CHAPTER VII. — Love and a Stomach Pump.
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—”
The door slammed with extreme violence, and Weary slashed his chin unbecomingly in consequence, but he felt no resentment toward Chip. He calmly stuck a bit of paper on the cut to stop the bleeding and continued to shave.
A short time after, the Little Doctor came across Chip glaring at Dick Brown, who was strumming his guitar with ostentatious ease upon an inverted dry-goods box at one end of the long dining room.
“I came to ask a favor of you,” she said, “but my courage oozed at the first glance.”
“It's hard to believe your courage would ooze at anything. What's the favor?”
The Little Doctor bent her head and lowered her voice to a confidential undertone which caught at Chip's blood and set it leaping.
“I want you to come and help me turn my drug store around with its face to the wall. All the later editions of Denson, Pilgreen and Beckman have taken possession of my office—and as the Countess says: 'Them Beckman kids is holy terrors—an' it's savin' the rod an' spoilin' the kid that makes 'em so!'”
Chip laughed outright. “The Denson kids are a heap worse, if she only knew it,” he said, and followed her willingly.
The Little Doctor's “office” was a homey little room, with a couch, a well-worn Morris rocker, two willow chairs and a small table for the not imposing furnishing, dignified by a formidable stack of medical books in one corner, and the “drug store,” which was simply a roomy bookcase filled with jars, bottles, boxes and packages, all labeled in a neat vertical hand.
The room fairly swarmed with children, who seemed, for the most part, to be enjoying themselves very much. Charlotte May Pilgreen and Sary Denson were hunched amicably over one of the books, shuddering beatifically over a pictured skeleton. A swarm surrounded the drug store, the glass door of which stood open.
The Little Doctor flew across to the group, horror white.
“Sybilly got the key an' unlocked it, an' she give us this candy, too!” tattled a Pilgreen with very red hair and a very snub nose.
“I didn't, either! It was Jos'phine!”
“Aw, you big story-teller! I never tetched it!”
The Little Doctor clutched the nearest arm till the owner of it squealed.
“How many of you have eaten some of these? Tell the truth, now.” They quailed before her sternness—quailed and confessed. All told, seven had swallowed the sweet pellets, in numbers ranging from two to a dozen more.
“Is it poison?” Chip whispered the question in the ear of the perturbed Little Doctor.
“No—but it will make them exceedingly uncomfortable for a time—I'm going to pump them out.”
“Good shot! Serves 'em right, the little—”
“All of you who have eaten this—er—candy, must come with me. The rest of you may stay here and play, but you must NOT touch this case.”
“Yuh going t' give 'em a lickin'?” Sary Denson wetted a finger copiously before turning a leaf upon the beautiful skeleton.
“Never mind what I'm going to do to them—you had better keep out of mischief yourself, however. Mr. Bennett, I wish you would get some fellow you can trust—some one who won't talk about this afterward—turn this case around so that it will be safe, and then come to the back bedroom—the one off the kitchen. And tell Louise I want her, will you, please?”
“I'll get old Weary. Yes, I'll send the Countess—but don't you think she's a mighty poor hand to keep a secret?”
“I can't help it—I need her. Hurry, please.”
Awed by the look in her big, gray eyes and the mysterious summoning of help, the luckless seven were marched silently through the outer door, around the house, through the coal shed and so into the back bedroom, without being observed by the merrymakers, who shook the house to its foundation to the cheerful command: “Gran' right 'n' left with a double ELBOW-W!” “Chasse by yer pardner—balance—SWING!”
“What under the shinin' sun's the matter, Dell?” The Countess, breathless from dancing, burst in upon the little group.
“Nothing very serious, Louise, though it's rather uncomfortable to be called from dancing to administer heroic remedies by wholesale. Can you hold Josephine—whichever one that is? She ate the most, as nearly as I can find out.”
“She ain't gone an' took pizen, has she? What was it—strychnine? I'll bet them Beckman kids put 'er up to it. Yuh goin' t' give 'er an anticdote?”
“I'm going to use this.” The Little Doctor held up a fearsome thing to view. “Open your mouth, Josephine.”
Josephine refused; her refusal was emphatic and unequivocal, punctuated by sundry kicks directed at whoever came within range of her stout little shoes.
“It ain't no use t' call Mary in—Mary can't handle her no better'n I can—an' not so good. Jos'phine, yuh got—”
“Here's where we shine,” broke in a cheery voice which was sweet to the ears, just then. “Chip and I ain't wrassled with bronks all our lives for nothing. This is dead easy—all same branding calves. Ketch hold of her heels, Splinter—that's the talk. Countess, you better set your back against that door—some of these dogies is thinking of taking a sneak on us—and we'd have t' go some, to cut 'em out uh that bunch out there and corral 'em again. There yuh are, Doctor—sail in.”
Upheld mentally by the unfailing sunniness of Weary and the calm determination of Chip, to whom flying heels and squirming bodies were as nothing, or at most a mere trifle, the Little Doctor set to work with a thoroughness and dispatch which struck terror to the hearts of the guilty seven.
It did not take long—as Weary had said, it was very much like branding calves. No sooner was one child made to disgorge and laid, limp and subdued, upon the bed, than Chip and Weary seized another dexterously by heels and head. The Countess did nothing beyond guarding the door and acting as chaperon to the undaunted Little Doctor; but she did her duty and held her tongue afterward—which was a great deal for her to do.
The Little Doctor sat down in a chair, when it was all over, looking rather white. Chip moved nearer, though there was really nothing that he could do beyond handing her a glass of water, which she accepted gratefully.
Weary held a little paper trough of tobacco in his fingers and drew the tobacco sack shut with his teeth. His eyes were fixed reflectively upon the bed. He placed the sack absently in his pocket, still meditating other things.
“She answered: 'We are seven,'” he quoted softly and solemnly, and the Little Doctor forgot her faintness in a hearty laugh.
“You two go back to your dancing now,” she commanded, letting the dimples stand in her cheeks in a way that Chip dreamed about afterward. “I don't know what I should have done without you—a cow-puncher seems born to meet emergencies in just the right way. PLEASE don't tell anyone, will you?”
“Never. Don't you worry about us, Doctor. Chip and I don't set up nights emptying our brains out our mouths. We don't tell our secrets to nobody but our horses—and they're dead safe.”
“You needn't think I'll tell, either,” said the Countess, earnestly. “I ain't forgot how you took the blame uh that sof' soap, Dell. As the sayin' is—”
Weary closed the door then, so they did not hear the saying which seemed to apply to this particular case. His arm hooked into Chip's, he led the way through the kitchen and down the hill to the hay corral. Once safe from observation, he threw himself into the sweetly pungent “blue-joint” and laughed and laughed.
Chip's nervous system did not demand the relief of cachinnation. He went away to Silver's stall and groped blindly to the place where two luminous, green moons shone upon him in the darkness. He rubbed the delicate nose gently and tangled his fingers in the dimly gleaming mane, as he had seen HER do. Such pink little fingers they were! He laid his brown cheek against the place where he remembered them to have rested.
“Silver horse,” he whispered, “if I ever fall in love with a girl—which isn't likely!—I'll want her to have dimples and big, gray eyes and a laugh like—”
CHAPTER VIII. — Prescriptions.
It was Sunday, the second day after the dance. The boys were scattered, for the day was delicious—one of those sweet, soft days which come to us early in May. Down in the blacksmith shop Chip was putting new rowels into his spurs and whistling softly to himself while he worked.
The Little Doctor had gone with him to visit Silver that morning, and had not hurried away, but had leaned against the manger and listened while he told her of the time Silver, swimming the river when it was “up,” had followed him to the Shonkin camp when Chip had thought to leave him at home. And they had laughed together over the juvenile seven and the subsequent indignation of the mothers who, with the exception of “Mary,” had bundled up their offspring and gone home mad. True, they had none of them thoroughly understood the situation, having only the version of the children, who accused the Little Doctor of trying to make them eat rubber—“just cause she was mad about some little old candy.” The mystification of the others among the Happy Family, who scented a secret with a joke to it but despaired of wringing the truth from either Weary or Chip, was dwelt upon with much enjoyment by the Little Doctor.
It was a good old world and a pleasant, and Chip had no present quarrel with fate—or with anybody else. That was why he whistled.
Then voices reached him through the open door, and a laugh—HER laugh. Chip smiled sympathetically, though he had not the faintest notion of the cause of her mirth. As the voices drew nearer, the soft, smooth, hated tones of Dunk Whitaker untangled from the Little Doctor's laugh, and Chip stopped whistling. Dunk was making a good, long stay of it this time; usually he came one day and went the next, and no one grieved at his departure.
“You find them an entirely new species, of course. How do you get on with them?” said Dunk.
And the Little Doctor answered him frankly and distinctly: “Oh, very well, considering all things. They furnish me with some amusement, and I give them something quite new to talk about, so we are quits. They are a good-hearted lot, you know—but SO ignorant! I don't suppose—”
The words trailed into an indistinct murmur, punctuated by Dunk's jarring cackle.
Chip did not resume his whistling, though he might have done so if he had heard a little more, or a little less. As a matter of fact, it was the Densons, and the Pilgreens, and the Beckmans that were under discussion, and not the Flying U cowboys, as Chip believed. He no longer smiled sympathetically.
“We furnish her with some amusement, do we? That's good! We're a good-hearted lot, but SO ignorant! The devil we are!” He struck the rivet such a blow that he snapped one shank of his spur short off. This meant ten or twelve dollars for a new pair—though the cost of it troubled him little, just then. It was something tangible upon which to pour profanity, however, and the atmosphere grew sulphurous in the vicinity of the blacksmith shop and remained so for several minutes, after which a tall, irate cow-puncher with his hat pulled low over angry eyes left the shop and strode up the path to the deserted bunk house.
He did not emerge till the Old Man called to him to ride down to Benson's after one of the Flying U horses which had broken out of the pasture.
Della was looking from the window when Chip rode up the hill upon the “coulee trail,” which passed close by the house. She was tired of the platitudes of Dunk, who, trying to be both original and polished, fell far short of being either and only succeeded in being extremely tiresome.
“Where's Chip going, J. G.?” she demanded, in a proprietary tone.
“Down t' Benson's after a horse.” J. G. spoke lazily, without taking his pipe from his mouth.
“Oh, I wish I could go—I wonder if he'd care.” The Little Doctor spoke impulsively as was her habit.
“'Course he wouldn't. Hey, Chip! Hold on a minute!” The Old Man stood waving his pipe in the doorway.
Chip jerked his horse to a stand-still and half turned in the saddle.
“What?”
“Dell wants t' go along. Will yuh saddle up Concho for 'er? There's no hurry, anyhow, you've got plenty uh time. Dell's afraid one uh the kids might fall downstairs ag'in, and she'd miss the case.”
“I'm not, either,” said the Little Doctor, coming to stand by her brother; “it's too nice a day to stay inside, and my muscles ache for a gallop over the hills.”
Chip did not look up at her; he did not dare. He felt that, if he met her eyes—with the laugh in them—he should do one of two undesirable things: he should either smile back at her, weakly overlooking the hypocrisy of her friendliness, or sneer in answer to her smile, which would be very rude and ungentlemanly.
“If you had mentioned wanting a ride I should have been glad to accompany you,” remarked Dunk, reproachfully, when Chip had ridden, somewhat sullenly, back to the stable.
“I didn't think of it before—thank you,” said the Little Doctor, lightly, and hurried away to put on her blue riding habit with its cunning little jockey cap which she found the only headgear that would stay upon her head in the teeth of Montana wind, and which made her look-well, kissable. She was standing on the porch drawing on her gauntlets when Chip returned, leading Concho by the bridle.
“Let me help you,” begged Dunk, at her elbow, hoping till the last that she would invite him to go with them.
The Little Doctor, not averse to hiding the bitter of her medicine under a coating of sugar, smiled sweetly upon him, to the delectation of Dunk and the added bitterness of Chip, who was rapidly nearing that state of mind which is locally described as being “strictly on the fight.”
“I expect she thinks I'll amuse her some more!” he thought, savagely, as they galloped away through the quivering sunlight.
For the first two miles the road was level, and Chip set the pace—which was, as he intended it should be, too swift for much speech. After that the trail climbed abruptly out of Flying U coulee, and the horses were compelled to walk. Then it was that Chip's native chivalry and self-mastery were put to test.
He was hungry for a solitary ride such as had, before now, drawn much of the lonely ache out of his heart and keyed him up to the life which he must live and which chafed his spirit more than even he realized. Instead of such slender comfort, he was forced to ride beside the girl who had hurt him—so close that his knee sometimes brushed her horse—and to listen to her friendly chatter and make answer, at times, with at least some show of civility.
She was talking reminiscently of the dance.
“J. G. showed splendid judgment in his choice of musicians, didn't he?”
Chip looked straight ahead. This was touching a sore place in his memory. A vision of Dick Brown's vapid smile and curled up mustache rose before him.
“I'd tell a man,” he said, with faint irony.
The Little Doctor gave him a quick, surprised look and went on.
“I liked their playing so much. Mr. Brown was especially good upon the guitar.”
“Y—e-s?”
“Yes, of course. You know yourself, he plays beautifully.”
“Cow-punchers aren't expected to know all these things.” Chip hated himself for replying so, but the temptation mastered him.
“Aren't they? I can't see why not.”
Chip closed his lips tightly to keep in something impolite.
The Little Doctor, puzzled as well as piqued, went straight to the point.
“Why didn't you like Mr. Brown's playing?”
“Did I say I didn't like it?”
“Well, you—not exactly, but you implied that you did not.”
“Y—e-s?”
The Little Doctor gave the reins an impatient twitch.
“Yes, yes—YES!”
No answer from Chip. He could think of nothing to say that was not more or less profane.
“I think he's a very nice, amiable young man”—strong emphasis upon the second adjective. “I like amiable young men.”
Silence.
“He's going to come down here hunting next fall. J. G. invited him.”
“Yes? What does he expect to find?”
“Why, whatever there is to hunt. Chickens and—er—deer—”
“Exactly.”
By this they reached the level and the horses broke, of their own accord, into a gallop which somewhat relieved the strain upon the mental atmosphere. At the next hill the Little Doctor looked her companion over critically.
“Mr. Bennett, you look positively bilious. Shall I prescribe for you?”
“I can't see how that would add to your amusement.”
“I'm not trying to add to my amusement.”
“No?”
“If I were, there's no material at hand. Bad-tempered young men are never amusing, to me. I like—”
“Amiable young men. Such as Dick Brown.”
“I think you need a change of air, Mr. Bennett.”
“Yes? I've felt, lately, that Eastern airs don't agree with my constitution.”
Miss Whitmore grew red as to cheeks and bright as to eyes.
“I think a few small doses of Eastern manners would improve you very much,” she said, pointedly.
“Y—e-s? They'd have to be small, because the supply is very limited.”
The Little Doctor grew white around the mouth. She held Concho's rein so tight he almost stopped.
“If you didn't want me to come, why in the world didn't you have the courage to say so at the start? I must say I don't admire people whose tempers—and manners—are so unstable. I'm sorry I forced my presence upon you, and I promise you it won't occur again.” She hesitated, and then fired a parting shot which certainly was spiteful in the extreme. “There's one good thing about it,” she smiled, tartly, “I shall have something interesting to write to Dr. Cecil.”
With that she turned astonished Concho short around in the trail—and as Chip gave Blazes a vicious jab with his spurs at the same instant, the distance between them widened rapidly.
As Chip raced away over the prairie, he discovered a new and puzzling kink in his temper. He had been angry with the Little Doctor for coming, but it was nothing to the rage he felt when she turned back! He did not own to himself that he wanted her beside him to taunt and to hurt with his rudeness, but it was a fact, for all that. And it was a very surly young man who rode into the Denson corral and threw a loop over the head of the runaway.
CHAPTER IX. — Before the Round-up.
“The Little Doctor wants us all to come up t' the White House this evening and have some music,” announced Cal, bursting into the bunk house where the boys were sorting and packing their belongings ready to start with the round-up wagon in the morning.
Jack Bates hurriedly stuffed a miscellaneous collection of socks and handkerchiefs into his war bag and made for the wash basin.
“I'll just call her bluff,” he said, determinedly.
“It ain't any bluff; she wants us t' come, er you bet she wouldn't say so. I've learned that much about her. Say, you'd a died to seen old Dunk look down his nose! I'll bet money she done it just t' rasp his feelin's—and she sure succeeded. I'd go anyway, now, just t' watch him squirm.”
“I notice it grinds him consider'ble to see the Little Doctor treat us fellows like white folks. He's workin' for a stand-in there himself. I bet he gets throwed down good and hard,” commented Weary, cheerfully.
“It's a cinch he don't know about that pill-thrower back in Ohio,” added Cal. “Any of you fellows going to take her bid? I'll go alone, in a minute.”
“I don't think you'll go alone,” asserted Jack Bates, grabbing his hat.
Slim made a few hasty passes at his hair and said he was ready. Shorty, who had just come in from riding, unbuckled his spurs and kicked them under his bed.
“It'll be many a day b'fore we listen t' the Little Doctor's mandolin ag'in,” croaked Happy Jack.
“Aw, shut up!” admonished Cal.
“Come on, Chip,” sang out Weary. “You can spoil good paper when you can't do anything else. Come and size up the look on Dunk's face when we take possession of all the best chairs and get t' pouring our incense and admiration on the Little Doctor.”
Chip took the cigarette from his lips and emptied his lungs of smoke. “You fellows go on. I'm not going.” He bent again to his eternal drawing.
“The dickens you ain't!” Weary was too astounded to say more.
Chip said nothing. His gray hat-brim shielded his face from view, save for the thin, curved lips and firm chin. Weary studied chin and lips curiously, and whatever he read there, he refrained from further argument. He knew Chip so much better than did anyone else.
“Aw, what's the matter with yuh, Splinter! Come on; don't be a chump,” cried Cal, from the doorway.
“I guess you'll let a fellow do as he likes about it, won't you?” queried Chip, without looking up. He was very busy, just then, shading the shoulders of a high-pitching horse so that one might see the tense muscles.
“What's the matter? You and the Little Doctor have a falling out?”
“Not very bad,” Chip's tone was open to several interpretations. Cal interpreted it as a denial.
“Sick?” He asked next.
“Yes!” said Chip, shortly and falsely.
“We'll call the doctor in, then,” volunteered Jack Bates.
“I don't think you will. When I'm sick enough for that I'll let you know. I'm going to bed.”
“Aw, come on and let him alone. Chip's able t' take care of himself, I guess,” said Weary, mercifully, holding open the door.
They trooped out, and the last heard of them was Cal, remarking:
“Gee whiz! I'd have t' be ready t' croak before I'd miss this chance uh dealing old Dunk misery.”
Chip sat where they had left him, staring unseeingly down at the uncompleted sketch. His cigarette went out, but he did not roll a fresh one and held the half-burned stub abstractedly between his lips, set in bitter lines.
Why should he care what a slip of a girl thought of him? He didn't care; he only—that thought he did not follow to the end, but started immediately on a new one. He supposed he was ignorant, according to Eastern standards. Lined up alongside Dr. Cecil Granthum—damn him!—he would cut a sorry figure, no doubt. He had never seen the outside of a college, let alone imbibing learning within one. He had learned some of the wisdom which nature teaches those who can read her language, and he had read much, lying on his stomach under a summer sky, while the cattle grazed all around him and his horse cropped the sweet grasses within reach of his hand. He could repeat whole pages of Shakespeare, and of Scott, and Bobbie Burns—he'd like to try Dr. Cecil on some of them and see who came out ahead. Still, he was ignorant—and none realized it more keenly and bitterly than did Chip.
He rested his chin in his hand and brooded over his comfortless past and cheerless future. He could just remember his mother—and he preferred not to remember his father, who was less kind to him than were strangers. That was his past. And the future—always to be a cow-puncher? There was his knack for drawing; if he could study and practice, perhaps even the Little Doctor would not dare call him ignorant then. Not that he cared for what she might say or might not say, but a fellow can't help hating to be reminded of something that he knows better than anyone else—and that is not pleasant, however you may try to cover up the unsightliness of it.
If Dr. Cecil Granthum—damn him!—had been kicked into the world and made to fight fate with tender, childish little fists but lately outgrown their baby dimples, as had been HIS lot, would he have amounted to anything, either? Maybe Dr. Cecil would have grown up just common and ignorant and fit for nothing better than to furnish amusement to girl doctors with dimples and big, gray eyes and a way of laughing. He'd like to show that little woman that she didn't know all about him yet. It wasn't too late—he was only twenty-four—he would study, and work, and climb to where she must look up, not down, to him—if she cared enough to look at all. It wasn't too late. He would quit gambling and save his money, and by next winter he'd have enough to go somewhere and learn to make pictures that amounted to something. He'd show her!
After reiterating this resolve in several emphatic forms, Chip's spirits grew perceptibly lighter—so much so that he rolled a fresh cigarette and finished the drawing in his hands, which demonstrated the manner in which a particularly snaky broncho had taken a fall out of Jack Bates in the corral that morning.
Next day, early in the afternoon, the round-up climbed the grade and started on its long trip over the range, and, after they had gone, the ranch seemed very quiet and very lonely to the Little Doctor, who revenged herself by snubbing Dunk so unmercifully that he announced his intention of taking the next train for Butte, where he lived in the luxury of rich bachelorhood. As the Little Doctor showed no symptoms of repenting, he rode sullenly away to Dry Lake, and she employed the rest of the afternoon writing a full and decidedly prejudiced account to Dr. Cecil of her quarrel with Chip, whom, she said, she quite hated.
CHAPTER X. — What Whizzer Did.
“I guess Happy lost some of his horses, las' night,” said Slim at the breakfast table next morning. Slim had been kept at the ranch to look after the fences and the ditches, and was doing full justice to the expert cookery of the Countess.
“What makes yuh think that?” The Old Man poised a bit of tender, broiled steak upon the end of his fork.
“They's a bunch hangin' around the upper fence, an' Whizzer's among 'em. I'd know that long-legged snake ten miles away.”
The Little Doctor looked up quickly. She had never before heard of a “long-legged snake”—but then, she had not yet made the acquaintance of Whizzer.
“Well, maybe you better run 'em into the corral and hold 'em till Shorty sends some one after 'em,” suggested the Old Man.
“I never c'd run 'em in alone, not with Whizzer in the bunch,” objected Slim. “He's the orneriest cayuse in Chouteau County.”
“Whizzer'll make a rattlin' good saddle horse some day, when he's broke gentle,” argued the Old Man.
“Huh! I don't envy Chip the job uh breakin' him, though,” grunted Slim, as he went out of the door.
After breakfast the Little Doctor visited Silver and fed him his customary ration of lump sugar, helped the Countess tidy the house, and then found herself at a loss for something to do. She stood looking out into the hazy sunlight which lay warm on hill and coulee.
“I think I'll go up above the grade and make a sketch of the ranch,” she said to the Countess, and hastily collected her materials.
Down by the creek a “cotton-tail” sprang out of her way and kicked itself out of sight beneath a bowlder. The Little Doctor stood and watched till he disappeared, before going on again. Further up the bluff a striped snake gave her a shivery surprise before he glided sinuously away under a sagebush. She crossed the grade and climbed the steep bluff beyond, searching for a comfortable place to work.
A little higher, she took possession of a great, gray bowlder jutting like a giant table from the gravelly soil. She walked out upon it and looked down—a sheer drop of ten or twelve feet to the barren, yellow slope below.
“I suppose it is perfectly solid,” she soliloquized and stamped one stout, little boot, to see if the rock would tremble. If human emotions are possible to a heart of stone, the rock must have been greatly amused at the test. It stood firm as the hills around it.
Della sat down and looked below at the house—a doll's house; at the toy corrals and tiny sheds and stables. Slim, walking down the hill, was a mere pigmy—a short, waddling insect. At least, to a girl unused to gazing from a height, each object seemed absurdly small. Flying U coulee stretched away to the west, with a silver ribbon drawn carelessly through it with many a twist and loop, fringed with a tender green of young leaves. Away and beyond stood the Bear Paws, hazily blue, with splotches of purple shadows.
“I don't blame J. G. for loving this place,” thought the Little Doctor, drinking in the intoxication of the West with every breath she drew.
She had just become absorbed in her work when a clatter arose from the grade below, and a dozen horses, headed by a tall, rangy sorrel she surmised was Whizzer, dashed down the hill. Weary and Chip galloped close behind. They did not look up, and so passed without seeing her. They were talking and laughing in very good spirits—which the Little Doctor resented, for some inexplicable reason. She heard them call to Slim to open the corral gate, and saw Slim run to do their bidding. She forgot her sketching and watched Whizzer dodge and bolt back, and Chip tear through the creek bed after him at peril of life and limb.
Back and forth, round and round went Whizzer, running almost through the corral gate, then swerving suddenly and evading his pursuers with an ease which bordered closely on the marvelous. Slim saddled a horse and joined in the chase, and the Old Man climbed upon the fence and shouted advice which no one heard and would not have heeded if they had.
As the chase grew in earnestness and excitement, the sympathies of the Little Doctor were given unreservedly to Whizzer. Whenever a particularly clever maneuver of his set the men to swearing, she clapped her hands in sincere, though unheard and unappreciated, applause.
“Good boy!” she cried, approvingly, when he dodged Chip and whirled through the big gate which the Old Man had unwittingly left open. J. G. leaned perilously forward and shook his fist unavailingly. Whizzer tossed head and heels alternately and scurried up the path to the very door of the kitchen, where he swung round and looked back down the hill snorting triumph.
“Shoo, there!” shrilled the Countess, shaking her dish towel at him.
“Who—oo-oof-f,” snorted he disdainfully and trotted leisurely round the corner.
Chip galloped up the hill, his horse running heavily. After him came Weary, liberally applying quirt and mild invective. At the house they parted and headed the fugitive toward the stables. He shot through the big gate, lifting his heels viciously at the Old Man as he passed, whirled around the stable and trotted haughtily past Slim into the corral of his own accord, quite as if he had meant to do so all along.
“Did you ever!” exclaimed the Little Doctor, disgustedly, from her perch. “Whizzer, I'm ashamed of you! I wouldn't have given in like that—but you gave them a chase, didn't you, my beauty?”
The boys flung themselves off their tired horses and went up to the house to beg the Countess for a lunch, and Della turned resolutely to her sketching again.
She was just beginning to forget that the world held aught but soft shadows, mellow glow and hazy perspective, when a subdued uproar reached her from below. She drew an uncertain line or two, frowned and laid her pencil resignedly in her lap.
“It's of no use. I can't do a thing till those cow-punchers take themselves and their bronchos off the ranch—and may it be soon!” she told herself, disconsolately and not oversincerely. The best of us are not above trying to pull the wool over our own eyes, at times.
In reality their brief presence made the near future seem very flat and insipid to the Little Doctor. It was washing all the color out of the picture, and leaving it a dirty gray. She gazed moodily down at the whirl of dust in the corral, where Whizzer was struggling to free himself from the loop Chip had thrown with his accustomed, calm precision. Whatever Chip did he did thoroughly, with no slurring of detail. Whizzer was fain to own himself fairly caught.
“Oh, he's got you fast, my beauty!” sighed the Little Doctor, woefully. “Why didn't you jump over the fence—I think you COULD—and run, run, to freedom?” She grew quite melodramatic over the humiliation of the horse she had chosen to champion, and glared resentfully when Chip threw his saddle, with no gentle hand, upon the sleek back and tightened the cinches with a few strong, relentless yanks.
“Chip, you're an ugly, mean-tempered—that's right, Whizzer! Kick him if you can—I'll stand by you!” This assertion, you understand, was purely figurative; the Little Doctor would have hesitated long before attempting to carry it out literally.
“Now, Whizzer, when he tries to ride you, don't you let him! Throw him clear-over-the STABLE—so there!”
Perhaps Whizzer understood the command in some mysterious, telepathic manner. At any rate, he set himself straightway to obey it, and there was not a shadow of doubt but that he did his best—but Chip did not choose to go over the stable. Instead of doing so, he remained in the saddle and changed ends with his quirt, to the intense rage of the Little Doctor, who nearly cried.
“Oh, you brute! You fiend! I'll never speak to you again as long as I live! Oh, Whizzer, you poor fellow, why do you let him abuse you so? Why DON'T you throw him clean off the ranch?”
This is exactly what Whizzer was trying his best to do, and Whizzer's best was exceedingly bad for his rider, as a general thing. But Chip calmly refused to be thrown, and Whizzer, who was no fool, suddenly changed his tactics and became so meek that his champion on the bluff felt tempted to despise him for such servile submission to a tyrant in brown chaps and gray hat—I am transcribing the facts according to the Little Doctor's interpretation.
She watched gloomily while Whizzer, in whose brain lurked no thought of submission, galloped steadily along behind the bunch which Slim made haste to liberate, and bided his time. She had expected better—rather, worse—of him than that. She had not dreamed he would surrender so tamely. As they crossed the Hog's Back and climbed the steep grade just below her, she eyed him reproachfully and said again:
“Whizzer, I'm ashamed of you!”
It did certainly seem that Whizzer heard and felt the pricking of pride at the reproof. He made a feint at being frightened by a jack rabbit which sprang out from the shade of a rock and bounced down the hill like a rubber ball. As if Whizzer had never seen a jack rabbit before!—he who had been born and reared upon the range among them! It was a feeble excuse at the best, but he made the most of it and lost no time seeking a better.
He stopped short, sidled against Weary's horse and snorted. Chip, in none the best humor with him, jerked the reins savagely and dug him with his spurs, and Whizzer, resenting the affront, whirled and bounded high in the air. Back down the grade he bucked with the high, rocking, crooked jumps which none but a Western cayuse can make, while Weary turned in his saddle and watched with sharp-drawn breaths. There was nothing else that he could do.
Chip was by no means passive. For every jump that Whizzer made the rawhide quirt landed across his flaring nostrils, and the locked rowels of Chip's spurs raked the sorrel sides from cinch to flank, leaving crimson streams behind them.
Wild with rage at this clinging cow-puncher whom he could not dislodge, who stung his sides and head like the hornets in the meadow, Whizzer gathered himself for a mighty leap as he reached the Hog's Back. Like a wire spring released, he shot into the air, shook himself in one last, desperate hope of victory, and, failing, came down with not a joint in his legs and turned a somersault.
A moment, and he struggled to his feet and limped painfully away, crushed and beaten in spirit.
Chip did not struggle. He lay, a long length of brown chaps, pink-and-white shirt and gray hat, just where he had fallen.
The Little Doctor never could remember getting down that bluff, and her sketching materials went to amuse the jack rabbits and the birds. Fast as she flew, Weary was before her and had raised Chip's head upon one arm. She knelt beside him in the dust, hovering over the white face and still form like a pitying, little gray angel. Weary looked at her impersonally, but neither of them spoke in those first, breathless moments.
The Old Man, who had witnessed the accident, came puffing laboriously up the hill, taking the short cut straight across from the stable.
“Is he—DEAD?” he yelled while he scrambled.
Weary turned his head long enough to look down at him, with the same impersonal gaze he had bestowed upon the Little Doctor, but he did not answer the question. He could not, for he did not know. The Little Doctor seemed not to have heard.
The Old Man redoubled his exertions and reached them very much out of breath.
“Is he dead, Dell?” he repeated in an awestruck tone. He feared she would say yes.
The Little Doctor had taken possession of the brown head. She looked up at her brother, a very unprofessional pallor upon her face, and down at the long, brown lashes and at the curved, sensitive lips which held no hint of red. She pressed the face closer to her breast and shook her head. She could not speak, just then, for the griping ache that was in her throat.
“One of the best men on the ranch gone under, just when we need help the worst!” complained the Old Man. “Is he hurt bad?”
“J. G.,” began the Little Doctor in a voice all the fiercer for being suppressed, “I want you to kill that horse. Do you hear? If you don't do it, I will!”
“You won't have to, if old Splinter goes down and out,” said Weary, with quiet meaning, and the Little Doctor gave him a grateful flash of gray eyes.
“How bad is he hurt?” repeated the Old Man, impatiently. “You're supposed t' be a doctor—don't you know?”
“He has a scalp wound which does not seem serious,” said she in an attempt to be matter-of-fact, “and his left collar bone is broken.”
“Doggone it! A broken collar bone ain't mended overnight.”
“No,” acquiesced the Little Doctor, “it isn't.”
These last two remarks Chip heard. He opened his eyes and looked straight up into the gray ones above—a long, questioning, rebellious look. He tried then to rise, to free himself from the bitter ecstasy of those soft, enfolding arms. Only a broken collar bone! Good thing it was no worse! Ugh! A spasm of pain contracted his features and drew beads of moisture to his forehead. The spurned arms once more felt the dead weight of him.
“What is it?” The Little Doctor's voice called to him from afar.
Must he answer? He wanted to drift on and on—“Can you tell me where the pain is?”
Pain? Oh, yes, there had been pain—but he wanted to drift. He opened his eyes again reluctantly; again the pain clutched him.
“It's—my—foot.”
For the first time the eyes of the Little Doctor left his face and traveled downward to the spurred boots. One was twisted in a horrible unnatural position that told the agonizing truth—a badly dislocated ankle. They returned quickly to the face, and swam full of blinding tears—such as a doctor should not succumb to. He was not drifting into oblivion now; his teeth were not digging into his lower lip for nothing, she knew.
“Weary,” she said, forgetting to call him properly by name, “ride to the house and get my medicine case—the little black one. The Countess knows—and have Slim bring something to carry him home on. And—RIDE!”
Weary was gone before she had finished, and he certainly “rode.”
“You'll have another crippled cow-puncher on yer hands, first thing yuh know,” grumbled the Old Man, anxiously, as he watched Weary race recklessly down the hill.
The Little Doctor did not answer. She scarcely heard him. She was stroking the hair back from Chip's forehead softly, unconsciously, wondering why she had never before noticed the wave in it—but then, she had scarcely seen him with his hat off. How silky and soft it felt! And she had called him all sorts of mean names, and had wanted Whizzer to—she shuddered and turned sick at the memory of the thud when they struck the hard road together.
“Dell!” exclaimed the Old Man, “you're white's a rag. Doggone it, don't throw up yer hands at yer first case—brace up!”
Chip looked up at her curiously, forgetting the pain long enough to wonder at her whiteness. Did she have a heart, then, or was it a feminine trait to turn pale in every emergency? She had not turned so very white when those kids—he felt inclined to laugh, only for that cussed foot. Instead he relaxed his vigilance and a groan slipped out before he knew.
“Just a minute more and I'll ease the pain for you,” murmured the girl, compassionately.
“All right—so long as you—don't—use—the stomach pump,” he retorted, with a miserable makeshift of a laugh.
“What's that?” asked the Old Man, but no one explained.
The Little Doctor was struggling with the lump in her throat that he should try to joke about it.
Then Weary was back and holding the little, black case out to her. She seized it eagerly, slipping Chip's head to her knees that she might use her hands freely. There was no halting over the tiny vials, for she had decided just what she must do.
She laid something against Chip's closed lips.
“Swallow these,” she said, and he obeyed her. “Weary—oh, you knew what to do, I see. There, lay the coat down there for a pillow.”
Relieved of her burden, she rose and went to the poor, twisted foot.
Weary and the Old Man watched her go to work systematically and disclose the swollen, purpling ankle. Very gently she did it, and when she had administered a merciful anaesthetic, the enthusiasm of the Old Man demanded speech.
“Well, I'll be eternally doggoned! You're onto your job, Dell, doggoned if yuh ain't. I won't ever josh yuh again about yer doctorin'!”
“I wish you'd been around the time I smashed MY ankle,” commented Weary, fishing for his cigarette book; he was beginning to feel the need of a quieting smoke. “They hauled me forty miles, to Benton.”
“That must have been torture!” shuddered the Little Doctor. “A dislocated ankle is a most agonizing thing.”
“Yes,” assented Weary, striking a match, “it sure is, all right.”