by B. M. Bower
“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.
CHAPTER IV
An Ideal Picture
“I guess I’ll go down to Denson’s today,” said J. G. at the breakfast table one morning. “Maybe we can get that grass widow to come and keep house for us.”
“I don’t want any old grass widow to keep house,” protested Della. “I’m getting along well enough, so long as Patsy bakes the bread, and meat, and cake, and stuff. It’s just fun to keep house. The only trouble is, there isn’t half enough to keep me busy. I’m going to get a license to practice medicine, so if there’s any sickness around I can be of some use. You say it’s fifty miles to the nearest doctor. But that needn’t make a grass widow necessary. I can keep house—it looks better than when I came, and you know it.” Which remark would have hurt the feelings of several well-meaning cow-punchers, had they overheard it.
“Oh, I ain’t finding fault with your housekeeping—you do pretty well for a green hand. But Patsy’ll have to go with the round-up when it starts, and what men I keep on the ranch will have to eat with us. That’s the way I’ve been used to fixing things; I was never so good I couldn’t eat at the same table with my men; if they wasn’t fit for my company I fired ’em and got fellows that was. I’ve had this bunch a good long while, now. You can do all right with just me, but you couldn’t cook for two or three men; you can’t cook good enough, even if it wasn’t too much work.” J. G. had a blunt way of stating disagreeable facts, occasionally.
“Very well, get your grass widow by all means,” retorted she with much wasted dignity.
“She’s a swell cook, and a fine housekeeper, and shell keep yuh from getting lonesome. She’s good company, the Countess is.” He grinned when he said it “I’ll have Chip ketch up the creams, and you get ready and go along with us. It’ll give you a chance to size up the kind uh neighbors yuh got.”
There was real pleasure in driving swiftly over the prairie land, through the sweet, spring sunshine, and Miss Whitmore tingled with enthusiasm till they drove headlong into a deep coulee which sheltered the Denson family.
“This road is positively dangerous!” she exclaimed when they reached a particularly steep place and Chip threw all his weight upon the brake.
“We’ll get the Countess in beside yuh, coming back, and then yuh won’t rattle around in the seat so much. She’s good and solid—just hang onto her and you’ll be all right,” said J. G.
“If I don’t like her looks—and I know I won’t—I’ll get into the front seat and you can hang onto her yourself, Mr. J. G. Whitmore.”
Chip, who had been silent till now, glanced briefly over his shoulder.
“It’s a cinch you’ll take the front seat,” he remarked, laconically.
“J. G., if you hire a woman like that—”
“Like what? Doggone it, it takes a woman to jump at conclusions! The Countess is all right. She talks some—”
“I’d tell a man she does!” broke in Chip, tersely.
“Well, show me the woman that don’t! Don’t you be bluffed so easy, Dell. I never seen the woman yet that Chip had any time for. The Countess is all right, and she certainly can cook! I admit she talks consider’ble—”
Chip laughed grimly, and the Old Man subsided.
At the house a small, ginger-whiskered man came down to the gate to greet them.
“Why, how-de-do! I couldn’t make out who ’twas comin’, but Mary, she up an’ rek’nized the horses. Git right out an’ come on in! We’ve had our dinner, but I guess the wimmin folks can scare ye up a bite uh suthin’. This yer sister? We heard she was up t’ your place. She the one that set one uh your horse’s leg? Bill, he was tellin’ about it. I dunno as wimmin horse doctors is very common, but I dunno why not. I get a horse with somethin’ the matter of his foot, and I dunno what. I’d like t’ have ye take a look at it, fore ye go. ’Course, I expect t’ pay ye.”
The Old Man winked appreciatively at Chip before he came humanely to the rescue and explained that his sister was not a horse doctor, and Mr. Denson, looking very disappointed, reiterated his invitation to enter.
Mrs. Denson, a large woman who narrowly escaped being ginger-whiskered like her husband, beamed upon them from the doorway.
“Come right on in! Louise, here’s comp’ny! The house is all tore up— we been tryin’ t’ clean house a little. Lay off yer things an’ I’ll git yuh some dinner right away. I’m awful glad yuh come over—I do hate t’ see folks stand on cer’mony out here where neighbors is so skurce. I guess yuh think we ain’t been very neighborly, but we been tryin’ t’ clean house, an’ me an’ Louise ain’t had a minute we could dast call our own, er we’d a been over t’ seen yuh before now. Yuh must git awful lonesome, comin’ right out from the East where neighbors is thick. Do lay off yer things!”
Della looked appealingly at J. G., who again came to the rescue. Somehow he made himself heard long enough to explain their errand, and to emphasize the fact that they were in a great hurry, and had eaten dinner before they started from home. In his sister’s opinion he made one exceedingly rash statement. He said that he wished to hire Mrs. Denson’s sister for the summer. Mrs. Denson immediately sent a shrill call for Louise.
Then appeared the Countess, tall, gaunt and muscular, with sallow skin and a nervous manner.
“The front seat or walk!” declared Miss Whitmore, mentally, after a brief scrutiny and began storing up a scathing rebuke for J. G.
“Louise, this is Miss Whitmore,” began Mrs. Denson, cheerfully, fortified by a fresh lungful of air. “They’re after yuh t’ go an’ keep house for ’em, an’ I guess yuh better go, seein’ we got the house cleaned all but whitewashin’ the cellar an’ milk room an’ kals’minin’ the upstairs, an’ I’ll make Bill do that, an’ ’t won’t hurt him a mite. They’ll give yuh twenty-five dollars a month an’ keep yuh all summer, an’ as much longer as his sister stays. I guess yuh might as well go, fer they can’t git anybody else that’ll keep things up in shape an’ be comp’ny fer his sister, an’ I b’lieve in helpin’ a neighbor out when yuh can. You go right an’ pack up yer trunk, an’ don’t worry about me—I’ll git along somehow, now the house-cleanin’s most done.”
Louise had been talking also, but her sister seemed to have a stronger pair of lungs, for her voice drowned that of the Countess, who retreated to “pack up.”
The minutes dragg
ed by, to the tune of several chapters of family history as voluminously interpreted by Mrs. Denson. Miss Whitmore had always boasted the best-behaved of nerves, but this day she developed a genuine case of “fidgets.” Once she saw Chip’s face turned inquiringly toward the window, and telegraphed her state of mind—while Mrs. Denson’s back was turned—so eloquently that Chip was swept at once into sympathetic good-fellowship. He arranged the cushion on the front seat significantly, and was rewarded by an emphatic, though furtive, nod and smile. Whereupon he leaned comfortably back, rolled a cigarette and smoked contentedly, at peace with himself and the world—though he did not in the least know why.
“An’ as I told Louise, folks has got t’ put up with things an’ not be huntin’ trouble with a club all the time, if they expect t’ git any comfort out uh this life. We ain’t had the best uh luck, seems t’ me, but we always git along somehow, an’ we ain’t had no sickness except when—”
A confused uproar arose in the room above them, followed, immediately by a humpety bump and a crash as a small, pink object burst open a door and rolled precipitately into their midst. It proved to be one of the little Densons, who kicked feebly with both feet and then lay still.
“Mercy upon us! Ellen, who pushed Sary down them stairs? She’s kilt!”
Della sprang up and lifted the child in her arms, passing her hand quickly over the head and plump body.
“Bring a little cold water, Mrs. Denson. She’s only stunned, I think.”
“Well, it does beat all how handy you go t’ work. Anybody c’d see t’ you know your business. I’m awful glad you was here—there, darlin’, don’t cry—Ellen, an’ Josephine, an’ Sybilly, an’ Margreet, you come down here t’ me!”
The quartet, snuffling and reluctant, was dragged ignominously to the middle of the floor and there confessed, ’mid tears and much recrimination, that they had been peeping down at the “comp’ny” through various knot-holes in the chamber floor; that, as Sary’s knot-hole was next the wall, her range of vision was restricted to the thin spot upon the crown of J. G.’s head, and the back of his neck. Sary longed for sight of the woman horse doctor, and when she essayed to crowd in and usurp Ellen’s point of vantage, there ensued a war of extermination which ended in the literal downfall of Sary.