“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.