“You’re off your feed. Brace up and take all there is going, my son.” Weary prepared to finish his interrupted beautification.
“I’m going to—all the bottles, that is. If that Dry Lake gang comes loaded down with whisky, like they generally do, we ought to get hold of it and cache every drop, Weary.”
Weary turned clear around to stare his astonishment.
“When did the W. C. T. U. get you by the collar?” he demanded.
“Aw, don’t be a fool, Weary,” retorted Chip. “You can see it wouldn’t look right for us to let any of the boys get full, or even half shot, seeing this is the Little Doctor’s dance.”
Weary meditatively scraped his left jaw and wiped the lather from the razor upon a fragment of newspaper.
“Splinter, we’ve throwed in together ever since we drifted onto the same range, and I’m with you, uh course. But—don’t overlook Dr. Cecil Granthum. I’d hate like the devil to see you git throwed down, because it’d hurt you worse than anybody I know.”
Chip calmly sifted some tobacco into a cigarette paper. His mouth was very straight and his brows very close together.
“It’s a devilish good thing it was YOU said that, Weary. If it had been anyone else I’d punch his face for him.”
“Why, yes—an’ I’d help you, too.” Weary, his mouth very much on one side of his face that he might the easier shave the other, spoke in fragments. “You don’t take it amiss from—me, though. I can see—”