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.