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--”