by B. M. Bower
“Hello! What you trying to do?”
No answer. The Little Doctor refused even to lift her lashes, which were wet and clung together in little groups of two or three. Chip also observed that there were suggestive streaks upon her cheeks—and not a sign of a dimple anywhere. He lifted one leg over the horn of the saddle to ease his ankle, which still pained him a little after a ride, and watched her a moment.
“What’s the matter, Doctor? Step on a cactus?”
“Oh, no,” snapped the Doctor in a tone to take one’s head off, “I didn’t step on a cactus—I just walked all over acres and acres of them!”
There was a suspicious gurgle from somewhere. The Little Doctor looked up.
“Don’t hesitate to laugh, Mr. Bennett, if you happen to feel that way!”
Mr. Bennett evidently felt that way. He rocked in the saddle, and shouted with laughter. The Little Doctor stood this for as much as a minute.
“Oh, no doubt it’s very funny to set me afoot away off from everywhere—” Her voice quivered and broke from self-pity; her head bent lower over her shoe.
Chip made haste to stifle his mirth, in fear that she was going to cry. He couldn’t have endured that. He reached for his tobacco and began to make a cigarette.
“I didn’t set you afoot,” he said. “That was a bad break you made yourself. Why didn’t you do as I told you—hang to the bridle and fight Denver off with your whip? You had one.”
“Yes—and let him gnaw me!”
Chip gurgled again, and drew the tobacco sack shut with his teeth. “He wouldn’t ‘gnaw’ you—he wouldn’t have come near you. He’s whip trained. And I’d have been there myself in another minute.”
“I didn’t want you there! And I don’t pretend to be a horse-trainer, Mr. Bennett. There’s several things about your old ranch life that I don’t know—and don’t want to know! I’m going back to Ohio tomorrow, so there!”
“Yes?” He drew a match sharply along his stamped saddle-skirt and applied it to the cigarette, pinched out the blaze with extreme care, and tossed the match-end facetiously against Concho’s nose. He did not seem particularly alarmed at her threat—or, perhaps, he did not care. The Little Doctor prodded savagely at her shoe, too angry to see the thorn, and Chip drove another nail into his coffin with apparent relish, and watched her. After a little, he slid to the ground and limped over to her.
“Here, give me that shoe; you’ll have it all picked to pieces and not get the thorn, either. Where is it?”
“It?” sniffed the Little Doctor, surrendering the shoe with hypocritical reluctance. “It? There’s a dozen, at the very least!”
Chip emptied his lungs of smoke, and turned the shoe in his hands.
“Oh, I guess not—there isn’t room in this little bit of leather for a dozen. Two would be crowded.”
“I detest flattery above all things!” But, being a woman, the brow of the Little Doctor cleared perceptibly.
“Yes? You’re just like me in that respect. I love the truth.”
Thinking of Dr. Cecil, the Little Doctor grew guiltily red. But she had never said Cecil was a man, she reflected, with what comfort she could. The boys, like Dunk, had simply made the mistake of taking too much for granted.
Chip opened the smallest blade of his knife deliberately, sat down upon a neighboring rock and finished his cigarette, still turning the shoe reflectively—and caressingly—in his hand.
“I’d smile to see the Countess try to put that shoe on,” he remarked, holding the cigarette in some mysterious manner on his lip. “I’ll bet she couldn’t get one toe in it.”
“I don’t see that it matters, whether she could or not,” snapped the Little Doctor. “For goodness sake, hurry!”
“You’re pretty mad, aren’t you?” inquired he, shoving his hat back off his forehead, and looking at her as though he enjoyed doing so.
“Do I look mad?” asked she, tartly.
“I’d tell a man you do!”
“Well—my appearance doesn’t half express the state of my mind!”
“Your mind must be in an awful state.”
“It is.”
Two minutes passed silently.
“Dr. Cecil’s bread is done—she gave me a slice as big as your hat, with butter and jelly on it. It was out of sight.”
The Little Doctor groaned, and rallied.
“Butter and jelly on my hat, did you say?”
“Not on your hat—on the bread. I ate it coming back down the coulee— and I sure had my hands full, leading Concho, too.”
The Little Doctor held back the question trembling on her hungry, parched lips as long as she could, but it would come.
“Was it good?”
“I’d tell a man!” said Chip, briefly and eloquently.
The Little Doctor sighed.
“Dr. Cecil Granthum’s a mighty good fellow—I’m stuck on him, myself— and if I haven’t got the symptoms sized up wrong, the Old Man’s going to be.”
“That’s all the good it will do him. Cecil and I are going somewhere and practice medicine together—and we aren’t either of us going to get married, ever!”
“Have you got the papers for that?” grinned Chip, utterly unmoved.
“I have my license,” said the Little Doctor, coldly.
“You’re ahead of me there, for I haven’t—yet. I can soon get one, though.”
“I wish to goodness you’d hurry up with that shoe! I’m half starved.”
“Well, show me a dimple and you can have it. My, you are cranky!”
The Little Doctor showed him two, and Chip laid the shoe in her lap— after he had surprised himself, and the doctor, by planting a daring little kiss upon the toe.
“The idea!” exclaimed she, with a feeble show of indignation, and slipped her foot hurriedly into its orthodox covering. Feeling his inscrutable, hazel eyes upon her, she blushed uncomfortably and fumbled the laces.
“You better let me lace that shoe—you won’t have it done in a thousand years, at that gait.”
“If you’re in a hurry,” said she, without looking at him, “you can ride on ahead. It would please me better if you did.”
“Yes? You’ve been pleased all summer—at my expense. I’m going to please myself, this time. It’s my deal, Little Doctor. Do you want to know what’s trumps?”
“No, I don’t!” Still without looking at him, she tied her shoelaces with an impatient twitch that came near breaking them, and walked haughtily to where Concho stood dutifully waiting. With an impulsive movement, she threw her arms around his neck, and hid her hot face against his scanty mane.
A pair of arms clad in pink-and-white striped sleeves went suddenly about her. Her clasp on Concho loosened and she threw back her head, startled—to be still more startled at the touch of lips that were curved and thin and masterful. The arms whirled her about and held her against a heart which her trained senses knew at once was beating very irregularly.
“You—you ought to be ashamed!” she asserted feebly, at last.
“I’m not, though.” The arms tightened their clasp a little.
“You—you don’t seem to be,” admitted the Little Doctor, meekly.
For answer he kissed her hungrily—not once, but many times.
“Aren’t you going to let me go?” she demanded, afterward, but very faintly.
“No,” said he, boldly. “I’m going to keep you—always.” There was conviction in the tone.
She stood silent a minute, listening to his heart and her own, and digesting this bit of news.
“Are you—quite sure about—that?” she asked at length.
“I’d tell a man! Unless”—he held her off and looked at her—“you don’t like me. But you do, don’t you?” His eyes were searching her face.
The Little Doctor struggled to release herself from the arms which held her unyieldingly and tenderly. Failing this, she raised her eyes to the white silk handkerchief knotted around his throat; to the chin; to the lips,
wistful with their well defined curve; to the eyes, where they lingered shyly a moment, and then looked away to the horizon.
“Don’t you like me? Say!” He gave her a gentle shake.
“Ye—er—it doesn’t seem to matter, whether I do or not,” she retorted with growing spirit—witness the dimple dodging into her cheek.
“Yes, it does—it matters a whole heap. You’ve dealt me misery ever since I first set eyes on you—and I believe, on my soul, you liked to watch me squirm! But you do like me, don’t you?”
“I—I’d tell a man!” said she, and immediately hid a very red face from sight of him.
Concho turned his head and gazed wonderingly upon the two. What amazed him was to see Chip kissing his mistress again and again, and to hear the idolatrous tone in which he was saying “My Little Doctor!”
THE FLYING-U’S LAST STAND (Part 1)
CHAPTER 1
OLD WAYS AND NEW
Progress is like the insidious change from youth to old age, except that progress does not mean decay. The change that is almost imperceptible and yet inexorable is much the same, however. You will see a community apparently changeless as the years pass by; and yet, when the years have gone and you look back, there has been a change. It is not the same. It never will be the same. It can pass through further change, but it cannot go back. Men look back sick sometimes with longing for the things that were and that can be no more; they live the old days in memory—but try as they will they may not go back. With intelligent, persistent effort they may retard further change considerably, but that is the most that they can hope to do. Civilization and Time will continue the march in spite of all that man may do.
That is the way it was with the Flying U. Old J. G. Whitmore fought doggedly against the changing conditions—and he fought intelligently and well. When he saw the range dwindling and the way to the watering places barred against his cattle with long stretches of barbed wire, he sent his herds deeper into the Badlands to seek what grazing was in the hidden, little valleys and the deep, sequestered canyons. He cut more hay for winter feeding, and he sowed his meadows to alfalfa that he might increase the crops. He shipped old cows and dry cows with his fat steers in the fall, and he bettered the blood of his herds and raised bigger cattle. Therefore, if his cattle grew fewer in number, they improved in quality and prices went higher, so that the result was much the same.
It began to look, then, as though J. G. Whitmore was cunningly besting the situation, and was going to hold out indefinitely against the encroachments of civilization upon the old order of things on the range. And it had begun to look as though he was going to best Time at his own game, and refuse also to grow old; as though he would go on being the same pudgy, grizzled, humorously querulous Old Man beloved of his men, the Happy Family of the Flying U.
Sometimes, however, Time will fill a four-flush with the joker, and then laugh while he rakes in the chips. J. G. Whitmore had been going his way and refusing to grow old for a long time—and then an accident, which is Time’s joker, turned the game against him. He stood for just a second too long on a crowded crossing in Chicago, hesitating between going forward or back. And that second gave Time a chance to play an accident. A big seven-passenger touring car mowed him down and left him in a heap for the ambulance from the nearest hospital to gather on its stretcher.
The Old Man did not die; he had lived long on the open range and he was pretty tough and hard to kill. He went back to his beloved Flying U, with a crutch to help him shuffle from bed to easy chair and back again.
The Little Doctor, who was his youngest sister, nursed him tirelessly; but it was long before there came a day when the Old Man gave his crutch to the Kid to use for a stick-horse, and walked through the living room and out upon the porch with the help of a cane and the solicitous arm of the Little Doctor, and with the Kid galloping gleefully before him on the crutch.
Later he discarded the help of somebody’s arm, and hobbled down to the corral with the cane, and with the Kid still galloping before him on “Uncle Gee Gee’s” crutch. He stood for some time leaning against the corral watching some of the boys halter-breaking a horse that was later to be sold—when he was “broke gentle”—and then he hobbled back again, thankful for the soft comfort of his big chair.
That was well enough, as far as it went. The Flying U took it for granted that the Old Man was slowly returning to the old order of life, when rheumatism was his only foe and he could run things with his old energy and easy good management. But there never came a day when the Old Man gave his cane to the kid to play with. There never came a day when he was not thankful for the soft comfort of his chair. There never came a day when he was the same Old Man who joshed the boys and scolded them and threatened them. The day was always coming—of course!—when his back would quit aching if he walked to the stable and back without a long rest between, but it never actually arrived.
So, imperceptibly but surely, the Old Man began to grow old. The thin spot on top of his head grew shiny, so that the Kid noticed it and made blunt comments upon the subject. His rheumatism was not his worst foe, now. He had to pet his digestive apparatus and cut out strong coffee with three heaping teaspoons of sugar in each cup, because the Little Doctor told him his liver was torpid. He had to stop giving the Kid jolty rides on his knees,—but that was because the Kid was getting too big for baby play, the Old Man declared. The Kid was big enough to ride real horses, now, and he ought to be ashamed to ride knee-horses any more.
To two things the Old Man clung almost fiercely; the old regime of ranging his cattle at large and starting out the wagons in the spring just the same as if twenty-five men instead of twelve went with them; and the retention of the Happy Family on his payroll, just as if they were actually needed. If one of the boys left to try other things and other fields, the Old Man considered him gone on a vacation and expected him back when spring roundup approached.
True, he was seldom disappointed in that. For the Happy Family looked upon the Flying U as home, and six months was about the limit for straying afar. Cowpunchers to the bone though they were, they bent backs over irrigating ditches and sweated in the hay fields just for the sake of staying together on the ranch. I cannot say that they did it uncomplainingly—for the bunk-house was saturated to the ridge-pole with their maledictions while they compared blistered hands and pitchfork callouses, and mourned the days that were gone; the days when they rode far and free and scorned any work that could not be done from the saddle. But they stayed, and they did the ranch work as well as the range work, which is the main point.
They became engaged to certain girls who filled their dreams and all their waking thoughts—but they never quite came to the point of marrying and going their way. Except Pink, who did marry impulsively and unwisely, and who suffered himself to be bullied and called Percy for seven months or so, and who balked at leaving the Flying U for the city and a vicarious existence in theaterdom, and so found himself free quite as suddenly as he had been tied.
They intended to marry and settle down—sometime. But there was always something in the way of carrying those intentions to fulfillment, so that eventually the majority of the Happy Family found themselves not even engaged, but drifting along toward permanent bachelorhood. Being of the optimistic type, however, they did not worry; Pink having set before them a fine example of the failure of marriage and having returned with manifest relief to the freedom of the bunk-house.
CHAPTER 2
ANDY GREEN’S NEW ACQUAINTANCE
Andy Green, chief prevaricator of the Happy Family of the Flying U—and not ashamed of either title or connection—pushed his new Stetson back off his untanned forehead, attempted to negotiate the narrow passage into a Pullman sleeper with his suitcase swinging from his right hand, and butted into a woman who was just emerging from the dressing-room. He butted into her so emphatically that he was compelled to swing his left arm out very quickly, or see her go headlong into the window opposite; for a fullsized suitc
ase propelled forward by a muscular young man may prove a very efficient instrument of disaster, especially if it catches one just in the hollow back of the knee. The woman tottered and grasped Andy convulsively to save herself a fall, and so they stood blocking the passage until the porter arrived and took the suitcase from Andy with a tip-inviting deference.
Andy apologized profusely, with a quaint, cowpunchery phrasing that caused the woman to take a second look at him. And, since Andy Green would look good to any woman capable of recognizing—and appreciating—a real man when she saw him, she smiled and said it didn’t matter in the least.
That was the beginning of the acquaintance. Andy took her by her plump, chiffon-veiled arm and piloted her to her seat, and he afterward tipped the porter generously and had his own belongings deposited in the section across the aisle. Then, with the guile of a foreign diplomat, he betook himself to the smoking-room and stayed there for three quarters of an hour. He was not taking any particular risk of losing the opportunity of an unusually pleasant journey, for the dollar he had invested in the goodwill of the porter had yielded the information that the lady was going through to Great Falls. Since Andy had boarded the train at Harlem there was plenty of time to kill between there and Dry Lake, which was his destination.
The lady smiled at him rememberingly when finally he seated himself across the aisle from her, and without any serious motive Andy smiled back. So presently they were exchanging remarks about the journey. Later on, Andy went over and sat beside her and conversation began in earnest. Her name, it transpired, was Florence Grace Hallman. Andy read it engraved upon a card which added the information that she was engaged in the real estate business—or so the three or four words implied. “Homemakers’ Syndicate, Minneapolis and St. Paul,” said the card. Andy was visibly impressed thereby. He looked at her with swift appraisement and decided that she was “all to the good.”
Florence Grace Hallman was tall and daintily muscular as to figure. Her hair was a light yellow—not quite the shade which peroxide gives, and therefore probably natural. Her eyes were brown, a shade too close together but cool and calm and calculating in their gaze, and her eyebrows slanted upward a bit at the outer ends and were as heavy as beauty permitted. Her lips were very red, and her chin was very firm. She looked the successful business woman to her fingertips, and she was eminently attractive for a woman of that self-assured type.