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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chip, of the Flying U, by B. M. Bower
+#13 in our series by B. M. Bower
+
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+
+
+Title: Chip, of the Flying U
+
+Author: B. M. Bower
+
+Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9267]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 16, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIP, OF THE FLYING U ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Matthew H. Heller
+
+
+
+
+CHIP, OF THE FLYING U
+
+BY
+
+B. M. BOWER (B. M. SINCLAIR)
+
+AUTHOR OF
+"The Lure of the Dim Trails," "Her Prairie Knight,"
+"The Lonesome Trail," etc.
+
+Illustrations by
+CHARLES M. RUSSELL
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+I      The Old Man's Sister
+II     Over the "Hog's Back"
+III    Silver
+IV     An Ideal Picture
+V      In Silver's Stall
+VI     The Hum of Preparation
+VII    Love and a Stomach Pump
+VIII   Prescriptions
+IX     Before the Round-up
+X      What Whizzer Did
+XI     Good Intentions
+XII    "The Last Stand"
+XIII   Art Critics
+XIV    Convalescence
+XV     The Spoils of Victory
+XVI    Weary Advises
+XVII   When a Maiden Wills
+XVIII  Dr Cecil Granthum
+XIX    Love Finds Its Hour
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Came down with not a joint in his legs
+and turned a somersault
+
+"The Last Stand."
+
+Throwing herself from the saddle she
+slid precipitately into the washout,
+just as Denver thundered up
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+The Old Man's Sister.
+
+
+
+The weekly mail had just arrived at the Flying U ranch.  Shorty, who
+had made the trip to Dry Lake on horseback that afternoon, tossed the
+bundle to the "Old Man" and was halfway to the stable when he was
+called back peremptorily.
+
+"Shorty!  O-h-h, Shorty!  Hi!"
+
+Shorty kicked his steaming horse in the ribs and swung round in the
+path, bringing up before the porch with a jerk.
+
+"Where's this letter been?" demanded the Old Man, with some excitement.
+James G. Whitmore, cattleman, would have been greatly surprised had
+he known that his cowboys were in the habit of calling him the Old
+Man behind his back.  James G. Whitmore did not consider himself old,
+though he was constrained to admit, after several hours in the saddle,
+that rheumatism had searched him out--because of his fourteen years of
+roughing it, he said.  Also, there was a place on the crown of his head
+where the hair was thin, and growing thinner every day of his life,
+though he did not realize it.  The thin spot showed now as he stood in
+the path, waving a square envelope aloft before Shorty, who regarded it
+with supreme indifference.
+
+Not so Shorty's horse.  He rolled his eyes till the whites showed,
+snorted and backed away from the fluttering, white object.
+
+"Doggone it, where's this been?" reiterated James G., accusingly.
+
+"How the devil do I know?" retorted Shorty, forcing his horse nearer.
+"In the office, most likely.  I got it with the rest to-day."
+
+"It's two weeks old," stormed the Old Man.  "I never knew it to
+fail--if a letter says anybody's coming, or you're to hurry up and
+go somewhere to meet somebody, that letter's the one that monkeys
+around and comes when the last dog's hung.  A letter asking yuh if
+yuh don't want to get rich in ten days sellin' books, or something,
+'ll hike along out here in no time.  Doggone it!"
+
+"You got a hurry-up order to go somewhere?" queried Shorty, mildly
+sympathetic.
+
+"Worse than that," groaned James G.  "My sister's coming out to spend
+the summer--t'-morrow.  And no cook but Patsy--and she can't eat in the
+mess house--and the house like a junk shop!"
+
+"It looks like you was up against it, all right," grinned Shorty.
+Shorty was a sort of foreman, and was allowed much freedom of speech.
+
+"Somebody's got to meet her--you have Chip catch up the creams so he
+can go.  And send some of the boys up here to help me hoe out a little.
+Dell ain't used to roughing it; she's just out of a medical school--got
+her diploma, she was telling me in the last letter before this.  She'll
+be finding microbes by the million in this old shack.  You tell Patsy
+I'll be late to supper--and tell him to brace up and cook something
+ladies like--cake and stuff.  Patsy'll know.  I'd give a dollar to get
+that little runt in the office--"
+
+But Shorty, having heard all that it was important to know, was
+clattering down the long slope again to the stable.  It was supper
+time, and Shorty was hungry.  Also, there was news to tell, and he
+was curious to see how the boys would take it.  He was just turning
+loose the horse when supper was called.  He hurried back up the hill
+to the mess house, performed hasty ablutions in the tin wash basin
+on the bench beside the door, scrubbed his face dry on the roller
+towel, and took his place at the long table within.
+
+"Any mail for me?"  Jack Bates looked up from emptying the third
+spoon of sugar into his coffee.
+
+"Naw--she didn't write this time, Jack."  Shorty reached a long arm
+for the "Mulligan stew."
+
+"How's the dance coming on?" asked Cal Emmett.
+
+"I guess it's a go, all right.  They've got them coons engaged to
+play.  The hotel's fixing for a big crowd, if the weather holds like
+this.  Chip, Old Man wants you to catch up the creams, after supper;
+you've got to meet the train to-morrow."
+
+"Which train?" demanded Chip, looking up.  "Is old Dunk coming?"
+
+"The noon train.  No, he didn't say nothing about Dunk.  He wants a
+bunch of you fellows to go up and hoe out the White House and slick
+it up for comp'ny--got to be done t'-night.  And Patsy, Old Man says
+for you t' git a move on and cook something fit to eat; something
+that ain't plum full uh microbes."
+
+Shorty became suddenly engaged in cooling his coffee, enjoying the
+varied emotions depicted on the faces of the boys.
+
+"Who's coming?"
+
+"What's up?"
+
+Shorty took two leisurely gulps before he answered:
+
+"Old Man's sister's coming out to stay all summer--and then some, maybe.
+Be here to-morrow, he said."
+
+"Gee whiz!  Is she pretty?"  This from Cal Emmett.
+
+"Hope she ain't over fifty."  This from Jack Bates.
+
+"Hope she ain't one of them four-eyed school-ma'ams," added Happy Jack
+--so called to distinguish him from Jack Bates, and also because of his
+dolorous visage.
+
+"Why can't some one else haul her out?" began Chip.  "Cal would like
+that job--and he's sure welcome to it."
+
+"Cal's too dangerous.  He'd have the old girl dead in love before he
+got her over the first ridge, with them blue eyes and that pretty smile
+of his'n.  It's up to you, Splinter--Old Man said so."
+
+"She'll be dead safe with Chip.  HE won't make love to her," retorted
+Cal.
+
+"Wonder how old she is," repeated Jack Bates, half emptying the syrup
+pitcher into his plate.  Patsy had hot biscuits for supper, and Jack's
+especial weakness was hot biscuits and maple syrup.
+
+"As to her age," remarked Shorty, "it's a cinch she ain't no spring
+chicken, seeing she's the Old Man's sister."
+
+"Is she a schoolma'am?"  Happy Jack's distaste for schoolma'ams dated
+from his tempestuous introduction to the A B C's, with their daily
+accompaniment of a long, thin ruler.
+
+"No, she ain't a schoolma'am.  She's a darn sight worse. She's a
+doctor."
+
+"Aw, come off!"  Cal Emmett was plainly incredulous."
+
+"That's right.  Old Man said she's just finished taking a course uh
+medicine--what'd yuh call that?"
+
+"Consumption, maybe--or snakes."  Weary smiled blandly across the table.
+
+"She got a diploma, though.  Now where do you get off at?"
+
+"Yeah--that sure means she's a doctor," groaned Cal.
+
+"By golly, she needn't try t' pour any dope down ME," cried a short,
+fat man who took life seriously--a man they called Slim, in fine irony.
+
+"Gosh, I'd like to give her a real warm reception," said Jack Bates,
+who had a reputation for mischief.  "I know them Eastern folks, down t'
+the ground.  They think cow-punchers wear horns.  Yes, they do.  They
+think we're holy terrors that eat with our six-guns beside our plates--
+and the like of that.  They make me plum tired.  I'd like to--wish we
+knew her brand."
+
+"I can tell you that," said Chip, cynically.  "There's just two bunches
+to choose from.  There's the Sweet Young Things, that faint away at
+sight of a six-shooter, and squawk and catch at your arm if they see a
+garter snake, and blush if you happen to catch their eye suddenly, and
+cry if you don't take off your hat every time you see them a mile off."
+Chip held out his cup for Patsy to refill.
+
+"Yeah--I've run up against that brand--and they're sure all right.  They
+suit ME," remarked Cal.
+
+"That don't seem to line up with the doctor's diploma," commented Weary.
+
+"Well, she's the other kind then--and if she is, the Lord have mercy on
+the Flying U!  She'll buy her some spurs and try to rope and cut out
+and help brand.  Maybe she'll wear double-barreled skirts and ride a
+man's saddle and smoke cigarettes.  She'll try to go the men one better
+in everything, and wind up by making a darn fool of herself.  Either
+kind's bad enough."
+
+"I'll bet she don't run in either bunch," began Weary.  "I'll bet she's
+a skinny old maid with a peaked nose and glasses, that'll round us up
+every Sunday and read tracts at our heads, and come down on us with both
+feet about tobacco hearts and whisky livers, and the evils and devils
+wrapped up in a cigarette paper.  I seen a woman doctor, once--she was
+stopping at the T Down when I was line-riding for them--and say, she was
+a holy fright!  She had us fellows going South before a week. I
+stampeded clean off the range, soon as my month was up."
+
+"Say," interrupted Cal, "don't yuh remember that picture the Old Man
+got last fall, of his sister?  She was the image of the Old Man--and
+mighty near as old."
+
+Chip, thinking of the morrow's drive, groaned in real anguish of spirit.
+
+"You won't dast t' roll a cigarette comin' home, Chip," predicted Happy
+Jack, mournfully.  "Yuh want t' smoke double goin' in."
+
+"I don't THINK I'll smoke double going in," returned Chip, dryly.  "If
+the old girl don't like my style, why the walking isn't all taken up."
+
+"Say, Chip," suggested Jack Bates, "you size her up at the depot, and,
+if she don't look promising, just slack the lines on Antelope Hill.
+The creams 'll do the rest.  If they don't, we'll finish the job here."
+
+Shorty tactfully pushed back his chair and rose.  "You fellows don't
+want to git too gay," he warned.  "The Old Man's just beginning to
+forget about the calf-shed deal."  Then he went out and shut the door
+after him.  The boys liked Shorty; he believed in the old adage about
+wisdom being bliss at certain times, and the boys were all the better
+for his living up to his belief.  He knew the Happy Family would stop
+inside the limit--at least, they always had, so far.
+
+"What's the game?" demanded Cal, when the door closed behind their
+indulgent foreman.
+
+"Why, it's this.  (Pass the syrup, Happy.)  T'morrow's Sunday, so
+we'll have time t' burn.  We'll dig up all the guns we can find, and
+catch up the orneriest cayuses in our strings, and have a real, old
+lynching bee--sabe?"
+
+"Who yuh goin' t' hang?" asked Slim, apprehensively.  "Yuh needn't
+think I'LL stand for it."
+
+"Aw, don't get nervous.  There ain't power enough on the ranch t'
+pull yuh clear of the ground.  We ain't going to build no derrick,"
+said Jack, witheringly.  "We'll have a dummy rigged up in the bunk
+house.  When Chip and the doctor heave in sight on top of the grade,
+we'll break loose down here with our bronks and our guns, and smoke
+up the ranch in style.  We'll drag out Mr. Strawman, and lynch him
+to the big gate before they get along.  We'll be 'riddling him with
+bullets' when they arrive--and by that time she'll be so rattled she
+won't know whether it's a man or a mule we've got strung up."
+
+"You'll have to cut down your victim before I get there," grinned Chip.
+"I never could get the creams through the gate, with a man hung to the
+frame; they'd spill us into the washout by the old shed, sure as fate."
+
+"That'd be all right.  The old maid would sure know she was out West--
+we need something to add to the excitement, anyway."
+
+"If the Old Man's new buggy is piled in a heap, you'll wish you had cut
+out some of the excitement," retorted Chip.
+
+"All right, Splinter.  We won't hang him there at all.  That old
+cottonwood down by the creek would do fine.  It'll curdle her blood
+like Dutch cheese to see us marching him down there--and she can't
+see the hay sticking out of his sleeves, that far off."
+
+"What if she wants to hold an autopsy?" bantered Chip.
+
+"By golly, we'll stake her to a hay knife and tell her to go after him!"
+cried Slim, suddenly waking up to the situation.
+
+The noon train slid away from the little, red depot at Dry Lake and
+curled out of sight around a hill.  The only arrival looked expectantly
+into the cheerless waiting room, gazed after the train, which seemed
+the last link between her and civilization, and walked to the edge of
+the platform with a distinct frown upon the bit of forehead visible
+under her felt hat.
+
+A fat young man threw the mail sack into a weather-beaten buggy and
+drove leisurely down the track to the post office.  The girl watched
+him out of sight and sighed disconsolately.  All about her stretched
+the rolling grass land, faintly green in the hollows, brownly barren
+on the hilltops.  Save the water tank and depot, not a house was to
+be seen, and the silence and loneliness oppressed her.
+
+The agent was dragging some boxes off the platform.  She turned and
+walked determinedly up to him, and the agent became embarrassed under
+her level look.
+
+"Isn't there anyone here to meet me?" she demanded, quite needlessly.
+"I am Miss Whitmore, and my brother owns a ranch, somewhere near here.
+I wrote him, two weeks ago, that I was coming, and I certainly expected
+him to meet me."  She tucked a wind-blown lock of brown hair under her
+hat crown and looked at the agent reproachfully, as if he were to blame,
+and the agent, feeling suddenly that somehow the fault was his, blushed
+guiltily and kicked at a box of oranges.
+
+"Whitmore's rig is in town," he said, hastily.  "I saw his man at
+dinner.  The train was reported late, but she made up time."  Grasping
+desperately at his dignity, he swallowed an abject apology and retreated
+into the office.
+
+Miss Whitmore followed him a few steps, thought better of it, and paced
+the platform self-pityingly for ten minutes, at the end of which the
+Flying U rig whirled up in a cloud of dust, and the agent hurried out
+to help with the two trunks, and the mandolin and guitar in their canvas
+cases.
+
+The creams circled fearsomely up to the platform and stood quivering
+with eagerness to be off, their great eyes rolling nervously.  Miss
+Whitmore took her place beside Chip with some inward trepidation
+mingled with her relief.  When they were quite ready and the reins
+loosened suggestively, Pet stood upon her hind feet with delight and
+Polly lunged forward precipitately.
+
+The girl caught her breath, and Chip eyed her sharply from the corner
+of his eye.  He hoped she was not going to scream--he detested screaming
+women.  She looked young to be a doctor, he decided, after that
+lightning survey.  He hoped to goodness she wasn't of the Sweet Young
+Thing order; he had no patience with that sort of woman.  Truth to tell,
+he had no patience with ANY sort of woman.
+
+He spoke to the horses authoritatively, and they obeyed and settled
+to a long, swinging trot that knew no weariness, and the girl's heart
+returned to its normal action.
+
+Two miles were covered in swift silence, then Miss Whitmore brought
+herself to think of the present and realized that the young man beside
+her had not opened his lips except to speak once to his team.  She
+turned her head and regarded him curiously, and Chip, feeling the
+scrutiny, grew inwardly defiant.
+
+Miss Whitmore decided, after a close inspection, that she rather liked
+his looks, though he did not strike her as a very amiable young man.
+Perhaps she was a bit tired of amiable young men.  His face was thin,
+and refined, and strong--the strength of level brows, straight nose and
+square chin, with a pair of paradoxical lips, which were curved and
+womanish in their sensitiveness; the refinement was an intangible
+expression which belonged to no particular feature but pervaded the
+whole face.  As to his eyes, she was left to speculate upon their color,
+since she had not seen them, but she reflected that many a girl would
+give a good deal to own his lashes.
+
+Of a sudden he turned his eyes from the trail and met her look squarely.
+If he meant to confuse her, he failed--for she only smiled and said to
+herself:  "They're hazel."
+
+"Don't you think we ought to introduce ourselves?" she asked,
+composedly, when she was quite sure the eyes were not brown.
+
+"Maybe."  Chip's tone was neutrally polite.
+
+Miss Whitmore had suspected that he was painfully bashful, after the
+manner of country young men.  She now decided that he was not; he was
+passively antagonistic.
+
+"Of course you know that I'm Della Whitmore," she said.
+
+Chip carefully brushed a fly off Polly's flank with the whip.
+
+"I took it for granted.  I was sent to meet a Miss Whitmore at the
+train, and I took the only lady in sight."
+
+"You took the right one--but I'm not--I haven't the faintest idea who
+you are."
+
+"My name is Claude Bennett, and I'm happy to make your acquaintance."
+
+"I don't believe it--you don't look happy," said Miss Whitmore, inwardly
+amused.
+
+"That's the proper thing to say when you've been introduced to a lady,"
+remarked Chip, noncommittally, though his lips twitched at the corners.
+
+Miss Whitmore, finding no ready reply to this truthful statement,
+remarked, after a pause, that it was windy.  Chip agreed that it was,
+and conversation languished.
+
+Miss Whitmore sighed and took to studying the landscape, which had
+become a succession of sharp ridges and narrow coulees, water-worn
+and bleak, with a purplish line of mountains off to the left.  After
+several miles she spoke.
+
+"What is that animal over there?  Do dogs wander over this wilderness
+alone?"
+
+Chip's eyes followed her pointing finger.
+
+"That's a coyote.  I wish I could get a shot at him--they're an awful
+pest, out here, you know."  He looked longingly at the rifle under his
+feet.  "If I thought you could hold the horses a minute--"
+
+"Oh, I can't!  I--I'm not accustomed to horses--but I can shoot a little."
+
+Chip gave her a quick, measuring glance.  The coyote had halted and was
+squatting upon his haunches, his sharp nose pointed inquisitively toward
+them.  Chip slowed the creams to a walk, raised the gun and laid it
+across his knees, threw a shell into position and adjusted the sight.
+
+"Here, you can try, if you like," he said.  "Whenever you're ready I'll
+stop.  You had better stand up--I'll watch that you don't fall.  Ready?
+Whoa, Pet!"
+
+Miss Whitmore did not much like the skepticism in his tone, but she
+stood up, took quick, careful aim and fired.
+
+Pet jumped her full length and reared, but Chip was watching for some
+such performance and had them well under control, even though he was
+compelled to catch Miss Whitmore from lurching backward upon her baggage
+behind the seat--which would have been bad for the guitar and mandolin,
+if not for the young woman.
+
+The coyote had sprung high in air, whirled dizzily and darted over the
+hill.
+
+"You hit him," cried Chip, forgetting his prejudice for a moment.  He
+turned the creams from the road, filled with the spirit of the chase.
+Miss Whitmore will long remember that mad dash over the hilltops and
+into the hollows, in which she could only cling to the rifle and to the
+seat as best she might, and hope that the driver knew what he was about--
+which he certainly did.
+
+"There he goes, sneaking down that coulee!  He'll get into one of those
+washouts and hide, if we don't head him off.  I'll drive around so you
+can get another shot at him," cried Chip.  He headed up the hill again
+until the coyote, crouching low, was fully revealed.
+
+"That's a fine shot.  Throw another shell in, quick!  You better kneel
+on the seat, this time--the horses know what's coming.  Steady, Polly,
+my girl!"
+
+Miss Whitmore glanced down the hill, and then, apprehensively, at the
+creams, who were clanking their bits, wild-eyed and quivering.  Only
+their master's familiar voice and firm grip on the reins held them there
+at all.  Chip saw and interpreted the glance, somewhat contemptuously.
+
+"Oh, of course if you're AFRAID--"
+
+Miss Whitmore set her teeth savagely, knelt and fired, cutting the
+sentence short in his teeth and forcing his undivided attention to
+the horses, which showed a strong inclination to bolt.
+
+"I think I got him that time," said she, nonchalantly, setting her hat
+straight--though Chip, with one of his quick glances, observed that she
+was rather white around the mouth.
+
+He brought the horses dexterously into the road and quieted them.
+
+"Aren't you going to get my coyote?" she ventured to ask.
+
+"Certainly.  The road swings back, down that same coulee, and we'll
+pass right by it.  Then I'll get out and pick him up, while you hold
+the horses."
+
+"You'll hold those horses yourself," returned Miss Whitmore, with
+considerable spirit.  "I'd much rather pick up the coyote, thank you."
+
+Chip said nothing to this, whatever he may have thought.  He drove up
+to the coyote with much coaxing of Pet and Polly, who eyed the gray
+object askance.  Miss Whitmore sprang out and seized the animal by its
+coarse, bushy tail.
+
+"Gracious, he's heavy!" she exclaimed, after one tug.
+
+"He's been fattening up on Flying U calves," remarked Chip, his foot
+upon the brake.
+
+Miss Whitmore knelt and examined the cattle thief curiously.
+
+"Look," she said, "here's where I hit him the first time; the bullet
+took a diagonal course from the shoulder back to the other side.  It
+must have gone within an inch of his heart, and would have finished
+him in a short time, without that other shot--that penetrated his brain,
+you see; death was instantaneous."
+
+Chip had taken advantage of the halt to roll a cigarette, holding the
+reins tightly between his knees while he did so.  He passed the loose
+edge of the paper across the tip of his tongue, eying the young woman
+curiously the while.
+
+"You seem to be pretty well onto your job," he remarked, dryly.
+
+"I ought to be," she said, laughing a little.  "I've been learning the
+trade ever since I was sixteen."
+
+"Yes?  You began early."
+
+"My Uncle John is a doctor.  I helped him in the office till he got
+me into the medical school.  I was brought up in an atmosphere of
+antiseptics and learned all the bones in Uncle John's 'Boneparte'--
+the skeleton, you know--before I knew all my letters."  She dragged
+the coyote close to the wheel.
+
+"Let me get hold of the tail."  Chip carefully pinched out the blaze
+of his match and threw it away before he leaned over to help.  With a
+quick lift he landed the animal, limp and bloody, squarely upon the
+top of Miss Whitmore's largest trunk.  The pointed nose hung down the
+side, the white fangs exposed in a sinister grin.  The girl gazed upon
+him proudly at first, then in dismay.
+
+"Oh, he's dripping blood all over my mandolin case--and I just know it
+won't come out!"  She tugged frantically at the instrument.
+
+"'Out, damned spot!'" quoted Chip in a sepulchral tone before he turned
+to assist her.
+
+Miss Whitmore let go the mandolin and stared blankly up at him, and
+Chip, offended at her frank surprise that he should quote Shakespeare,
+shut his lips tightly and relapsed into silence.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+Over the "Hog's Back."
+
+
+
+"That's Flying U ranch," volunteered Chip, as they turned sharply to
+the right and began to descend a long grade built into the side of a
+steep, rocky bluff.  Below them lay the ranch in a long, narrow coulee.
+Nearest them sprawled the house, low, white and roomy, with broad
+porches and wide windows; further down the coulee, at the base of a
+gentle slope, were the sheds, the high, round corrals and the haystacks.
+Great, board gates were distributed in seemingly useless profusion,
+while barbed wire fences stretched away in all directions.  A small
+creek, bordered with cottonwoods and scraggly willows, wound aimlessly
+away down the coulee.
+
+"J. G. doesn't seem to have much method," remarked Miss Whitmore,
+after a critical survey.  "What are all those log cabins scattered
+down the hill for?  They look as though J. G. had a handful that he
+didn't want, and just threw them down toward the stable and left them
+lying where they happened to fall."
+
+"It does, all right," conceded Chip.  "They're the bunk house--where
+us fellows sleep--and the mess house, where we eat, and then come the
+blacksmith shop and a shack we keep all kinds of truck in, and--"
+
+"What--in--the world--"
+
+A chorus of shouts and shots arose from below.  A scurrying group
+of horsemen burst over the hill behind the house, dashed half down
+the slope, and surrounded the bunk house with blood-curdling yells.
+Chip held the creams to a walk and furtively watched his companion.
+Miss Whitmore's eyes were very wide open; plainly, she was astonished
+beyond measure at the uproar.  Whether she was also frightened, Chip
+could not determine.
+
+The menacing yells increased in volume till the very hills seemed to
+cower in fear.  Miss Whitmore gasped when a limp form was dragged from
+the cabin and lifted to the back of a snorting pony.
+
+"They've got a rope around that man's neck," she breathed, in a
+horrified half whisper.  "Are--they--going to HANG him?"
+
+"It kinda looks that way, from here," said Chip, inwardly ashamed.
+All at once it struck him as mean and cowardly to frighten a lady
+who had traveled far among strangers and who had that tired droop
+to her mouth.  It wasn't a fair game; it was cheating.  Only for his
+promise to the boys, he would have told her the truth then and there.
+
+Miss Whitmore was not a stupid young woman; his very indifference told
+her all that she needed to know.  She tore her eyes from the confused
+jumble of gesticulating men and restive steeds to look sharply at Chip.
+He met her eyes squarely for an instant, and the horror oozed from her
+and left only amused chagrin that they should try to trick her so.
+
+"Hurry up," she commanded, "so I can be in at the death.  Remember,
+I'm a doctor.  They're tying him to his horse--he looks half dead with
+fright."
+
+Inwardly she added:  "He overacts the part dreadfully."
+
+The little cavalcade in the coulee fired a spectacular volley into the
+air and swept down the slope like a dry-weather whirlwind across a patch
+of alkali ground.  Through the big gate and up the road past the stables
+they thundered, the prisoner bound and helpless in their midst.
+
+Then something happened.  A wide-open River Press, flapping impotently
+in the embrace of a willow, caught the eye of Banjo, a little blaze--
+faced bay who bore the captive.  He squatted, ducked backward so
+suddenly that his reins slipped from Slim's fingers and lowered his
+head between his white front feet.  His rider seemed stupid beyond
+any that Banjo had ever known--and he had known many.  Snorting and
+pitching, he was away before the valiant band realized what was
+happening in their midst.  The prisoner swayed drunkenly in the saddle.
+At the third jump his hat flew off, disclosing the jagged end of a
+two-by-four.
+
+The Happy Family groaned as one man and gave chase.
+
+Banjo, with almost human maliciousness, was heading up the road
+straight toward Chip and the woman doctor--and she must be a poor
+doctor indeed, and a badly frightened one, withal, if she failed
+to observe a peculiarity in the horse thief's cranium.
+
+Cal Emmett dug his spurs into his horse and shot by Slim like a
+locomotive, shouting profanity as he went.
+
+"Head him into the creek," yelled Happy Jack, and leaned low over
+the neck of his sorrel.
+
+Weary Willie stood up in his stirrups and fanned Glory with his hat.
+"Yip, yee--e-e!  Go to it, Banjo, old boy!  Watch his nibs ride, would
+yuh?  He's a broncho buster from away back."  Weary Willie was the only
+man of them all who appeared to find any enjoyment in the situation.
+
+"If Chip only had the sense to slow up and give us a chance--or spill
+that old maid over the bank!" groaned Jack Bates, and plied whip and
+spur to overtake the runaway.
+
+Now the captive was riding dizzily, head downward, frightening Banjo
+half out of his senses.  What he had started as a grim jest, he now
+continued in deadly earnest; what was this uncanny semblance of a
+cow-puncher which he could not unseat, yet which clung so precariously
+to the saddle?  He had no thought now of bucking in pure devilment--he
+was galloping madly, his eyes wild and staring.
+
+Of a sudden, Chip saw danger lurking beneath the fun of it.  He leaned
+forward a little, got a fresh grip on the reins and took the whip.
+
+"Hang tight, now--I'm going to beat that horse to the Hog's Back."
+
+Miss Whitmore, laughing till the tears stood in her eyes, braced herself
+mechanically.  Chip had been laughing also--but that was before Banjo
+struck into the hill road in his wild flight from the terror that rode
+in the saddle.
+
+A smart flick of the whip upon their glossy backs, and the creams sprang
+forward at a run.  The buggy was new and strong, and if they kept the
+road all would be well--unless they met Banjo upon the narrow ridge
+between two broad-topped knolls, known as the Hog's Back.  Another
+tap, and the creams ran like deer.  One wheel struck a cobble stone,
+and the buggy lurched horribly.
+
+"Stop!  There goes my coyote!" cried Miss Whitmore, as a gray object
+slid down under the hind wheel.
+
+"Hang on or you'll go next," was all the comfort she got, as Chip
+braced himself for the struggle before him.  The Hog's Back was reached,
+but Banjo was pounding up the hill beyond, his nostrils red and flaring,
+his sides reeking with perspiration.  Behind him tore the Flying U boys
+in a vain effort to head him back into the coulee before mischief was
+done.
+
+Chip drew his breath sharply when the creams swerved out upon the broad
+hilltop, just as Banjo thundered past with nothing left of his rider but
+the legs, and with them shorn of their plumpness as the hay dribbled out
+upon the road.
+
+A fresh danger straightway forced itself upon Chip's consciousness.
+The creams, maddened by the excitement, were running away.  He held
+them sternly to the road and left the stopping of them to Providence,
+inwardly thanking the Lord that Miss Whitmore did not seem to be the
+screaming kind of woman.
+
+The "vigilantes" drew hastily out of the road and scudded out of sight
+down a gully as the creams lunged down the steep grade and across the
+shallow creek bed.  Fortunately the great gate by the stable swung wide
+open and they galloped through and up the long slope to the house,
+coming more under control at every leap, till, by a supreme effort,
+Chip brought them, panting, to a stand before the porch where the
+Old Man stood boiling over with anxiety and excitement.  James G.
+Whitmore was not a man who took things calmly; had he been a woman
+he would have been called fussy.
+
+"What in--what was you making a race track out of the grade for," he
+demanded, after he had bestowed a hasty kiss beside the nose of his
+sister.
+
+Chip dropped a heavy trunk upon the porch and reached for the guitar
+before he answered.
+
+"I was just trying those new springs on the buggy."
+
+"It was very exciting," commented Miss Whitmore, airily.  "I shot a
+coyote, J. G., but we lost it coming down the hill.  Your men were
+playing a funny game--hare and hounds, it looked like.  Or were they
+breaking a new horse?"
+
+The Old Man looked at Chip, intelligence dawning in his face.  There
+was something back of it all, he knew.  He had been asleep when the
+uproar began, and had reached the door only in time to see the creams
+come down the grade like a daylight shooting star.
+
+"I guess they was breaking a bronk," he said, carelessly; "you've got
+enough baggage for a trip round the world, Dell.  I hope it ain't all
+dope for us poor devils.  Tell Shorty I want t' see him, Chip."
+
+Chip took the reins from the Old Man's hands, sprang in and drove back
+down the hill to the stables.
+
+
+The "reception committee," as Chip sarcastically christened them,
+rounded up the runaway and sneaked back to the ranch by the coulee
+trail.  With much unseemly language, they stripped the saddle and
+a flapping pair of overalls off poor, disgraced Banjo, and kicked
+him out of the corral.
+
+"That's the way Jack's schemes always pan out," grumbled Slim.
+"By golly, yuh don't get me into another jackpot like that!"
+
+"You might explain why you let that" (several kinds of) "cayuse get
+away from you!" retorted Jack, fretfully.  "If you'd been onto your job,
+things would have been smooth as silk."
+
+"Wonder what the old maid thought," broke in Weary, bent on preserving
+peace in the Happy Family.
+
+"I'll bet she never saw us at all!" laughed Cal.  "Old Splinter gave
+her all she wanted to do, hanging to the rig.  The way he came down
+that grade wasn't slow.  He just missed running into Banjo on the Hog's
+Back by the skin of the teeth.  If he had, it'd be good-by, doctor--and
+Chip, too.  Gee, that was a close shave!"
+
+"Well," said Happy Jack, mournfully, "if we don't all get the bounce
+for this, I miss my guess.  It's a little the worst we've done yet."
+
+"Except that time we tin-canned that stray steer, last winter,"
+amended Weary, chuckling over the remembrance as he fastened the
+big gate behind them.
+
+"Yes, that was another of Jack's fool schemes," put in Slim.  "Go and
+tin-can a four-year-old steer and let him take after the Old Man and
+put him on the calf shed, first pass he made.  Old Man was sure hot
+about that--by golly, it didn't help his rheumatism none."
+
+"He'll sure go straight in the air over this," reiterated Happy Jack,
+with mournful conviction.
+
+"There's old Splinter at the bunk house--drawing our pictures, I'll bet
+a dollar.  Hey, Chip!  How you vas, already yet?" sung out Weary, whose
+sunny temper no calamity could sour.
+
+Chip glanced at them and went on cutting the leaves of a late magazine
+which he had purloined from the Dry Lake barber.  Cal Emmett strode up
+and grabbed the limp, gray hat from his head and began using it for a
+football.
+
+"Here!  Give that back!" commanded Chip, laughing.  "DON'T make a dish
+rag of my new John B. Stetson, Cal.  It won't be fit for the dance."
+
+"Gee!  It don't lack much of being a dish rag, now, if I'm any judge.
+Now!  Great Scott!"  He held it at arm's length and regarded it
+derisively.
+
+"Well, it was new two years ago," explained Chip, making an ineffectual
+grab at it.
+
+Cal threw it to him and came and sat down upon his heels to peer over
+Chip's arm at the magazine.
+
+"How's the old maid doctor?" asked Jack Bates, leaning against the door
+while he rolled a cigarette.
+
+"Scared plum to death.  I left the remains in the Old Man's arms."
+
+"Was she scared, honest?"  Cal left off studying the "Types of Fair
+Women."
+
+"What did she say when we broke loose?"  Jack drew a match sharply
+along a log.
+
+"Nothing.  Well, yes, she said 'Are they going to H-A-N-G that man ?'"
+Chip's voice quavered the words in a shrill falsetto.
+
+"The deuce she did!"  Jack indulged in a gratified laugh.
+
+"What did she say when you put the creams under the whip, up there?
+I don't suppose the old girl is wise to the fact that you saved her
+neck right then--but you sure did.  You done yourself proud, Splinter."
+Cal patted Chip's knee approvingly.
+
+Chip blushed under the praise and hastily answered the question.
+
+"She hollered out:  'Stop!  There goes my COYOTE!'"
+
+"Her COYOTE?"
+
+"HER coyote?"
+
+"What the devil was she doing with a COYOTE?"
+
+The Happy Family stood transfixed, and Chip's eyes were seen to laugh.
+
+"HER COYOTE.  Did any of you fellows happen to see a dead coyote up on
+the grade?  Because if you did, it's the doctor's."
+
+Weary Willie walked deliberately over and seized Chip by the shoulders,
+bringing him to his feet with one powerful yank.
+
+"Don't you try throwing any loads into THIS crowd, young man.  Answer me
+truly-s'help yuh.  How did that old maid come by a coyote--a dead one?"
+
+Chip squirmed loose and reached for his cigarette book.  "She shot it,"
+he said, calmly, but with twitching lips.
+
+"Shot it!"  Five voices made up the incredulous echo.
+
+"What with?" demanded Weary when he got his breath.
+
+"With my rifle.  I brought it out from town today.  Bert Rogers had left
+it at the barber shop for me."
+
+"Gee whiz!  And them creams hating a gun like poison!  She didn't shoot
+from the rig, did she?"
+
+"Yes," said Chip, "she did.  The first time she didn't know any better--
+and the second time she was hot at me for hinting she was scared.  She's
+a spunky little devil, all right.  She's busy hating me right now for
+running the grade--thinks I did it to scare her, I guess.  That's all
+some fool women know."
+
+"She's a howling sport, then!" groaned Cal, who much preferred the Sweet
+Young Things.
+
+"No--I sized her up as a maverick."
+
+"What does she look like?"
+
+"How old is she?"
+
+"I never asked her age," replied Chip, his face lighting briefly in a
+smile.  "As to her looks, she isn't cross-eyed, and she isn't four-eyed.
+That's as much as I noticed."  After this bald lie he became busy with
+his cigarette.  "Give me that magazine, Cal.  I didn't finish cutting
+the leaves."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+Silver.
+
+
+
+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 charactertistic
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+An Ideal Picture.
+
+
+
+"I guess I'll go down to Denson's to-day," 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 't was 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 dragged 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.
+
+By the time this checked-apron court of inquiry adjourned, Louise
+appeared and said she believed she was ready, and Miss Whitmore
+escaped from the house far in advance of the others--and such were
+Chip's telepathic powers that he sprang down voluntarily and assisted
+her to the front seat without a word being said by either.
+
+Followed a week of dullness at the ranch, with the Countess scrubbing
+and dusting and cleaning from morning till night.  The Little Doctor,
+as the bunk house had christened her, was away attending the State
+Medical Examination at Helena.
+
+"Gee-whiz!" sighed Cal on Sunday afternoon.  "It seems mighty queer
+without the Little Doctor around here, sassing the Old Man and putting
+the hull bunch of us on the fence about once a day.  If it wasn't for
+Len Adams--"
+
+"It wouldn't do you any good to throw a nasty loop at the Little
+Doctor," broke in Weary, "'cause she's spoken for, by all signs and
+tokens.  There's some fellow back East got a long rope on her."
+
+"You got the papers for that?" jeered Cal.  "The Little Doctor don't
+act the way I'd want my girl t' act, supposin' I was some thousand or
+fifteen hundred miles off her range.  She ain't doing no pining, I tell
+yuh those."
+
+"She's doing a lot of writing, though.  I'll bet money, if we called
+the roll right here, you'd see there's been a letter a week hittin' the
+trail to one Dr. Cecil Granthum, Gilroy, Ohio."
+
+"That's what," agreed Jack Bates.  "I packed one last week, myself."
+
+"I done worse than that," said Weary, blandly.  "I up and fired a shot
+at her, after the second one she handed me.  I says, as innocent:  'I
+s'pose, if I lost this, there'd be a fellow out on the next train with
+blood in his eye and a six-gun in both hands, demanding explanations'--
+and she flashed them dimples on me and twinkled them big, gray eyes of
+hers, and says:  'It's up to you to carry it safe, then,' or words to
+that effect.  I took notice she didn't deny but what he would."
+
+"Two doctors in one family--gee whiz!" mused Cal.  "If I hadn't got the
+only girl God ever made right, I'd give one Dr. Cecil Granthum, of
+Gilroy, Ohio, a run for his money, I tell yuh those.  I'd impress it
+upon him that a man's taking long chances when he stands and lets his
+best girl stampede out here among us cow-punchers for a change uh grass.
+That fellow needs looking after; he ain't finished his education.
+Jacky, you ain't got a female girl yanking your heart around, sail
+in and show us what yuh can do in that line."
+
+"Nit," said Jack Bates, briefly.  "My heart's doing business at the old
+stand and doing it satisfactory and proper.  I don't want to set it to
+bucking--over a girl that wouldn't have me at any price.  Let Slim.  The
+Little Doctor's half stuck on him, anyhow."
+
+While the boys amused themselves in serious debate with Slim, Chip
+put away his magazine and went down to visit Silver in the box stall.
+He was glad they had not attempted to draw him into the banter--they
+had never once thought to do so, probably, though he had been thrown
+into the company of the Little Doctor more than any of the others,
+for several good reasons.  He had broken the creams to harness, and
+always drove them, for the Old Man found them more than he cared to
+tackle.  And there was Silver, with frequent discussions over his
+progress toward recovery and some argument over his treatment--for
+Chip had certain ideas of his own concerning horses, and was not
+backward about expressing them upon occasion.
+
+That the Little Doctor should write frequent letters to a man in the
+East did not concern him--why should it?  Still, a fellow without a home
+and without some woman who cares for him, cannot escape having his
+loneliness thrust upon him at times.  He wondered why he should care.
+Surely, ten years of living his life alone ought to kill that latent
+homesickness which used to hold him awake at nights.  Sometimes even
+of late years, when he stood guard over the cattle at night, and got
+to thinking--oh, it was hell to be all alone in the world!
+
+There were Cal and Weary, they had girls who loved them--and they were
+sure welcome to them.  And Jack Bates and Happy Jack had sisters and
+mothers--and even Slim had an old maid aunt who always knit him a red
+and green pair of wristlets for Christmas.  Chip, smoothing mechanically
+the shimmery, white mane of his pet, thought he might be contented if he
+had even an old maid aunt--but he would see that she made his wristlets
+of some other color than those bestowed every year upon Slim.
+
+As for the Little Doctor, it would be something strange if she had gone
+through life without having some fellow in love with her.  Probably, if
+the truth was known, there had been more than Dr. Cecil Granthum--bah,
+what a sickening name!  Cecil!  It might as well be Adolphus or Regie
+or--what does a man want to pack around a name like that for?  Probably
+he was the kind of man that the name sounded like; a dude with pink
+cheeks.
+
+Chip knew just how he looked.  Inspiration suddenly seizing upon him,
+he sat down upon the manger, drew his memorandum book out of his inner
+coat pocket, carefully sharpened a bit of lead pencil which he found
+in another pocket, tore a leaf from the book, and, with Silver looking
+over his shoulder, drew a graphic, ideal picture of Dr. Cecil Granthum.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+In Silver's Stall.
+
+
+
+"Oh, are YOU here?  It's a wonder you don't have your bed brought down
+here, so you can sleep near Silver.  How has he been doing since I left?"
+
+Chip simply sat still upon the edge of the manger and stared.  His gray
+hat was pushed far back upon his head and his dark hair waved and curled
+upon his forehead, very much as a girl's might have done.  He did not
+know that he was a very good-looking young man, but perhaps the Little
+Doctor did.  She smiled and came up and patted Silver, who had forgotten
+that he ever had objected to her nearness.  He nickered a soft welcome
+and laid his nose on her shoulder.
+
+"You've been drawing a picture.  Who's the victim of your satirical
+pencil this time?"  The Little Doctor, reaching out quickly, calmly
+appropriated the sketch before Chip had time to withdraw it, even if
+he had cared to do so.  He was busy wondering how the Little Doctor
+came to be there at that particular time, and had forgotten the picture,
+which he had not quite finished labeling.
+
+"Dr. Cecil--"  Miss Whitmore turned red at first, then broke into
+laughter.  "Oh--h, ha! ha! ha!  Silver, you don't know how funny this
+master of yours can be!  Ha! ha!"  She raised her head from Silver's
+neck, where it had rested, and wiped her eyes.
+
+"How did you know about Cecil?" she demanded of a very discomfited
+young man upon the manger.
+
+"I didn't know--and I didn't WANT to know.  I heard the boys talking
+and joshing about him, and I just drew--their own conclusions."  Chip
+grinned a little and whittled at his pencil, and wondered how much of
+the statement was a lie.
+
+Miss Whitmore tamed red again, and ended by laughing even more heartily
+than at first.
+
+"Their conclusions aren't very complimentary," she said.  "I don't
+believe Dr. Cecil would feel flattered at this.  Why those bowed legs,
+may I ask, and wherefore that long, lean, dyspeptic visage?  Dr. Cecil,
+let me inform you, has a digestion that quails not at deviled crabs and
+chafing-dish horrors at midnight, as I have abundant reason to know.  I
+have seen Dr. Cecil prepare a welsh rabbit and--eat it, also, with much
+relish, apparently.  Oh, no, their conclusions weren't quite correct.
+There are other details I might mention--that cane, for instance--but
+let it pass.  I shall keep this, I think, as a companion to 'The old
+maid's credential card.'"
+
+"Are you in the habit of keeping other folk's property?" inquired Chip,
+with some acerbity.
+
+"Nothing but personal caricatures--and hearts, perhaps," returned the
+Little Doctor, sweetly.
+
+"I hardly think your collection of the last named article is very large,"
+retorted Chip.
+
+"Still, I added to the collection to-day," pursued Miss Whitmore, calmly.
+"I shared my seat in the train with J. G.'s silent partner (I did not
+find him silent, however), Mr. Duncan Whitaker.  He hired a team in Dry
+Lake and we came out together, and I believe--please don't mention Dr.
+Cecil Granthum to him, will you ?"
+
+Chip wished, quite savagely, that she wouldn't let those dimples dodge
+into her cheeks, and the laugh dodge into her eyes, like that.  It made
+a fellow uncomfortable.  He was thoroughly disgusted with her--or he
+would be, if she would only stop looking like that.  He was in that
+state of mind where his only salvation, seemingly, lay in quarreling
+with some one immediately.
+
+"So old Dunk's come back?  If you've got his heart, you must have gone
+hunting it with a microscope, for it's a mighty small one--almost as
+small as his soul.  No one else even knew he had one.  You ought to
+have it set in a ring, so you won't lose it."
+
+"I don't wear phony jewelry, thank you," said Miss Whitmore, and Chip
+thought dimples weren't so bad after all.
+
+The Little Doctor was weaving Silver's mane about her white fingers and
+meditating deeply.  Chip wondered if she were thinking of Dr. Cecil.
+
+"Where did you learn to draw like that?" she asked, suddenly, turning
+toward him.  "You do much better than I, and I've always been learning
+from good teachers.  Did you ever try painting?"
+
+Chip blushed and looked away from her.  This was treading close to his
+deep-hidden, inner self.
+
+"I don't know where I learned.  I never took a lesson in my life, except
+from watching people and horses and the country, and remembering the
+lines they made, you know.  I always made pictures, ever since I can
+remember--but I never tried colors very much.  I never had a chance,
+working around cow-camps and on ranches."
+
+"I'd like to have you look over some of my sketches and things--and I've
+paints and canvas, if you ever care to try that.  Come up to the house
+some evening and I'll show you my daubs.  They're none of them as good
+as 'The Old Maid.'"
+
+"I wish you'd tear that thing up!" said Chip, vehemently.
+
+"Why?  The likeness is perfect.  One would think you were designer for a
+fashion paper, the way you got the tucks in my sleeve and the braid on
+my collar--and you might have had the kindness to TELL me my hat was on
+crooked, I think!"
+
+There was a rustle in the loose straw, a distant slam of the stable
+door, and Chip sat alone with his horse, whittling abstractedly at his
+pencil till his knife blade grated upon the metal which held the eraser.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+The Hum of Preparation.
+
+
+
+Miss Whitmore ran down to the blacksmith shop, waving an official-
+looking paper in her hand.
+
+"I've got it, J. G.!"
+
+"Got what--smallpox?"  J. G. did not even look up from the iron he was
+welding.
+
+"No, my license.  I'm a really, truly doctor now, and you needn't laugh,
+either.  You said you'd give a dance if I passed, and I did.  Happy Jack
+brought it just now."
+
+"Brought the dance?"  The Old Man gave the bellows a pull which sent a
+shower of sparks toward the really, truly doctor.
+
+"Brought the license," she explained, patiently.  "You can see for
+yourself.  They were awfully nice to me--they seemed to think a girl
+doctor is some kind of joke out here.  They didn't make it any easier,
+though; they acted as if they didn't expect me to pass--but I did!"
+
+The Old Man rubbed one smutty hand down his trousers leg and extended
+it for the precious document.  "Let me have a look at it," he said,
+trying to hide his pride in her.
+
+"Well, but I'll hold it.  Your hands are dirty."  Dr. Whitmore eyed the
+hands disapprovingly.
+
+The Old Man read it slowly through, growing prouder every line.
+
+"You're all right, Dell--I'll be doggoned if you ain't.  Don't you worry
+about the dance--I'll see't yuh get it.  You go tell the Countess to bake
+up a lot of cake and truck, and I'll send some uh the boys around t'
+tell the neighbors.  Better have it Friday night, I guess--I'm goin t'
+start the round-up out early next week.  Doggone it!  I've gone and
+burned that weldin'.  Go on and stop your botherin' me!"
+
+In two minutes the Little Doctor was back, breathless.
+
+"What about the music, J. G.?  We want GOOD music."
+
+"Well, I'll tend t' that part.  Say!  You can rig up that room off the
+dining room for your office--I s'pose you'll have to have one.  You make
+out a list of what dope you want--and be sure yuh get a-plenty.  I look
+for an unhealthy summer among the cow-punchers.  If I ain't mistook in
+the symptoms, Dunk's got palpitation uh the heart right now--an' got it
+serious."
+
+The Old Man chuckled to himself and went back to his welding.
+
+"Oh, Louise!"  The Little Doctor hurried to where the Countess was
+scrubbing the kitchen steps with soft soap and sand and considerable
+energy.  "J. G. says I may have a dance next Friday night, so we must
+hurry and fix the house--only I don't see much fixing to be done;
+everything is SO clean."
+
+"Oh, there ain't a room in the house fit fer comp'ny t' walk into,"
+expostulated the Countess while she scrubbed.  "I do like t' see a
+house clean when folks is expected that only come t' be critical an'
+make remarks behind yer back the minit they git away.  If folks got
+anything t' say I'd a good deal ruther they said it t' my face an' be
+done with it.  'Yuh can know a man's face but yuh can't know his heart,'
+as the sayin' is, an' it's the same way with women--anyway, it's the same
+way with Mis' Beckman.  You can know her face a mile off, but yuh never
+know who she's goin' t' rake over the coals next.  As the sayin' is:
+'The tongue of a woman, at last it biteth like a serpent an' it stingeth
+like an addle,' an' I guess it's so.  Anyway, Mis' Beckman's does.  I do
+b'lieve on my soul--what's the matter, Dell?  What yuh laughin' at?"
+
+The Little Doctor was past speech for the moment, and the Countess stood
+up and looked curiously around her.  It never occurred to her that she
+might be the cause of that convulsive outburst.
+
+"Oh--he--never mind--he's gone, now."
+
+"Who's gone?" persisted the Countess.
+
+"What kinds of cake do you think we ought to have?" asked the Little
+Doctor, diplomatically.
+
+The Countess sank to her knees and dipped a handful of amber, jelly-like
+soap from a tin butter can.
+
+"Well, I don't know.  I s'pose folks will look for something fancy,
+seein' you're givin' the dance.  Mis' Beckman sets herself up as a
+shinin' example on cake, and she'll come just t' be critical an' find
+fault, if she can.  If I can't bake all around her the best day she
+ever seen, I'll give up cookin' anything but spuds.  She had the
+soggiest kind uh jelly roll t' the su'prise on Mary last winter.
+I know it was hern, fer I seen her bring it in, an' I went straight
+an' ondone it.  I guess it was kinda mean uh me, but I don't care--as
+the sayin' is:  'What's sass fer the goose is good enough sass fer
+anybody'--an' she done the same trick by me, at the su'prise at Adamses
+last fall.  But she couldn't find no kick about MY cake, an' hers--yuh
+c'd of knocked a cow down with it left-handed!  If that's the best she
+c'n do on cake I'd advise 'er to keep the next batch t' home where
+they're used to it.  They say't 'What's one man's meat 's pizen t'
+the other feller,' and I guess it's so enough.  Maybe Mame an' the
+rest uh them Beckman kids can eat sech truck without comin' down in
+a bunch with gastakutus, but I'd hate t' tackle it myself."
+
+The Little Doctor gurgled.  This was a malady which had not been
+mentioned at the medical college.
+
+"Where shall we set the tables, if we dance in the dining room?" she
+asked, having heard enough of the Beckmans for the present.
+
+"Why, we won't set any tables.  Folks always have a lap supper at ranch
+dances.  At the su'prise on Mary--"
+
+"What is a lap supper?"
+
+"Well, my stars alive!  Where under the shinin' sun was you brought up
+if yuh never heard of a lap supper?  A lap supper is where folks set
+around the walls--or any place they can find--and take the plates on their
+laps and yuh pass 'em stuff.  The san'wiches--"
+
+"You do make such beautiful bread!" interrupted the Little Doctor, very
+sincerely.
+
+"Well, I ain't had the best uh luck, lately, but I guess it does taste
+good after that bread yuh had when I come.  Soggy was no name for--"
+
+"Patsy made that bread," interposed Miss Whitmore, hastily.  "He had bad
+luck, and--"
+
+"I guess he did!" sniffed the Countess, contemptuously.  "As I told Mary
+when I come--"
+
+"I wonder how many cakes we'll need?"  Miss Whitmore, you will observe,
+had learned to interrupt when she had anything to say.  It was the only
+course to pursue with anyone from Denson coulee.
+
+The Countess, having finished her scrubbing, rose jerkily and upset the
+soap can, which rolled over and over down the steps, leaving a yellow
+trail as it went.
+
+"Well, there, if that wasn't a bright trick uh mine?  They say the more
+yuh hurry the less yuh'll git along, an' that's a sample.  We'd ought t'
+have five kinds, an' about four uh each kind.  It wouldn't do t' run out,
+er Mis' Beckman never would let anybody hear the last of it.  Down t'
+Mary's--"
+
+"Twenty cakes!  Good gracious!  I'll have to order my stock of medicine,
+for I'll surely have a houseful of patients if the guests eat twenty
+cakes."
+
+"Well, as the sayin' is:  'Patience an' perseverance can git away with
+most anything,'" observed the Countess, naively.
+
+The Little Doctor retired behind her handkerchief.
+
+"My stars alive, I do b'lieve my bread's beginnin' t' scorch!" cried
+the Countess, and ran to see.  The Little Doctor followed her inside
+and sat down.
+
+"We must make a list of the things we'll need, Louise.  You--"
+
+"Dell!  Oh-h. Dell!"  The voice of the Old Man resounded from the parlor.
+
+"I'm in the kitchen!" called she, remaining where she was.  He tramped
+heavily through the house to her.
+
+"I'll send the rig in, t'morrow, if there's anything yuh want," he
+remarked.  "And if you'll make out a list uh dope, I'll send the order
+in t' the Falls.  We've got plenty uh saws an' cold chisels down in the
+blacksmith shop--you can pick out what yuh want."  He dodged and grinned.
+"Got any cake, Countess?"
+
+"Well, there ain't a thing cooked, hardly.  I'm going t' bake up
+something right after dinner.  Here's some sponge cake--but it ain't
+fit t' eat, hardly.  I let Dell look in the oven, 'cause my han's
+was all over flour, an' she slammed the door an' it fell.  But yuh
+can't expect one person t' know everything--an' too many han's can't
+make decent soup, as the sayin' is, an' it's the same way with cake."
+
+The Old Man winked at the Little Doctor over a great wedge of feathery
+delight.  "I don't see nothing the matter with this--only it goes down
+too easy," he assured the Countess between mouthfuls.  "Fix up your
+list, Dell, and don't be afraid t' order everything yuh need.  I'll
+foot the--"
+
+The Old Man, thinking to go back to his work, stepped into the puddle of
+soft soap and sat emphatically down upon the top step, coasting rapidly
+to the bottom.  A carpet slipper shot through the open door and landed
+in the dishpan; the other slipper disappeared mysteriously.  The wedge
+of cake was immediately pounced upon by an investigative hen and carried
+in triumph to her brood.
+
+"Good Lord!"  J. G. struggled painfully to his feet.  "Dell, who in
+thunder put that stuff there?  You're a little too doggoned anxious
+for somebody t' practice on, seems t' me."  A tiny trickle of blood
+showed in the thin spot on his head.
+
+"Are you hurt, J. G.?  We--I spilled the soap."  The Little Doctor gazed
+solicitous, from the doorway.
+
+"Huh!  I see yuh spilled the soap, all right enough.  I'm willin' to
+believe yuh did without no affidavit.  Doggone it, a bachelor never has
+any such a man-trap around in a fellow's road.  I've lived in Montana
+fourteen years, an' I never slipped up on my own doorstep till you got
+here.  It takes a woman t' leave things around--where's my cake ?"
+
+"Old Specie took it down by the bunk house.  Shall I go after it?"
+
+"No, you needn't.  Doggone it, this wading through ponds uh soft soap
+has got t' stop right here.  I never had t' do it when I was baching,
+I notice."  He essayed, with the aid of a large splinter, to scrape the
+offending soap from his trousers.
+
+"Certainly, you didn't.  Bachelors never use soap," retorted Della.
+
+"Oh, they don't, hey?  That's all you know about it.  They don't use
+this doggoned, slimy truck, let me tell yuh.  What d'yuh want, Chip?
+Oh, you've got t' grin, too!  Dell, why don't yuh do something fer my
+head?  What's your license good f er, I'd like t' know?  You didn't
+see Dell's license, did yuh, Chip?  Go and get it an' show it to him,
+Dell.  It's good fer everything but gitting married--there ain't any
+cure for that complaint."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+Love and a Stomach Pump.
+
+
+
+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--"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+Prescriptions.
+
+
+
+It was Sunday, the second day after the dance.  The boys were scattered,
+for the day was delicious--one of those sweet, soft days which come to us
+early in May.  Down in the blacksmith shop Chip was putting new rowels
+into his spurs and whistling softly to himself while he worked.
+
+The Little Doctor had gone with him to visit Silver that morning, and
+had not hurried away, but had leaned against the manger and listened
+while he told her of the time Silver, swimming the river when it was
+"up," had followed him to the Shonkin camp when Chip had thought to
+leave him at home.  And they had laughed together over the juvenile
+seven and the subsequent indignation of the mothers who, with the
+exception of "Mary," had bundled up their offspring and gone home mad.
+True, they had none of them thoroughly understood the situation, having
+only the version of the children, who accused the Little Doctor of
+trying to make them eat rubber--"just cause she was mad about some
+little old candy."  The mystification of the others among the Happy
+Family, who scented a secret with a joke to it but despaired of wringing
+the truth from either Weary or Chip, was dwelt upon with much enjoyment
+by the Little Doctor.
+
+It was a good old world and a pleasant, and Chip had no present quarrel
+with fate--or with anybody else.  That was why he whistled.
+
+Then voices reached him through the open door, and a laugh--HER laugh.
+Chip smiled sympathetically, though he had not the faintest notion of
+the cause of her mirth.  As the voices drew nearer, the soft, smooth,
+hated tones of Dunk Whitaker untangled from the Little Doctor's laugh,
+and Chip stopped whistling.  Dunk was making a good, long stay of it
+this time; usually he came one day and went the next, and no one grieved
+at his departure.
+
+"You find them an entirely new species, of course.  How do you get on
+with them?" said Dunk.
+
+And the Little Doctor answered him frankly and distinctly:  "Oh, very
+well, considering all things.  They furnish me with some amusement,
+and I give them something quite new to talk about, so we are quits.
+They are a good-hearted lot, you know--but SO ignorant!  I don't
+suppose--"
+
+The words trailed into an indistinct murmur, punctuated by Dunk's jarring
+cackle.
+
+Chip did not resume his whistling, though he might have done so if he
+had heard a little more, or a little less.  As a matter of fact, it
+was the Densons, and the Pilgreens, and the Beckmans that were under
+discussion, and not the Flying U cowboys, as Chip believed.  He no
+longer smiled sympathetically.
+
+"We furnish her with some amusement, do we?  That's good!  We're a good-
+hearted lot, but SO ignorant!  The devil we are!"  He struck the rivet
+such a blow that he snapped one shank of his spur short off.  This meant
+ten or twelve dollars for a new pair--though the cost of it troubled him
+little, just then.  It was something tangible upon which to pour
+profanity, however, and the atmosphere grew sulphurous in the vicinity
+of the blacksmith shop and remained so for several minutes, after which
+a tall, irate cow-puncher with his hat pulled low over angry eyes left
+the shop and strode up the path to the deserted bunk house.
+
+He did not emerge till the Old Man called to him to ride down to Benson's
+after one of the Flying U horses which had broken out of the pasture.
+
+Della was looking from the window when Chip rode up the hill upon the
+"coulee trail," which passed close by the house.  She was tired of the
+platitudes of Dunk, who, trying to be both original and polished, fell
+far short of being either and only succeeded in being extremely tiresome.
+
+"Where's Chip going, J. G. ?" she demanded, in a proprietary tone.
+
+"Down t' Benson's after a horse."  J. G. spoke lazily, without taking
+his pipe from his mouth.
+
+"Oh, I wish I could go--I wonder if he'd care."  The Little Doctor spoke
+impulsively as was her habit.
+
+"'Course he wouldn't.  Hey, Chip!  Hold on a minute!"  The Old Man stood
+waving his pipe in the doorway.
+
+Chip jerked his horse to a stand-still and half turned in the saddle.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Dell wants t' go along.  Will yuh saddle up Concho for 'er?  There's no
+hurry, anyhow, you've got plenty uh time.  Dell's afraid one uh the kids
+might fall downstairs ag'in, and she'd miss the case."
+
+"I'm not, either," said the Little Doctor, coming to stand by her
+brother; "it's too nice a day to stay inside, and my muscles ache
+for a gallop over the hills."
+
+Chip did not look up at her; he did not dare.  He felt that, if he met
+her eyes--with the laugh in them--he should do one of two undesirable
+things:  he should either smile back at her, weakly overlooking the
+hypocrisy of her friendliness, or sneer in answer to her smile, which
+would be very rude and ungentlemanly.
+
+"If you had mentioned wanting a ride I should have been glad to
+accompany you," remarked Dunk, reproachfully, when Chip had ridden,
+somewhat sullenly, back to the stable.
+
+"I didn't think of it before--thank you," said the Little Doctor, lightly,
+and hurried away to put on her blue riding habit with its cunning little
+jockey cap which she found the only headgear that would stay upon
+her head in the teeth of Montana wind, and which made her look-well,
+kissable.  She was standing on the porch drawing on her gauntlets
+when Chip returned, leading Concho by the bridle.
+
+"Let me help you," begged Dunk, at her elbow, hoping till the last that
+she would invite him to go with them.
+
+The Little Doctor, not averse to hiding the bitter of her medicine under
+a coating of sugar, smiled sweetly upon him, to the delectation of Dunk
+and the added bitterness of Chip, who was rapidly nearing that state of
+mind which is locally described as being "strictly on the fight."
+
+"I expect she thinks I'll amuse her some more!" he thought, savagely, as
+they galloped away through the quivering sunlight.
+
+For the first two miles the road was level, and Chip set the pace--which
+was, as he intended it should be, too swift for much speech.  After that
+the trail climbed abruptly out of Flying U coulee, and the horses were
+compelled to walk.  Then it was that Chip's native chivalry and self-
+mastery were put to test.
+
+He was hungry for a solitary ride such as had, before now, drawn much
+of the lonely ache out of his heart and keyed him up to the life which
+he must live and which chafed his spirit more than even he realized.
+Instead of such slender comfort, he was forced to ride beside the girl
+who had hurt him--so close that his knee sometimes brushed her horse--
+and to listen to her friendly chatter and make answer, at times, with
+at least some show of civility.
+
+She was talking reminiscently of the dance.
+
+"J. G. showed splendid judgment in his choice of musicians, didn't he?"
+
+Chip looked straight ahead.  This was touching a sore place in his
+memory.  A vision of Dick Brown's vapid smile and curled up mustache
+rose before him.
+
+"I'd tell a man," he said, with faint irony.
+
+The Little Doctor gave him a quick, surprised look and went on.
+
+"I liked their playing so much.  Mr. Brown was especially good upon the
+guitar."
+
+"Y--e-s?"
+
+"Yes, of course.  You know yourself, he plays beautifully."
+
+"Cow-punchers aren't expected to know all these things."  Chip hated
+himself for replying so, but the temptation mastered him.
+
+"Aren't they?  I can't see why not."
+
+Chip closed his lips tightly to keep in something impolite.
+
+The Little Doctor, puzzled as well as piqued, went straight to the point.
+
+"Why didn't you like Mr. Brown's playing?"
+
+"Did I say I didn't like it?"
+
+"Well, you--not exactly, but you implied that you did not."
+
+"Y--e-s?"
+
+The Little Doctor gave the reins an impatient twitch.
+
+"Yes, yes--YES!"
+
+No answer from Chip.  He could think of nothing to say that was not more
+or less profane.
+
+"I think he's a very nice, amiable young man"--strong emphasis upon the
+second adjective.  "I like amiable young men."
+
+Silence.
+
+"He's going to come down here hunting next fall.  J. G. invited him."
+
+"Yes?  What does he expect to find?"
+
+"Why, whatever there is to hunt.  Chickens and--er--deer--"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+By this they reached the level and the horses broke, of their own
+accord, into a gallop which somewhat relieved the strain upon the
+mental atmosphere.  At the next hill the Little Doctor looked her
+companion over critically.
+
+"Mr. Bennett, you look positively bilious.  Shall I prescribe for you?"
+
+"I can't see how that would add to your amusement."
+
+"I'm not trying to add to my amusement."
+
+"No?"
+
+"If I were, there's no material at hand.  Bad-tempered young men are
+never amusing, to me.  I like--"
+
+"Amiable young men.  Such as Dick Brown."
+
+"I think you need a change of air, Mr. Bennett."
+
+"Yes?  I've felt, lately, that Eastern airs don't agree with my
+constitution."
+
+Miss Whitmore grew red as to cheeks and bright as to eyes.
+
+"I think a few small doses of Eastern manners would improve you very
+much," she said, pointedly.
+
+"Y--e-s?  They'd have to be small, because the supply is very limited."
+
+The Little Doctor grew white around the mouth.  She held Concho's rein
+so tight he almost stopped.
+
+"If you didn't want me to come, why in the world didn't you have the
+courage to say so at the start?  I must say I don't admire people whose
+tempers--and manners--are so unstable.  I'm sorry I forced my presence
+upon you, and I promise you it won't occur again."  She hesitated, and
+then fired a parting shot which certainly was spiteful in the extreme.
+"There's one good thing about it," she smiled, tartly, "I shall have
+something interesting to write to Dr. Cecil."
+
+With that she turned astonished Concho short around in the trail--and as
+Chip gave Blazes a vicious jab with his spurs at the same instant, the
+distance between them widened rapidly.
+
+As Chip raced away over the prairie, he discovered a new and puzzling
+kink in his temper.  He had been angry with the Little Doctor for coming,
+but it was nothing to the rage he felt when she turned back!  He did not
+own to himself that he wanted her beside him to taunt and to hurt with
+his rudeness, but it was a fact, for all that.  And it was a very surly
+young man who rode into the Denson corral and threw a loop over the head
+of the runaway.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+Before the Round-up.
+
+
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+What Whizzer Did.
+
+
+
+"I guess Happy lost some of his horses, las' night," said Slim at the
+breakfast table next morning.  Slim had been kept at the ranch to look
+after the fences and the ditches, and was doing full justice to the
+expert cookery of the Countess.
+
+"What makes yuh think that?"  The Old Man poised a bit of tender,
+broiled steak upon the end of his fork.
+
+"They's a bunch hangin' around the upper fence, an' Whizzer's among 'em.
+I'd know that long-legged snake ten miles away."
+
+The Little Doctor looked up quickly.  She had never before heard of a
+"long-legged snake"--but then, she had not yet made the acquaintance of
+Whizzer.
+
+"Well, maybe you better run 'em into the corral and hold 'em till Shorty
+sends some one after 'em," suggested the Old Man.
+
+"I never c'd run 'em in alone, not with Whizzer in the bunch," objected
+Slim.  "He's the orneriest cayuse in Chouteau County."
+
+"Whizzer'll make a rattlin' good saddle horse some day, when he's broke
+gentle," argued the Old Man.
+
+"Huh!  I don't envy Chip the job uh breakin' him, though," grunted Slim,
+as he went out of the door.
+
+After breakfast the Little Doctor visited Silver and fed him his
+customary ration of lump sugar, helped the Countess tidy the house,
+and then found herself at a loss for something to do.  She stood
+looking out into the hazy sunlight which lay warm on hill and coulee.
+
+"I think I'll go up above the grade and make a sketch of the ranch,"
+she said to the Countess, and hastily collected her materials.
+
+Down by the creek a "cotton-tail" sprang out of her way and kicked
+itself out of sight beneath a bowlder.  The Little Doctor stood and
+watched till he disappeared, before going on again.  Further up the
+bluff a striped snake gave her a shivery surprise before he glided
+sinuously away under a sagebush.  She crossed the grade and climbed
+the steep bluff beyond, searching for a comfortable place to work.
+
+A little higher, she took possession of a great, gray bowlder jutting
+like a giant table from the gravelly soil.  She walked out upon it and
+looked down--a sheer drop of ten or twelve feet to the barren, yellow
+slope below.
+
+"I suppose it is perfectly solid," she soliloquized and stamped one
+stout, little boot, to see if the rock would tremble.  If human emotions
+are possible to a heart of stone, the rock must have been greatly amused
+at the test.  It stood firm as the hills around it.
+
+Della sat down and looked below at the house--a doll's house; at the toy
+corrals and tiny sheds and stables.  Slim, walking down the hill, was a
+mere pigmy--a short, waddling insect.  At least, to a girl unused to
+gazing from a height, each object seemed absurdly small.  Flying U
+coulee stretched away to the west, with a silver ribbon drawn carelessly
+through it with many a twist and loop, fringed with a tender green of
+young leaves.  Away and beyond stood the Bear Paws, hazily blue, with
+splotches of purple shadows.
+
+"I don't blame J. G. for loving this place," thought the Little Doctor,
+drinking in the intoxication of the West with every breath she drew.
+
+She had just become absorbed in her work when a clatter arose from the
+grade below, and a dozen horses, headed by a tall, rangy sorrel she
+surmised was Whizzer, dashed down the hill.  Weary and Chip galloped
+close behind.  They did not look up, and so passed without seeing her.
+They were talking and laughing in very good spirits--which the Little
+Doctor resented, for some inexplicable reason.  She heard them call to
+Slim to open the corral gate, and saw Slim run to do their bidding.
+She forgot her sketching and watched Whizzer dodge and bolt back, and
+Chip tear through the creek bed after him at peril of life and limb.
+
+Back and forth, round and round went Whizzer, running almost through the
+corral gate, then swerving suddenly and evading his pursuers with an ease
+which bordered closely on the marvelous.  Slim saddled a horse and joined
+in the chase, and the Old Man climbed upon the fence and shouted advice
+which no one heard and would not have heeded if they had.
+
+As the chase grew in earnestness and excitement, the sympathies of
+the Little Doctor were given unreservedly to Whizzer.  Whenever a
+particularly clever maneuver of his set the men to swearing, she
+clapped her hands in sincere, though unheard and unappreciated,
+applause.
+
+"Good boy!" she cried, approvingly, when he dodged Chip and whirled
+through the big gate which the Old Man had unwittingly left open.
+J. G. leaned perilously forward and shook his fist unavailingly.
+Whizzer tossed head and heels alternately and scurried up the path
+to the very door of the kitchen, where he swung round and looked
+back down the hill snorting triumph.
+
+"Shoo, there!" shrilled the Countess, shaking her dish towel at him.
+
+"Who--oo-oof-f," snorted he disdainfully and trotted leisurely round the
+corner.
+
+Chip galloped up the hill, his horse running heavily.  After him came
+Weary, liberally applying quirt and mild invective.  At the house they
+parted and headed the fugitive toward the stables.  He shot through
+the big gate, lifting his heels viciously at the Old Man as he passed,
+whirled around the stable and trotted haughtily past Slim into the
+corral of his own accord, quite as if he had meant to do so all along.
+
+"Did you ever!" exclaimed the Little Doctor, disgustedly, from her perch.
+"Whizzer, I'm ashamed of you!  I wouldn't have given in like that--but you
+gave them a chase, didn't you, my beauty?"
+
+The boys flung themselves off their tired horses and went up to the
+house to beg the Countess for a lunch, and Della turned resolutely to
+her sketching again.
+
+She was just beginning to forget that the world held aught but soft
+shadows, mellow glow and hazy perspective, when a subdued uproar
+reached her from below.  She drew an uncertain line or two, frowned
+and laid her pencil resignedly in her lap.
+
+"It's of no use.  I can't do a thing till those cow-punchers take
+themselves and their bronchos off the ranch--and may it be soon!"
+she told herself, disconsolately and not oversincerely.  The best of
+us are not above trying to pull the wool over our own eyes, at times.
+
+In reality their brief presence made the near future seem very flat
+and insipid to the Little Doctor.  It was washing all the color out
+of the picture, and leaving it a dirty gray.  She gazed moodily down
+at the whirl of dust in the corral, where Whizzer was struggling to
+free himself from the loop Chip had thrown with his accustomed, calm
+precision.  Whatever Chip did he did thoroughly, with no slurring of
+detail.  Whizzer was fain to own himself fairly caught.
+
+"Oh, he's got you fast, my beauty!" sighed the Little Doctor, woefully.
+"Why didn't you jump over the fence--I think you COULD--and run, run, to
+freedom?"  She grew quite melodramatic over the humiliation of the horse
+she had chosen to champion, and glared resentfully when Chip threw his
+saddle, with no gentle hand, upon the sleek back and tightened the
+cinches with a few strong, relentless yanks.
+
+"Chip, you're an ugly, mean-tempered--that's right, Whizzer!  Kick him if
+you can--I'll stand by you!"  This assertion, you understand, was purely
+figurative; the Little Doctor would have hesitated long before attempting
+to carry it out literally.
+
+"Now, Whizzer, when he tries to ride you, don't you let him!  Throw him
+clear-over-the STABLE--so there!"
+
+Perhaps Whizzer understood the command in some mysterious, telepathic
+manner.  At any rate, he set himself straightway to obey it, and there
+was not a shadow of doubt but that he did his best--but Chip did not
+choose to go over the stable.  Instead of doing so, he remained in
+the saddle and changed ends with his quirt, to the intense rage of
+the Little Doctor, who nearly cried.
+
+"Oh, you brute!  You fiend!  I'll never speak to you again as long as I
+live!  Oh, Whizzer, you poor fellow, why do you let him abuse you so?
+Why DON'T you throw him clean off the ranch?"
+
+This is exactly what Whizzer was trying his best to do, and Whizzer's
+best was exceedingly bad for his rider, as a general thing.  But Chip
+calmly refused to be thrown, and Whizzer, who was no fool, suddenly
+changed his tactics and became so meek that his champion on the bluff
+felt tempted to despise him for such servile submission to a tyrant
+in brown chaps and gray hat--I am transcribing the facts according to
+the Little Doctor's interpretation.
+
+She watched gloomily while Whizzer, in whose brain lurked no thought
+of submission, galloped steadily along behind the bunch which Slim made
+haste to liberate, and bided his time.  She had expected better--rather,
+worse--of him than that.  She had not dreamed he would surrender so
+tamely.  As they crossed the Hog's Back and climbed the steep grade
+just below her, she eyed him reproachfully and said again:
+
+"Whizzer, I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+It did certainly seem that Whizzer heard and felt the pricking of pride
+at the reproof.  He made a feint at being frightened by a jack rabbit
+which sprang out from the shade of a rock and bounced down the hill like
+a rubber ball.  As if Whizzer had never seen a jack rabbit before!--he
+who had been born and reared upon the range among them!  It was a feeble
+excuse at the best, but he made the most of it and lost no time seeking
+a better.
+
+He stopped short, sidled against Weary's horse and snorted.  Chip,
+in none the best humor with him, jerked the reins savagely and dug
+him with his spurs, and Whizzer, resenting the affront, whirled and
+bounded high in the air.  Back down the grade he bucked with the high,
+rocking, crooked jumps which none but a Western cayuse can make, while
+Weary turned in his saddle and watched with sharp-drawn breaths.  There
+was nothing else that he could do.
+
+Chip was by no means passive.  For every jump that Whizzer made the
+rawhide quirt landed across his flaring nostrils, and the locked rowels
+of Chip's spurs raked the sorrel sides from cinch to flank, leaving
+crimson streams behind them.
+
+Wild with rage at this clinging cow-puncher whom he could not dislodge,
+who stung his sides and head like the hornets in the meadow, Whizzer
+gathered himself for a mighty leap as he reached the Hog's Back.  Like
+a wire spring released, he shot into the air, shook himself in one last,
+desperate hope of victory, and, failing, came down with not a joint in
+his legs and turned a somersault.
+
+A moment, and he struggled to his feet and limped painfully away,
+crushed and beaten in spirit.
+
+Chip did not struggle.  He lay, a long length of brown chaps, pink-and-
+white shirt and gray hat, just where he had fallen.
+
+The Little Doctor never could remember getting down that bluff, and her
+sketching materials went to amuse the jack rabbits and the birds.  Fast
+as she flew, Weary was before her and had raised Chip's head upon one
+arm.  She knelt beside him in the dust, hovering over the white face
+and still form like a pitying, little gray angel.  Weary looked at her
+impersonally, but neither of them spoke in those first, breathless
+moments.
+
+The Old Man, who had witnessed the accident, came puffing laboriously
+up the hill, taking the short cut straight across from the stable.
+
+"Is he--DEAD?" he yelled while he scrambled.
+
+Weary turned his head long enough to look down at him, with the same
+impersonal gaze he had bestowed upon the Little Doctor, but he did not
+answer the question.  He could not, for he did not know.  The Little
+Doctor seemed not to have heard.
+
+The Old Man redoubled his exertions and reached them very much out of
+breath.
+
+"Is he dead, Dell?" he repeated in an awestruck tone.  He feared she
+would say yes.
+
+The Little Doctor had taken possession of the brown head.  She looked
+up at her brother, a very unprofessional pallor upon her face, and down
+at the long, brown lashes and at the curved, sensitive lips which held
+no hint of red.  She pressed the face closer to her breast and shook her
+head.  She could not speak, just then, for the griping ache that was in
+her throat.
+
+"One of the best men on the ranch gone under, just when we need help the
+worst!" complained the Old Man.  "Is he hurt bad?"
+
+"J. G.," began the Little Doctor in a voice all the fiercer for being
+suppressed, "I want you to kill that horse.  Do you hear?  If you don't
+do it, I will!"
+
+"You won't have to, if old Splinter goes down and out," said Weary, with
+quiet meaning, and the Little Doctor gave him a grateful flash of gray
+eyes.
+
+"How bad is he hurt?" repeated the Old Man, impatiently.  "You're
+supposed t' be a doctor--don't you know?"
+
+"He has a scalp wound which does not seem serious," said she in an
+attempt to be matter-of-fact, "and his left collar bone is broken."
+
+"Doggone it!  A broken collar bone ain't mended overnight."
+
+"No," acquiesced the Little Doctor, "it isn't."
+
+These last two remarks Chip heard.  He opened his eyes and looked
+straight up into the gray ones above--a long, questioning, rebellious
+look.  He tried then to rise, to free himself from the bitter ecstasy
+of those soft, enfolding arms.  Only a broken collar bone!  Good thing
+it was no worse!  Ugh!  A spasm of pain contracted his features and
+drew beads of moisture to his forehead.  The spurned arms once more
+felt the dead weight of him.
+
+"What is it?"  The Little Doctor's voice called to him from afar.
+
+Must he answer?  He wanted to drift on and on--
+
+"Can you tell me where the pain is?"
+
+Pain?  Oh, yes, there had been pain--but he wanted to drift.  He opened
+his eyes again reluctantly; again the pain clutched him.
+
+"It's--my--foot."
+
+For the first time the eyes of the Little Doctor left his face and
+traveled downward to the spurred boots.  One was twisted in a horrible
+unnatural position that told the agonizing truth--a badly dislocated
+ankle.  They returned quickly to the face, and swam full of blinding
+tears--such as a doctor should not succumb to.  He was not drifting
+into oblivion now; his teeth were not digging into his lower lip for
+nothing, she knew.
+
+"Weary," she said, forgetting to call him properly by name, "ride to
+the house and get my medicine case--the little black one.  The Countess
+knows--and have Slim bring something to carry him home on.  And--RIDE!"
+
+Weary was gone before she had finished, and he certainly "rode."
+
+"You'll have another crippled cow-puncher on yer hands, first thing
+yuh know," grumbled the Old Man, anxiously, as he watched Weary race
+recklessly down the hill.
+
+The Little Doctor did not answer.  She scarcely heard him.  She was
+stroking the hair back from Chip's forehead softly, unconsciously,
+wondering why she had never before noticed the wave in it--but then,
+she had scarcely seen him with his hat off.  How silky and soft it felt!
+And she had called him all sorts of mean names, and had wanted Whizzer
+to--she shuddered and turned sick at the memory of the thud when they
+struck the hard road together.
+
+"Dell!" exclaimed the Old Man, "you're white's a rag.  Doggone it, don't
+throw up yer hands at yer first case--brace up!"
+
+Chip looked up at her curiously, forgetting the pain long enough to
+wonder at her whiteness.  Did she have a heart, then, or was it a
+feminine trait to turn pale in every emergency?  She had not turned
+so very white when those kids--he felt inclined to laugh, only for
+that cussed foot.  Instead he relaxed his vigilance and a groan
+slipped out before he knew.
+
+"Just a minute more and I'll ease the pain for you," murmured the girl,
+compassionately.
+
+"All right--so long as you--don't--use--the stomach pump," he retorted,
+with a miserable makeshift of a laugh.
+
+"What's that?" asked the Old Man, but no one explained.
+
+The Little Doctor was struggling with the lump in her throat that he
+should try to joke about it.
+
+Then Weary was back and holding the little, black case out to her.
+She seized it eagerly, slipping Chip's head to her knees that she
+might use her hands freely.  There was no halting over the tiny vials,
+for she had decided just what she must do.
+
+She laid something against Chip's closed lips.
+
+"Swallow these," she said, and he obeyed her.  "Weary--oh, you knew what
+to do, I see.  There, lay the coat down there for a pillow."
+
+Relieved of her burden, she rose and went to the poor, twisted foot.
+
+Weary and the Old Man watched her go to work systematically and disclose
+the swollen, purpling ankle.  Very gently she did it, and when she had
+administered a merciful anaesthetic, the enthusiasm of the Old Man
+demanded speech.
+
+"Well, I'll be eternally doggoned!  You're onto your job, Dell, doggoned
+if yuh ain't.  I won't ever josh yuh again about yer doctorin'!"
+
+"I wish you'd been around the time I smashed MY ankle," commented Weary,
+fishing for his cigarette book; he was beginning to feel the need of a
+quieting smoke.  "They hauled me forty miles, to Benton."
+
+"That must have been torture!" shuddered the Little Doctor.  "A
+dislocated ankle is a most agonizing thing."
+
+"Yes," assented Weary, striking a match, "it sure is, all right."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+Good Intentions.
+
+
+
+"Mr. Davidson, have you nerve enough to help me replace this ankle?
+The Countess is too nervous, and J. G. is too awkward."
+
+Chip was lying oblivious to his surroundings or his hurt in the sunny,
+south room which Dunk Whitaker chose to call his.
+
+"I've never been accused of wanting nerve," grinned Weary.  "I guess I
+can stand it if you can."  And a very efficient assistant he proved
+himself to be.
+
+When the question of a nurse arose, when all had been done that could be
+done and Weary had gone, the Little Doctor found herself involved in an
+argument with the Countess.  The Countess wanted them to send for Bill.
+Bill just thought the world and all of Chip, she declared, and would
+just love to come.  She was positive that Bill was the very one they
+needed, and the Little Doctor, who had conceived a violent dislike for
+Bill, a smirky, self-satisfied youth addicted to chewing tobacco, red
+neckties and a perennial grin, was equally positive he was the very
+one they did not want.  In despair she retrenched herself behind the
+assertion that Chip should choose for himself.
+
+"I just know he'll choose Bill," crowed the Countess after the flicker
+of the doctor's skirts.
+
+Chip turned his head rebelliously upon the pillow and looked up at her.
+Something in his eyes brought to mind certain stormy crises in the
+headstrong childhood of the Little Doctor-crises in which she was
+forced to submission very much against her will.  It was the same
+mutinous surrender to overwhelming strength, the same futile defiance
+of fate.
+
+"I came to ask you who you would rather have to nurse you," she said,
+trying to keep the erratic color from crimsoning her cheeks.  You see,
+she had never had a patient of her very own before, and there were
+certain embarrassing complications in having this particular young
+man in charge.
+
+Chip's eyes wandered wistfully to the window, where a warm, spring breeze
+flapped the curtains in and out.
+
+"How long have I got to lie here?" he asked, reluctantly.
+
+"A month, at the least--more likely six weeks," she said with kind
+bluntness.  It was best he should know the worst at once.
+
+Chip turned his face bitterly to the wall for a minute and traced an
+impossible vine to its breaking point where the paper had not been
+properly matched.  Twenty miles away the boys were hurrying through
+their early dinner that they might catch up their horses for the
+afternoon's work.  And they had two good feet to walk on, two sound
+arms to subdue restless horseflesh and he was not there!  He could
+fairly smell the sweet, trampled sod as the horses circled endlessly
+inside the rope corral, and hear them snort when a noose swished close.
+He wondered who would get his string to ride, and what they would do
+with his bed.
+
+He didn't need it, now; he would lie on wire springs, instead of on the
+crisp, prairie grass.  He would be waited on like a yearling baby and--
+
+"The Countess just knows you will choose Bill," interrupted a whimsical
+girl voice.
+
+Chip said something which the Little Doctor did not try to hear
+distinctly.  "Don't she think I've had enough misery dealt me for
+once?" he asked, without taking his eyes from the poor, broken vine.
+He rather pitied the vine--it seemed to have been badly used by fate,
+just as he had been.  He was sure it had not wanted to stop right
+there on that line, as it had been forced to do.  HE had not wanted
+to stop, either.  He--
+
+"She says Bill would just love to come," said the voice, with a bit of
+a laugh in it.
+
+Chip, turning his head back suddenly, looked into the gray eyes and felt
+inexplicably cheered.  He almost believed she understood something of
+what it all meant to him.  And she mercifully refrained from spoken pity,
+which he felt he could not have borne just then.  His lips took back some
+of their curve.
+
+"You tell her I wouldn't just love to have him," he said, grimly.
+
+"I'd never dare.  She dotes on Bill.  Whom DO you want?"
+
+"When it comes to that, I don't want anybody.  But if you could get
+Johnny Beckman to come--"
+
+"Oh, I will--I'll go myself, to make sure of him.  Which one is Johnny?"
+
+"Johnny's the red-headed one," said Chip.
+
+"But--they're ALL--"
+
+"Yes, but his head is several shades redder than any of the others,"
+interrupted he, quite cheerfully.
+
+The Little Doctor, observing the twinkle in his eyes, felt her spirits
+rise wonderfully.  She could not bear that hurt, rebellious, lonely look
+which they had worn.
+
+"I'll bring him--but I may have to chloroform the Countess to get him
+into the house.  You must try to sleep, while I'm gone--and don't fret--
+will you?  You'll get well all the quicker for taking things easily."
+
+Chip smiled faintly at this wholesome advice, and the Little Doctor laid
+her hand shyly upon his forehead to test its temperature, drew down the
+shade over the south window, and left him in dim, shadowy coolness to
+sleep.
+
+She came again before she started for Johnny, and found him wide awake
+and staring hungrily at the patch of blue sky visible through the window
+which faced the East.
+
+"You'll have to learn to obey orders better than this," she said,
+severely, and took quiet possession of his wrist.  "I told you not
+to fret about being hurt.  I know you hate it--"
+
+Chip flushed a little under her touch and the tone in which she spoke
+the last words.  It seemed to mean that she hated it even more than he
+did, having him helpless in the house with her.  It hadn't been so long
+since she had told him plainly how little she liked him.  He was not
+going to forget, in a hurry!
+
+"Why don't you send me to the hospital ?" he demanded, brusquely.
+"I could stand the trip, all right."
+
+The Little Doctor, the color coming and going in her cheeks, pressed her
+cool fingers against his forehead.
+
+"Because I want you here to practice on.  Do you think I'd let such a
+chance escape?"
+
+After she was gone, Chip found some things to puzzle over.  He felt that
+he was no match for the Little Doctor, and for the first time in his life
+he deeply regretted his ignorance of woman nature.
+
+When the dishes were done, the Countess put her resentment behind her
+and went in to sit with Chip, with the best of intentions.  The most
+disagreeable trait of some disagreeable people is that their intentions
+are invariably good.  She had her "crochy work," and Chip groaned
+inwardly when he saw her settle herself comfortably in a rocking-
+chair and unwind her thread.  The Countess had worked hard all her
+life, and her hands were red and big-jointed.  There was no pleasure
+in watching their clever manipulation of the little, steel hook.
+If it had been the Little Doctor's hands, now--Chip turned again to
+the decapitated, pale blue vine with its pink flowers and no leaves.
+The Countess counted off "chain 'leven" and began in a constrained tone,
+such as some well-meaning people employ against helpless sick folk.
+
+"How're yuh feelin' now?  Yuh want a drink, or anything?"
+
+Chip did not want a drink, and he felt all right, he guessed.
+
+The Countess thought to cheer him a little.
+
+"Well, I do think it's too bad yuh got t' lay here all through this
+purty spring weather.  If it had been in the winter, when it's cold
+and stormy outside, a person wouldn't mind it s' much.  I know yuh
+must feel purty blew over it, fer yuh was always sech a hand t' be
+tearin' around the country on the dead run, seems like.  I always
+told Mary 't you'n Weary always rode like the sheriff wa'nt more'n
+a mile b'hind yuh.  An' I s'pose you feel it all the more, seein'
+the round-up's jest startin' out.  Weary said yuh was playin' big
+luck, if yuh only knew enough t' cash in yer chips at the right time,
+but he's afraid yuh wouldn't be watching the game close enough an' ud
+lose yer pile.  I don't know what he was drivin' at, an' I guess he
+didn't neither.  It's too bad, anyway.  I guess yuh didn't expect t'
+wind up in bed when yuh rode off up the hill.  But as the sayin' is:
+'Man plans an' God displans,' an' I guess it's so.  Here yuh are,
+laid up fer the summer, Dell says--the las' thing on earth, I guess,
+that yuh was lookin' fer.  An' yuh rode buckin' bronks right along,
+too.  I never looked fer Whizzer t' buck yuh off, I must say--yuh got
+the name uh bein' sech a good rider, too.  But they say 't the pitcher
+'t's always goin' t' the well is bound t' git busted sometime, an' I
+guess your turn come t' git busted.  Anyway--"
+
+"I didn't get bucked off," broke in Chip, angrily.  A "bronch fighter"
+is not more jealous of his sweetheart than of his reputation as a rider.
+"A fellow can't very well make a pretty ride while his horse is turning
+a somersault."
+
+"Oh, well, I didn't happen t' se it--I thought Weary said 't yuh got
+throwed off on the Hog's Back.  Anyway, I don't know's it makes much
+difference how yuh happened t' hit the ground--"
+
+"I guess it does make a difference," cried Chip, hotly.  His eyes took
+on the glitter of fever.  "It makes a whole heap of difference, let me
+tell you!  I'd like to hear Weary or anybody else stand up and tell me
+that I got bucked off.  I may be pretty badly smashed up, but I'd come
+pretty near showing him where he stood."
+
+"Oh, well, yuh needn't go t' work an' git mad about it," remonstrated
+the Countess, dropping her thread in her perturbation at his excitement.
+The spool rolled under the bed and she was obliged to get down upon her
+knees and claw it back, and she jarred the bed and set Chip's foot to
+hurting again something awful.
+
+When she finally secured the spool and resumed her chair, Chip's eyes
+were tightly closed, but the look of his mouth and the flush in his
+cheeks, together with his quick breathing, precluded the belief that
+he was asleep.  The Countess was not a fool--she saw at once that fever,
+which the Little Doctor had feared, was fast taking hold of him.  She
+rolled her half yard of "edging" around the spool of thread, jabbed the
+hook through the lump and went out and told the Old Man that Chip was
+getting worse every minute--which was the truth.
+
+The Old Map knocked the ashes out of his pipe and went in to look at him.
+
+"Did Weary say I got bucked off?" demanded the sick man before the Old
+Man was fairly in the room.  "If he did, he lied, that's all.  I didn't
+think Weary'd do me dirt like that--I thought he'd stand by me if anybody
+would.  He knows I wasn't throwed.  I--"
+
+"Here, young fellow," put in the Old Man, calmly, "don't yuh git t'
+rampagin' around over nothin'!  You turn over there an' go t' sleep."
+
+"I'll be hanged if I will!" retorted Chip.  "If Weary's taken to lying
+about me I'll have it out with him if I break all the rest of my bones
+doing it.  Do you think I'm going to stand a thing like that?  I'll
+see--"
+
+"Easy there, doggone it.  I never heard Weary say't yuh got bucked off.
+Whizzer turned over on his head, 's near as I c'd make out fer dust.
+I took it he turned a summerset."
+
+Chip's befogged brain caught at the last word.
+
+"Yes, that's just what he did.  It beats me how Weary could say, or even
+think, that I--it was the jack rabbit first--and I told her the supply was
+limited--and if we do furnish lots of amusement--but I guess I made her
+understand I wasn't so easy as she took me to be.  She--"
+
+"Hey?"  The Old Man could hardly be blamed for losing the drift of
+Chip's rapid utterances.
+
+"If we want to get them rounded up before the dance, I'll--it's a good
+thing it wasn't poison, for seven dead kids at once--"
+
+The Old Man knew something about sickness himself.  He hurried out,
+returning in a moment with a bowl of cool water and a fringed napkin
+which he pilfered from the dining-room table, wisely intending to bathe
+Chip's head.
+
+But Chip would have none of him or his wise intentions.  He jerked the
+wet napkin from the Old Man's fingers and threw it down behind the bed,
+knocked up the bowl of water into the Old Man's face and called him some
+very bad names.  The Countess came and looked in, and Chip hurled a
+pillow at her and called her a bad name also, so that she retreated
+to the kitchen with her feelings very much hurt.  After that Chip had
+the south room to himself until the Little Doctor returned with Johnny.
+
+The Old Man, looking rather scared, met her on the porch.  The Little
+Doctor read his face before she was off her horse.
+
+"What's the matter?  Is he worse?" she demanded, abruptly.
+
+"That's fer you t' find out.  I ain't no doctor.  He got on the fight,
+a while back, an' took t' throwin' things an' usin' langwidge.  He can't
+git out uh bed, thank the Lord, or we'd be takin' t' the hills by now."
+
+"Then somebody has it to answer for.  He was all right when I left him,
+two hours ago, with not a sign of fever.  Has the Countess been pestering
+him?"
+
+"No," said the Countess, popping her head out of the kitchen window and
+speaking in an aggrieved tone, "I hope I never pester anybody.  I went
+an' done all I could t' cheer 'im up, an' that's all the thanks I git
+fer it.  I must say some folks ain't overburdened with gratitude,
+anyhow."
+
+The Little Doctor did not wait to hear her out.  She went straight to
+the south room, pulling off her gloves on the way.  The pillow on the
+floor told her an eloquent tale, and she sighed as she picked it up and
+patted some shape back into it.  Chip stared at her with wide, bright
+eyes from the bed.
+
+"I don't suppose Dr. Cecil Granthum would throw pillows at anybody!" he
+remarked, sarcastically, as she placed it very gently under his head.
+
+"Perhaps, if the provocation was great enough.  What have they been
+doing to you?"
+
+"Did Weary say I got bucked off?" he demanded, excitedly.
+
+The Little Doctor was counting his pulse, and waited till she had
+finished.  It was a high number--much higher than she liked.
+
+"No, Weary didn't.  How could he?  You didn't, you know.  I saw it
+all from the bluff, and I know the horse turned over upon you.
+It's a wonder you weren't killed outright.  Now, don't worry about
+it any more--I expect it was the Countess told you that.  Weary
+hated dreadfully to leave you. I wonder if you know how much he
+thinks of you?  I didn't, till I saw how he looked when you--here,
+drink this, all of it.  You've got to sleep, you see."
+
+
+There was a week when the house was kept very still, and the south
+room very cool and shadowy, and Chip did not much care who it was
+that ministered to him--only that the hands of the Little Doctor were
+always soft and soothing on his head and he wished she would keep
+them there always, when he was himself enough to wish anything
+coherently.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+"The Last Stand."
+
+
+
+To use a trite expression and say that Chip "fought his way back
+to health" would be simply stating a fact and stating it mildly.
+He went about it much as he would go about gentling a refractory
+broncho, and with nearly the same results.
+
+His ankle, however, simply could not be hurried or bluffed into
+premature soundness, and the Little Doctor was at her wits' end
+to keep Chip from fretting himself back into fever, once he was
+safely pulled out of it.  She made haste to explain the bit of
+overheard conversation, which he harped on more than he dreamed,
+when his head went light in that first week, and so established
+a more friendly feeling between them.
+
+Still, there was a certain aloofness about him which she could not
+conquer, try as she might.  Just so far they were comrades--beyond,
+Chip walked moodily alone.  The Little Doctor did not like that
+overmuch.  She preferred to know that she fairly understood her
+friends and was admitted, sometimes, to their full confidence.
+She did not relish bumping her head against a blank wall that was
+too high to look over or to climb, and in which there seemed to be
+no door.
+
+To be sure, he talked freely, and amusingly, of his adventures and of
+the places he had known, but it was always an impersonal recital, and
+told little of his real self or his real feelings.  Still, when she
+asked him, he told her exactly what he thought about things, whether
+his opinion pleased her or not.
+
+There were times when he would sit in the old Morris chair and smoke
+and watch her make lacey stuff in a little, round frame.  Battenberg,
+she said it was.  He loved to see her fingers manipulate the needle
+and the thread, and take wonderful pains with her work--but once she
+showed him a butterfly whose wings did not quite match, and he pointed
+it out to her.  She had been listening to him tell a story of Indians
+and cowboys and with some wild riding mixed into it, and--well, she used
+the wrong stitch, but no one would notice it in a thousand years.  This,
+her argument.
+
+"You'll always know the mistake's there, and you won't get the
+satisfaction out of it you would if it was perfect, would you?"
+argued Chip, letting his eyes dwell on her face more than was good
+for him.
+
+The Little Doctor pouted her lips in a way to tempt a man all he could
+stand, and snipped out the wing with her scissors and did it over.
+
+So with her painting.  She started a scene in the edge of the Bad Lands
+down the river.  Chip knew the place well.  There was a heated discussion
+over the foreground, for the Little Doctor wanted him to sketch in some
+Indian tepees and some squaws for her, and Chip absolutely refused to do
+so.  He said there were no Indians in that country, and it would spoil
+the whole picture, anyway.  The Little Doctor threatened to sketch them
+herself, drawing on her imagination and what little she knew of Indians,
+but something in his eyes stayed her hand.  She left the easel in disgust
+and refused to touch it again for a week.
+
+She was to spend a long day with Miss Satterly, the schoolma'am, and
+started off soon after breakfast one morning.
+
+"I hope you'll find something to keep you out of mischief while I'm
+gone," she remarked, with a pretty, authoritative air.  "Make him take
+his medicine, Johnny, and don't let him have the crutches.  Well, I
+think I shall hide them to make sure."
+
+"I wish to goodness you had that picture done," grumbled Chip.
+"It seems to me you're doing a heap of running around, lately.
+Why don't you finish it up?  Those lonesome hills are getting
+on my nerves."
+
+"I'll cover it up," said she.
+
+"Let it be.  I like to look at them."  Chip leaned back in his
+chair and watched her, a hunger greater than he knew in his eyes.
+It was most awfully lonesome when she was gone all day, and last
+night she had been writing all the evening to Dr. Cecil Granthum--
+damn him!  Chip always hitched that invective to the unknown doctor's
+name, for some reason he saw fit not to explain to himself.  He
+didn't see what she could find to write about so much, for his part.
+And he did hate a long day with no one but Johnny to talk to.
+
+He craned his neck to keep her in view as long as possible, drew a long,
+discontented breath and settled himself more comfortably in the chair
+where he spent the greater part of his waking hours.
+
+"Hand me the tobacco, will you, kid?"
+
+He fished his cigarette book from his pocket.  "Thanks!"  He tore a
+narrow strip from the paper and sifted in a little tobacco.
+
+"Now a match, kid, and then you're done."
+
+Johnny placed the matches within easy reach, shoved a few magazines
+close to Chip's elbow, and stretched himself upon the floor with a book.
+
+Chip lay back against the cushions and smoked lazily, his eyes half
+closed, dreaming rather than thinking.  The unfinished painting stood
+facing him upon its easel, and his eyes idly fixed upon it.  He knew
+the place so well.  Jagged pinnacles, dotted here and there with scrubby
+pines, hemmed in a tiny basin below--where was blank canvas.  He went
+mentally over the argument again, and from that drifted to a scene he
+had witnessed in that same basin, one day--but that was in the winter.
+Dirty gray snow drifts, where a chinook had cut them, and icy side hills
+made the place still drearier.  And the foreground--if the Little Doctor
+could get that, now, she would be doing something!--ah! that foreground.
+A poor, half-starved range cow with her calf which the round-up had
+overlooked in the fall, stood at bay against a steep cut bank.  Before
+them squatted five great, gaunt wolves intent upon fresh beef for their
+supper.  But the cow's horns were long, and sharp, and threatening, and
+the calf snuggled close to her side, shivering with the cold and the fear
+of death.  The wolves licked their cruel lips and their eyes gleamed
+hungrily--but the eyes of the cow answered them, gleam for gleam.
+If it could be put upon canvas just as he had seen it, with the bitter,
+biting cold of a frozen chinook showing gray and sinister in the slaty
+sky--
+
+"Kid!"
+
+"Huh?"  Johnny struggled reluctantly back to Montana.
+
+"Get me the Little Doctor's paint and truck, over on that table,
+and slide that easel up here."
+
+Johnny stared, opened his mouth to speak, then wisely closed it and
+did as he was bidden.  Philosophically he told himself it was Chip's
+funeral, if the Little Doctor made a kick.
+
+"All right, kid."  Chip tossed the cigarette stub out of the window.
+"You can go ahead and read, now.  Lock the door first, and don't you
+bother me--not on your life."
+
+Then Chip plunged headlong into the Bad Lands, so to speak.
+
+A few dabs of dirty white, here and there, a wholly original
+manipulation of the sky--what mattered the method, so he attained
+the result?  Half an hour, and the hills were clutched in the
+chill embrace of a "frozen chinook" such as the Little Doctor
+had never seen in her life.  But Johnny, peeping surreptitiously
+over Chip's shoulder, stared at the change; then, feeling the
+spirit of it, shivered in sympathy with the barren hills.
+
+"Hully gee," he muttered under his breath, "he's sure a corker t'
+paint cold that fair makes yer nose sting."  And he curled up in a
+chair behind, where he could steal a look, now and then, without
+fear of detection.
+
+But Chip was dead to all save that tiny basin in the Bad Lands--to the
+wolves and their quarry.  His eyes burned as they did when the fever
+held him; each cheek bone glowed flaming red.
+
+As wolf after wolf appeared with what, to Johnny, seemed uncanny
+swiftness, and squatted, grinning and sinister, in a relentless half
+circle, the book slipped unheeded to the floor with a clatter that
+failed to rouse the painter, whose ears were dulled to all else than
+the pitiful blat of a shivering, panic-stricken calf whose nose sought
+his mother's side for her comforting warmth and protection.
+
+The Countess rapped on the door for dinner, and Johnny rose softly and
+tiptoed out to quiet her.  May he be forgiven the lies he told that day,
+of how Chip's head ached and he wanted to sleep and must not be disturbed,
+by strict orders of the Little Doctor.  The Countess, to whom the very
+name of the Little Doctor was a fetich, closed all intervening doors and
+walked on her toes in the kitchen, and Johnny rejoiced at the funeral
+quiet which rested upon the house.
+
+Faster flew the brush.  Now the eyes of the cow glared desperate defiance.
+One might almost see her bony side, ruffled by the cutting north wind,
+heave with her breathing.  She was fighting death for herself and her
+baby--but for how long?  Already the nose of one great, gray beast was
+straight uplifted, sniffing, impatient.  Would they risk a charge upon
+those lowered horns?  The dark pines shook their feathery heads
+hopelessly.  A little while perhaps, and then--
+
+Chip laid down the brush and sank back in the chair.  Was the sun so low?
+He could do no more--yes, he took up a brush and added the title:
+"The Last Stand."
+
+He was very white, and his hand shook.  Johnny leaned over the back of
+the chair, his eyes glued to the picture.
+
+"Gee," he muttered, huskily, "I'd like t' git a whack at them wolves
+once."
+
+Chip turned his head until he could look at the lad's face.  "What do you
+think of it, kid?" he asked, shakily.
+
+Johnny did not answer for a moment.  It was hard to put what he felt into
+words.  "I dunno just how t' say it," he said, gropingly, at last, "but
+it makes me want t' go gunnin' fer them wolves b'fore they hamstring her.
+It--well--it don't seem t' me like it was a pitcher, somehow.  It seems
+like the reel thing, kinda."
+
+Chip moved his head languidly upon the cushion.
+
+"I'm dead tired, kid.  No, I'm not hungry, nor I don't want any coffee,
+or anything.  Just roll this chair over to the bed, will you?  I'm--dead-
+tired."
+
+Johnny was worried.  He did not know what the Little Doctor would say,
+for Chip had not eaten his dinner, or taken his medicine.  Somehow there
+had been that in his face that had made Johnny afraid to speak to him.
+He went back to the easel and looked long at the picture, his heart
+bursting with rage that he could not take his rifle and shoot those
+merciless, grinning brutes.  Even after he had drawn the curtain before
+it and stood the easel in its accustomed place, he kept lifting the
+curtain to take another look at that wordless tragedy of the West.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+Art Critics.
+
+
+
+It was late the next forenoon when the Little Doctor, feeling the
+spirit of artistic achievement within her, gathered up brushes and
+paints for a couple hours' work.  Chip, sitting by the window smoking
+a cigarette, watched her uneasily from the tail of his eye.  Looking
+back to yesterday's "spasm," as he dubbed it mentally, he was filled
+with a great and unaccountable shyness.  What had seemed so real to
+him then he feared to-day to face, as trivial and weak.
+
+He wanted to cry "Stop!" when she laid hand to the curtain, but he
+looked, instead, out across the coulee to the hills beyond, the blood
+surging unevenly through his veins.  He felt when she drew the cloth
+aside; she stopped short off in the middle of telling him something
+Miss Satterly had said--some whimsical thing--and he could hear his
+heart pounding in the silence which followed.  The little, nickel
+alarm clock tick-tick-ticked with such maddening precision and speed
+that Chip wanted to shy a book at it, but his eyes never left the
+rocky bluff opposite, and the clock ticked merrily on.
+
+One minute--two--the silence was getting unbearable.  He could not
+endure another second.  He looked toward her; she stood, one hand
+full of brushes, gazing, white-faced, at "The Last Stand."  As he
+looked, a tear rolled down the cheek nearest him and compelled him
+to speech.
+
+"What's the matter?"  His voice seemed to him rough and brutal, but he
+did not mean it so.
+
+The Little Doctor drew a long, quivering breath.
+
+"Oh, the poor, brave thing!" she said, in a hushed tone.  She turned
+sharply away and sat down.
+
+"I expect I spoiled your picture, all right--but I told you I'd get into
+mischief if you went gadding around and left me alone."
+
+The Little Doctor stealthily wiped her eyes, hoping to goodness Chip had
+not seen that they had need of wiping.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me you could paint like that?"  She turned upon him
+fiercely.  "Here you've sat and looked on at me daubing things up--and if
+I'd known you could do better than--"  Looking again at the canvas she
+forgot to finish.  The fascination of it held her.
+
+"I'm not in the habit of going around the country shouting what I don't
+know," said Chip, defensively.  "You've taken heaps of lessons, and I
+never did.  I just noticed the color of everything, and--oh, I don't know--
+it's in me to do those things.  I can't help trying to paint and draw."
+
+"I suppose old Von Heim would have something to say of your way of doing
+clouds--but you got the effect, though--better than he did, sometimes.
+And that cow--I can see her breathe, I tell you!  And the wolves--oh,
+don't sit there and smoke your everlasting cigarettes and look so
+stoical over it!  What are you made of, anyway?  Can't you feel proud?
+Oh, don't you know what you've done?  I--I'd like to shake you--so now!"
+
+"Well, I don't much blame you.  I knew I'd no business to meddle.
+Maybe, if you'll touch it up a little--"
+
+"I'll not touch a brush to THAT.  I--I'm afraid I might kill the cow."
+She gave a little, hysterical laugh.
+
+"Don't you think you're rather excitable--for a doctor?" scoffed Chip,
+and her chin went up for a minute.
+
+"I'd like t' kill them wolves," said Johnny, coming in just then.
+
+"Turn the thing around, kid, so I can see it," commanded Chip, suddenly.
+"I worked at it yesterday till the colors all ran together and I couldn't
+tell much about it."
+
+Johnny turned the easel, and Chip, looking, fell silent.  Had HIS hand
+guided the brush while that scene grew from blank canvas to palpitating
+reality?  Verily, he had "builded better than he knew."  Something in
+his throat gripped, achingly and dry.
+
+"Did anybody see it yesterday?" asked the Little Doctor.
+
+"No--not unless the kid--"
+"I never said a word about it," denied Johnny, hastily and vehemently.
+"I lied like the dickens.  I said you had headache an' was tryin' t'
+sleep it off.  I kep' the Countess teeterin' around on her toes all
+afternoon."  Johnny giggled at the memory of it.
+
+"Well, I'm going to call them all in and see what they say," declared
+she, starting for the door.
+
+"I don't THINK you will," began Chip, rebelliously, blushing over his
+achievement like a girl over her graduation essay.  "I don't want to be--"
+
+"Well, we needn't tell them you did it," suggested she.
+
+"Oh, if you're willing to shoulder the blame," compromised Chip,
+much relieved.  He hated to be fussed over.
+
+The Little Doctor regarded him attentively a moment, smiled queerly to
+herself and stood back to get a better view of the painting.
+
+"I'll shoulder the blame--and maybe claim the glory.  It was mine in the
+first place, you know."  She watched him from under her lashes.
+
+"Yes, it's yours, all right," said Chip, readily, but something went
+out of his face and lodged rather painfully in the deepest corner of
+his heart.  He ignored it proudly and smiled back at her.
+
+"Do such things really happen, out here?" she asked, hurriedly.
+
+"I'd tell a man!" said Chip, his eyes returning to the picture.  "I was
+riding through that country last winter, and I came upon that very cow,
+just as you see her there, in that same basin.  That's how I came to
+paint it into your foreground; I got to thinking about it, and I couldn't
+help trying to put it on canvas.  Only, I opened up on the wolves with
+my six-shooter, and I got two; that big fellow ready to howl, there,
+and that one next the cut-bank.  The rest broke out down the coulee
+and made for the breaks, where I couldn't follow.  They--"
+
+"Say?  Old Dunk's comin'," announced Johnny, hurrying in.  "Why don't
+yuh let 'im see the pitcher an' think all the time the Little Doctor
+done it?  Gee, it'd be great t' hear 'im go on an' praise it up, like
+he always does, an' not know the diffrunce."
+
+"Johnny, you're a genius," cried she, effusively.  "Don't tell a soul
+that Chip had a brush in his hand yesterday, will you?  He--he'd rather
+not have anyone know he did anything to the painting, you see."
+
+"Aw, I won't tell," interrupted Johnny, gruffly, eying his divinity
+with distrust for the first time in his short acquaintance with her.
+Was she mean enough to claim it really?  Just at first, as a joke,
+it would be fun, but afterward, oh, she wouldn't do a thing like that!
+
+"Don't you bring Dunk in here," warned Chip, "or things might happen.
+I don't want to run up against him again till I've got two good feet
+to stand on."
+
+Their relation was a thing to be watched over tenderly, since Chip's
+month of invalidism.  Dunk had notions concerning master and servant,
+and concerning Chip as an individual.  He did not fancy occupying the
+back bedroom while Chip reigned in his sunny south room, waited on,
+petted (Dunk applied the term petted) and amused indefatigably by
+the Little Doctor.  And there had been a scene, short but exceeding
+"strenuous," over a pencil sketch which graphically portrayed an
+incident Dunk fain would forget--the incident of himself as a would-
+be broncho fighter, with Banjo, of vigilante fame, as the means of
+his downfall--physical, mental and spiritual.  Dunk might, in time,
+have forgiven the crippled ankle, and the consequent appropriation
+of his room, but never would he forgive the merciless detail of that
+sketch.
+
+"I'll carry easel and all into the parlor, and leave the door open so
+you can hear what they all say," said the Little Doctor, cheerfully.
+"I wish Cecil could be here to-day.  I always miss Cecil when there's
+anything especial going on in the way of fun."
+
+"Yes?" answered Chip, and made himself another cigarette.  He would be
+glad when he could hobble out to some lonely spot and empty his soul of
+the profane language stored away opposite the name of Dr. Cecil Granthum.
+There is so little comfort in swearing all inside, when one feels deeply
+upon a subject.
+
+"It's a wonder you wouldn't send for him if you miss him that bad,"
+he remarked, after a minute, hoping the Little Doctor would not find
+anything amiss with his tone, which he meant should be cordial and
+interested--and which evinced plenty of interest, of a kind, but was
+curiously lacking in cordiality.
+
+"I did beg, and tease, and entreat--but Cecil's in a hospital--as
+a physician, you understand, not as a patient, and can't get off
+just yet.  In a month or two, perhaps--"
+
+Dinner, called shrilly by the Countess, interrupted her, and she
+flitted out of the room looking as little like a lovelorn maiden
+as she did like a doctor--which was little indeed.
+
+"She begged, and teased, and entreated," repeated Chip, savagely
+to himself when the door closed upon her, and fell into gloomy
+meditation, which left him feeling that there was no good thing
+in this wicked world--no, not one--that was not appropriated by some
+one with not sense enough to understand and appreciate his blessing.
+
+After dinner the Little Doctor spoke to the unsuspecting critics.
+
+"That picture which I started a couple of weeks ago is finished at last,
+and I want you good people to come and tell me what you think of it.
+I want you all--you, Slim, and Louise, you are to come and give your
+opinion."
+
+"Well, I don't know the first thing about paintin'," remonstrated the
+Countess, coming in from the kitchen.
+
+The Old Man lighted his pipe and followed her into the parlor with the
+others, and Slim rolled a cigarette to hide his embarrassment, for the
+role of art critic was new to him.
+
+There was some nervousness in the Little Doctor's manner as she set the
+easel to her liking and drew aside the curtain.  She did not mean to be
+theatrical about it, but Chip, watching through the open door, fancied
+so, and let his lip curl a trifle.  He was not in a happy frame of mind
+just then.
+
+A silence fell upon the group.  The Old Man took his pipe from his mouth
+and stared.
+
+The cheeks of the Little Doctor paled and grew pink again.  She laughed
+a bit, as though she would much rather cry.
+
+"Say something, somebody, quick!" she cried, when her nerves would bear
+no more.
+
+"Well, I do think it's awfully good, Dell," began the Countess.
+
+"By golly, I don't see how you done that without seein' it happen,"
+exclaimed Slim, looking very dazed and mystified.
+
+"That's a Diamond Bar cow," remarked J. G., abstractedly.  "That outfit
+never does git half their calves.  I remember the last time I rode
+through there last winter, that cow--doggone it, Dell, how the dickens
+did you get that cow an' calf in?  You must a had a photograph t' work
+from."
+
+"By golly, that's right," chimed in Slim.  "That there's the cow I
+had sech a time chasin' out uh the bunch down on the bottom.  I run
+her till I was plum sick, an' so was she, by golly.  I'd know her
+among a thousand.  Yuh got her complete--all but the beller, an',
+by golly, yuh come blame near gittin' that, too!"  Slim, always
+slow and very much in earnest, gradually became infused with the
+spirit of the scene.  "Jest look at that ole gray sinner with his
+nose r'ared straight up in the air over there!  By golly, he's
+callin' all his wife's relations t' come an' help 'em out.  He's
+thinkin' the ole Diamon' Bar's goin' t' be one too many fer 'em.
+She shore looks fighty, with 'er head down an' 'er eyes rollin'
+all ways t' oncet, ready fer the first darn cuss that makes a
+crooked move!  An' they know it, too, by golly, er they wouldn't
+hang back like they're a-doin'.  I'd shore like t' be cached behind
+that ole pine stub with a thirty--thirty an' a fist full uh shells--
+I'd shore make a scatteration among 'em!  A feller could easy--"
+
+"But, Slim, they're nothing but paint!"  The Little Doctor's eyes were
+shining.
+
+Slim turned red and grinned sheepishly at the others.
+
+"I kinda fergot it wasn't nothin' but a pitcher," he stammered,
+apologetically.
+
+"That is the gist of the whole matter," said Dunk.  "You couldn't ask
+for a greater compliment, or higher praise, than that, Miss Della.
+One forgets that it is a picture.  One only feels a deep longing for
+a good rifle.  You must let me take it with me to Butte.  That picture
+will make you famous among cattlemen, at least.  That is to say, out
+West, here.  And if you will sell it I am positive I can get you a
+high price for it."
+
+The eyes of the Little Doctor involuntarily sought the Morris chair in
+the next room; but Chip was looking out across the coulee, as he had a
+habit of doing lately, and seemed not to hear what was going on in the
+parlor.  He was indifference personified, if one might judge from his
+outward appearance.  The Little Doctor turned her glance resentfully to
+her brother's partner.
+
+"Do you mean all that?" she demanded of him.
+
+"I certainly do.  It is great, Miss Della.  I admit that it is not quite
+like your other work; the treatment seems different, in places, and--er--
+stronger.  It is the best picture of the kind that I have ever seen, I
+think.  It holds one, in a way--"
+
+"By golly, I bet Chip took a pitcher uh that!" exclaimed Slim, who had
+been doing some hard thinking.  "He was tellin' us last winter about
+ridin' up on that ole Diamon' Bar cow with a pack uh wolves around her,
+an' her a-standin' 'em off, an' he shot two uh the wolves.  Yes, sir;
+Chip jest about got a snap shot of 'em."
+
+"Well, doggone it! what if he did?"  The Old Man turned jealously upon
+him.  "It ain't everyone that kin paint like that, with nothin' but a
+little kodak picture t' go by.  Doggone it!  I don't care if Dell had
+a hull apurn full uh kodak pictures that Chip took--it's a rattlin' good
+piece uh work, all the same."
+
+"I ain't sayin' anything agin' the pitcher," retorted Slim.  "I was jest
+wonderin' how she happened t' git that cow down s' fine, brand 'n all,
+without some kind uh pattern t' go by.  S' fur 's the pitcher goes,
+it's about as good 's kin be did with paint, I guess.  I ain't ever
+seen anything in the pitcher line that looked any natcherler."
+
+"Well, I do think it's just splendid!" gurgled the Countess.  "It's
+every bit as good 's the one Mary got with a year's subscription t'
+the Household Treasure fer fifty cents.  That one's got some hounds
+chasin' a deer and a man hidin' in 'the bushes, sost yuh kin jest see
+his head.  It's an awful purty pitcher, but this one's jest as good.
+I do b'lieve it's a little bit better, if anything.  Mary's has got
+some awful nice, green grass, an' the sky's an awful purty blue--jest
+about the color uh my blue silk waist.  But yuh can't expect t' have
+grass an' sky like that in the winter, an' this is more of a winter
+pitcher.  It looks awful cold an' lonesome, somehow, an' it makes yuh
+want t' cry, if yuh look at it long enough."
+
+The critics stampeded, as they always did when the Countess began to
+talk.
+
+"You better let Dunk take it with him, Dell," was the parting advice
+of the Old Man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+Convalescence.
+
+
+
+"You don't mind, do you?"  The Little Doctor was visibly uneasy.
+
+"Mind what?"  Chip's tone was one of elaborate unconsciousness.
+"Mind Dunk's selling the picture for you?  Why should I?  It's yours,
+you know."
+
+"I think you have some interest in it yourself," she said, without
+looking at him.  "You don't think I mean to--to--"
+
+"I don't think anything, except that it's your picture, and I put in
+a little time meddling with your property for want of something else
+to do.  All I painted doesn't cover one quarter of the canvas, and I
+guess you've done enough for me to more than make up.  I guess you
+needn't worry over that cow and calf--you're welcome to them both; and
+if you can get a bounty on those five wolves, I'll be glad to have you.
+Just keep still about my part of it."
+
+Chip really felt that way about it, after the first dash of wounded
+pride.  He could never begin to square accounts with the Little Doctor,
+anyhow, and he was proud that he could do something for her, even if it
+was nothing more than fixing up a picture so that it rose considerably
+above mediocrity.  He had meant it that way all along, but the suspicion
+that she was quite ready to appropriate his work rather shocked him,
+just at first.  No one likes having a gift we joy in bestowing calmly
+taken from our hands before it has been offered.  He wanted her to have
+the picture for her very own--but--but--He had not thought of the
+possibility of her selling it, or of Dunk as her agent.  It was all
+right, of course, if she wanted to do that with it, but--There was
+something about it that hurt, and the hurt of it was not less, simply
+because he could not locate the pain.
+
+His mind fidgeted with the subject.  If he could have saddled Silver and
+gone for a long gallop over the prairie land, he could have grappled with
+his rebellious inner self and choked to death several unwelcome emotions,
+he thought.  But there was Silver, crippled and swung uncomfortably in
+canvas wrappings in the box stall, and here was himself, crippled and
+held day after day in one room and one chair--albeit a very pleasant room
+and a very comfortable chair--and a gallop as impossible to one of them as
+to the other.
+
+"I do wish--"  The Little Doctor checked herself abruptly, and hummed a
+bit of coon song.
+
+"What do you wish?"  Chip pushed his thoughts behind him, and tried to
+speak in his usual manner.
+
+"Nothing much.  I was just wishing Cecil could see 'The Last Stand.'"
+
+Chip said absolutely nothing for five minutes, and for an excellent
+reason.  There was not a single thought during that time which would
+sound pretty if put into words, and he had no wish to shock the Little
+Doctor.
+
+After that day a constraint fell upon them both, which each felt
+keenly and neither cared to explain away.  "The Last Stand" was
+tacitly dismissed from their conversation, of which there grew less
+and less as the days passed.
+
+Then came a time when Chip strongly resented being looked upon as an
+invalid, and Johnny was sent home, greatly to his sorrow.
+
+Chip hobbled about the house on crutches, and chafed and fretted, and
+managed to be very miserable indeed because he could not get out and
+ride and clear his brain and heart of some of their hurt--for it had
+come to just that; he had been compelled to own that there was a hurt
+which would not heal in a hurry.
+
+It was a very bitter young man who, lounging in the big chair by the
+window one day, suddenly snorted contempt at a Western story he had
+been reading and cast the magazine--one of the Six Leading--clean into
+the parlor where it sprawled its artistic leaves in the middle of the
+floor.  The Little Doctor was somewhere--he never seemed to know just
+where, nowadays--and the house was lonesome as an isolated peak in the
+Bad Lands.
+
+"I wish I had the making of the laws.  I'd put a bounty on all the darn
+fools that think they can write cowboy stories just because they rode
+past a roundup once, on a fast train," he growled, reaching for his
+tobacco sack.  "Huh!  I'd like to meet up with the yahoo that wrote
+that rank yarn!  I'd ask him where he got his lack of information.
+Huh!  A cow-puncher togged up like he was going after the snakiest
+bronk in the country, when he was only going to drive to town in a
+buckboard!  'His pistol belt and dirk and leathern chaps'--oh, Lord;
+oh, Lord!  And spurs!  I wonder if he thinks it takes spurs to ride
+a buckboard?  Do they think, back East, that spurs grow on a man's
+heels out here and won't come off?  Do they think we SLEEP in 'em,
+I wonder?"  He drew a match along the arm of the chair where the
+varnish was worn off.  "They think all a cow-puncher has to do is
+eat and sleep and ride fat horses.  I'd like to tell some of them
+a few things that they don't--"
+
+"I've brought you a caller, Chip.  Aren't you glad to see him?"
+It was the Little Doctor at the window, and the laugh he loved was
+in her voice and in her eyes, that it hurt him to meet, lately.
+
+The color surged to his face, and he leaned from the window, his thin,
+white hand outstretched caressingly.
+
+"I'd tell a man!" he said, and choked a little over it.  "Silver,
+old boy!"
+
+Silver, nickering softly, limped forward and nestled his nose in the
+palm of his master.
+
+"He's been out in the corral for several days, but I didn't tell you--
+I wanted it for a surprise," said the Little Doctor.  "This is his
+longest trip, but he'll soon be well now."
+
+"Yes; I'd give a good deal if I could walk as well as he can,"
+said Chip, gloomily.
+
+"He wasn't hurt as badly as you were.  You ought to be thankful you can
+walk at all, and that you won't limp all your life.  I was afraid for a
+while, just at first--"
+
+"You were?  Why didn't you tell me?"  Chip's eyes were fixed sternly
+upon her.
+
+"Because I didn't want to.  It would only have made matters worse,
+anyway.  And you won't limp, you know, if you're careful for a while
+longer.  I'm going to get Silver his sugar.  He has sugar every day."
+
+Silver lifted his head and looked after her inquiringly, whinnied
+complainingly, and prepared to follow as best he could.
+
+"Silver--oh, Silver!"  Chip snapped his fingers to attract his attention.
+"Hang the luck, come back here!  Would you throw down your best friend
+for that girl?  Has she got to have you, too?"  His voice grew wistfully
+rebellious.  "You're mine.  Come back here, you little fool--she doesn't
+care."
+
+Silver stopped at the corner, swung his head and looked back at Chip,
+beckoning, coaxing, swearing under his breath.  His eyes sought for
+sign of his goddess, who had disappeared most mysteriously.  Throwing
+up his head, he sent a protest shrilling through the air, and looked
+no more at Chip.
+
+"I'm coming, now be still.  Oh, don't you dare paw with your lame leg!
+Why didn't you stay with your master?"
+
+"He's no use for his master, any more," said Chip, with a hurt laugh.
+"A woman always does play the--mischief, somehow.  I wonder why?  They
+look innocent enough."
+
+"Wait till your turn comes, and perhaps you'll learn why," retorted she.
+
+Chip, knowing that his turn had come, and come to tarry, found nothing
+to say.
+
+"Beside," continued the Little Doctor, "Silver didn't want me so much--
+it was the sugar.  I hope you aren't jealous of me, because I know his
+heart is big enough to hold us both."
+
+She stayed a long half hour, and was so gay that it seemed like old
+times to listen to her laugh and watch her dimples while she talked.
+Chip forgot that he had a quarrel with fate, and he also forgot Dr.
+Cecil Granthum, of Gilroy, Ohio--until Slim rode up and handed the
+Little Doctor a letter addressed in that bold, up-and-down writing
+that Chip considered a little the ugliest specimen of chirography he
+had ever seen in his life.
+
+"It's from Cecil," said the Little Doctor, simply and unnecessarily,
+and led Silver back down the hill.
+
+Chip, gazing at that tiresome bluff across the coulee, renewed his
+quarrel with fate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+The Spoils of Victory.
+
+
+
+"I wish, while I'm gone, you'd paint me another picture.  Will you,
+PLEASE?"
+
+When a girl has big, gray eyes that half convince you they are not gray
+at all, but brown, or blue, at times, and a way of using them that makes
+a fellow heady, like champagne, and a couple of dimples that will dodge
+into her cheeks just when a fellow is least prepared to resist them--why,
+what can a fellow do but knuckle under and say yes, especially when she
+lets her head tip to one side a little and says "please" like that?
+
+Chip tried not to look at her, but he couldn't help himself very well
+while she stood directly in front of him.  He compromised weakly instead
+of refusing point-blank, as he told himself he wanted to do.
+
+"I don't know--maybe I can't, again."
+
+"Maybe you can, though.  Here's an eighteen by twenty-four canvas,
+and here are all the paints I have in the house, and the brushes.
+I'll expect to see something worth while, when I return."
+
+"Well, but if I can't--"
+
+"Look here.  Straight in the eye, if you please!  Now, will you TRY?"
+
+Chip, looking into her eyes that were laughing, but with a certain
+earnestness behind the laugh, threw up his hands--mentally, you know.
+
+"Yes, I'll try.  How long are you going to be gone?"
+
+"Oh, perhaps a week," she said, lightly, and Chip's heart went heavy.
+
+"You may paint any kind of picture you like, but I'd rather you did
+something like 'The Last Stand'--only better.  And put your brand, as
+you call it, in one corner."
+
+"You won't sell it, will you?"  The words slipped out before he knew.
+
+"No--no, I won't sell it, for it won't be mine.  It's for yourself this
+time."
+
+"Then there won't be any picture," said Chip, shortly.
+
+"Oh, yes, there will," smiled the Little Doctor, sweetly, and went away
+before he could contradict her.
+
+Perhaps a week!  Heavens, that was seven days, and every day had at
+least sixteen waking hours.  How would it be when it was years, then?
+When Dr. Cecil Granthum--(er--no, I won't.  The invective attached to
+that gentleman's name was something not to be repeated here.)  At any
+rate, a week was a long, long time to put in without any gray eyes or
+any laugh, or any dimples, or, in short, without the Little Doctor.
+He could not see, for his part, why she wanted to go gadding off to
+the Falls with Len Adams and the schoolma'am, anyway.  Couldn't they
+get along without her?  They always had, before she came to the country;
+but, for that matter, so had he.  The problem was, how was he going to
+get along without her for the rest of his life?  What did they want to
+stay a week for?  Couldn't they buy everything they wanted in a day or
+so?  And the Giant Spring wasn't such great shakes, nor the Rainbow
+Falls, that they need to hang around town a week just to look at them.
+And the picture--what was he such a fool for?  Couldn't he say no with
+a pair of gray eyes staring into his?  It seemed not.  He supposed he
+must think up something to daub on there--the poorer the better.
+
+That first day Chip smoked something like two dozen cigarettes, gazed
+out across the coulee till his eyes ached, glared morosely at the canvas
+on the easel, which stared back at him till the dull blankness of it
+stamped itself upon his brain and he could see nothing else, look where
+he might.  Whereupon he gathered up hat and crutches, and hobbled slowly
+down the hill to tell Silver his troubles.
+
+The second day threatened to be like the first.  Chip sat by the window
+and smoked; but, little by little, the smoke took form and substance
+until, when he turned his eyes to the easel, a picture looked back at
+him--even though to other eyes the canvas was yet blank and waiting.
+
+There was no Johnny this time to run at his beckoning.  He limped about
+on his crutches, collected all things needful, and sat down to work.
+
+As he sketched and painted, with a characteristic rapidity that was
+impatient of the slightest interruption yet patient in its perfectness
+of detail, the picture born of the smoke grew steadily upon the canvas.
+
+It seemed, at first, that "The Last Stand" was to be repeated.  There
+were the same jagged pinnacles and scrubby pines, held in the fierce
+grip of the frozen chinook.  The same?  But there was a difference,
+not to be explained, perhaps, but certainly to be felt.  The Little
+Doctor's hills were jagged, barren hills; her pines were very nice
+pines indeed.  Chip's hills were jagged, they were barren--they--were
+desolate; his pines were shuddering, lonely pines; for he had wandered
+alone among them and had caught the Message of the Wilderness.  His sky
+was the cold, sinister sky of "The Last Stand"--but it was colder, more
+sinister, for it was night.  A young moon hung low in the west, its face
+half hidden behind a rift of scurrying snow clouds.  The tiny basin was
+shadowy and vague, the cut-bank a black wall touched here and there by
+a quivering shaft of light.
+
+There was no threatening cow with lowered horns and watchful eye;
+there was no panic-stricken calf to whip up her flagging courage
+with its trust in her.
+
+The wolves?  Yes, there were the wolves--but there were more of them.
+They were not sitting in a waiting half circle--they were scattered,
+unwatchful.  Two of them in the immediate foreground were wrangling
+over a half-gnawed bone.  The rest of the pack were nosing a heap
+pitifully eloquent.
+
+As before, so now they tricked the eye into a fancy that they lived.
+One could all but hear the snarls of the two standing boldly in the
+moonlight, the hair all bristly along the necks, the white fangs
+gleaming between tense-drawn lips.  One felt tempted to brace oneself
+for the rush that was to come.
+
+For two days Chip shut himself in his room and worked through the long
+hours of daylight, jealous of the minutes darkness stole from him.
+
+He clothed the feast in a merciful shade which hid the repugnance
+and left only the pathos--two long, sharp horns which gleamed in the
+moonlight but were no longer threatening.
+
+He centered his energy upon the two wolves in the foreground, grimly
+determined that Slim should pray for a Gatling gun when he saw them.
+
+The third day, when he was touching up the shoulders of one of the
+combatants, a puff of wind blew open the door which led to the parlor.
+He did not notice it and kept steadily at work, painting his "brand"
+into a corner.  Beneath the stump and its splinter he lettered his
+name--a thing he had never done before.
+
+"Well--I'll be--doggoned!"
+
+Chip jumped half out of his chair, giving his lame ankle a jolt which
+made him grind his teeth.
+
+"Darn it, Chip, did YOU do that?"
+
+"It kind of looks that way, don't it?"  Chip was plainly disconcerted,
+and his ankle hurt.
+
+"H--m-m."  The Old Man eyed it sharply a minute.  "It's a wonder you
+wouldn't paint in a howl or two, while you're about it.  I suppose
+that's a mate to--doggone you, Chip, why didn't yuh tell us you painted
+that other one?"
+
+"I didn't," said Chip, getting red and uncomfortable, "except the cow
+and--"
+
+"Yes, except the part that makes the picture worth the paint it's done
+with!" snorted the Old Man.  "I must say I never thought that uh Dell!"
+
+"Thought what?" flared Chip, hotly, forgetting everything but that the
+Little Doctor was being censured.  "It was her picture, she started it
+and intended to finish it.  I painted on it one day when she was gone,
+and she didn't know it.  I told her not to tell anyone I had anything
+to do with it.  It wasn't her fault."
+
+"Huh!" grunted the Old Man, as if he had his own opinion on that matter.
+"Well, it's a rattling good picture--but this one's better.  Poor ole
+Diamond Bar--she couldn't come through with it, after all.  She put up a
+good fight, out there alone, but she had t' go under--her an' her calf."
+He stood quiet a minute, gazing and gazing.  "Doggone them measly wolves!
+Why in thunder can't a feller pump lead into 'em like he wants t'?"
+
+Chip's heart glowed within him.  His technique was faulty, his colors
+daring, perhaps--but his triumph was for that the greater.  If men could
+FEEL his pictures--and they did!  That was the joy of it--they did!
+
+"Darn them snarlin' brutes, anyway!  I thought it was doggone queer if
+Dell could dab away all her life at nice, common things that you only
+think is purty, an' then blossom out, all of a sudden, with one like
+that other was--that yuh felt all up an' down yer back.  The little cheat,
+she'd no business t' take the glory uh that'n like she done.  I'll give
+her thunder when she gits back."
+
+"You won't do anything of the kind," said Chip, quietly--too quietly not
+to be menacing.  "I tell you that was my fault--I gave her all I did to
+the picture, and I told her not to say anything.  Do you think I don't
+know what I owe to her?  Do you think I don't know she saved Silver's
+life--and maybe mine?  Forty pictures wouldn't square me with the Little
+Doctor--not if they were a heap better than they are, and she claimed
+every darned one.  I'm doing this, and I'll thank you not to buy in
+where you're not wanted.  This picture is for her, too--but I don't want
+the thing shouted from the housetops.  When you go out, I wish you'd
+shut the door."
+
+The Old Man, thoroughly subdued, took the hint.  He went out, and he
+shut the door.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+Weary Advises.
+
+
+
+"I have a short article here which may interest you, Miss Della," said
+Dunk, coming out on the porch a few days later with a Butte paper in
+his hand.  The Little Doctor was swinging leisurely in the hammock.
+
+"It's about the picture," he added, smiling.
+
+"The picture?  Oh, let me see!"  The Little Doctor stopped the hammock
+with her toe and sat up.  The wind had tumbled her hair about her face
+and drawn extra color to her cheeks, and she looked very sweet, Dunk
+thought.  He held out the paper, pointing a well-kept finger at the
+place he wished her to read.  There was a rather large headline, for
+news was scarce just then and every little thing was made the most of.
+The eyes of the Little Doctor clung greedily to the lines.
+
+"It is reported that 'The Last Stand' has been sold.  The painting,
+which has been on exhibition in the lobby of the Summit Hotel, has
+attracted much attention among art lovers, and many people have viewed
+it in the last week.  Duncan Gray Whitaker, the well-known mine owner
+and cattleman, who brought the picture to Butte, is said to have
+received an offer which the artist will probably accept.  Mr. Whitaker
+still declines to give the artist's name, but whoever he is, he
+certainly has a brilliant future before him, and Montana can justly
+feel proud of him.  It has been rumored that the artist is a woman,
+but the best critics are slow to believe this, claiming that the work
+has been done with a power and boldness undoubtedly masculine.  Those
+who have seen 'The Last Stand' will not easily forget it, and the price
+offered for it is said to be a large one.  Mr. Whitaker will leave the
+city to-morrow to consult the unknown artist, and promises, upon his
+return, to reveal the name of the modest genius who can so infuse a bit
+of canvas with palpitating life."
+
+"What do you think of that?  Isn't the 'modest genius' rather proud of
+the hit she has made?  I wish you could have seen the old stockmen stand
+around it and tell wolf stories to one another by the hour.  The women
+came and cried over it--they were so sorry for the cow.  Really, Miss
+Della, she's the most famous cow in Butte, just now.  I had plenty of
+smaller offers, but I waited till Senator Blake came home; he's a crank
+on Western pictures, and he has a long pocketbook and won't haggle over
+prices.  He took it, just as I expected, but he insists that the artist's
+name must be attached to it; and if you take his offer, he may bring the
+picture down himself--for he's quite anxious to meet you.  I am to wire
+your decision at once."
+
+The Little Doctor watched a pale green "measuring worm" loop its way
+hurriedly along the floor of the porch.  She was breathing rather
+quickly and unevenly, and she seemed to be thinking very fast.  When
+the worm, reaching the end, doubled out of sight, she started the
+hammock swinging and leaned back upon her cushions.
+
+"You may tell him to come--I should like very much to see him," she said.
+"And I am very much obliged to you for the service you have performed."
+She became very much interested in a magazine, and seemed to dismiss
+Dunk and the picture entirely from her mind.  Dunk, after waiting till
+he was convinced she had no intention of saying more, went off to the
+stables to find a messenger for the telegram, telling himself on the
+way that Miss Della Whitmore was a very cool young person, and not as
+grateful as he would like her to be.
+
+The Little Doctor went immediately to find Chip, but that young man,
+who had been just inside the window and had heard every word, was not
+so easily found.  He was down in the bunk house, thinking things.
+And when she did find him, near supper time, he was so utterly
+unapproachable that her courage and her patience failed together,
+and she did not mention the picture at all.
+
+
+"Hello, Doctor!"  It was a heartening voice, sounding very sweet to
+the ears of the Little Doctor just then.  She turned eagerly, her arms
+still clasping Silver's neck.  She had come down to the corral to feed
+him sugar and tell him what a very difficult young man his master was,
+and how he held her at arm's length with his manner, and yet was nice
+and friendly and sunny enough--like the sun shining on an iceberg.
+But human sympathy was within reach of her hand, and it was much more
+satisfying than the mute sympathy of a horse.
+
+"Weary Willy Davidson, you don't know how glad I am to see you!  As the
+sayin' is:  'Yuh think of angels an' their opposets ain't fur off.'
+I AM glad to see you."
+
+"Dirt and all?" grinned Weary, for he had ridden far in the heat, and
+was dust-grimed and travelworn.  He pulled the saddle off Glory, also,
+travelworn and sweat-grimed, and gave him an affectionate slap of
+dismissal.
+
+"I'd chance money you wasn't thinking of me," he said, pointedly.
+"How is the old ranch, anyhow ?  Splinter up, yet?"
+
+"You must think I'm a feeble excuse for a doctor," retorted she.
+"Of course he's up.  He walks all around the house and yard with
+a cane; I promoted him from crutches yesterday."
+
+"Good shot!  That was sure a bad foot he had on him, and I didn't know--
+What's he been putting in the time at?  Making pictures--or love?"
+
+"Pictures," said the Little Doctor, hastily, laying her cheek against
+Silver's mane.  "I'd like to see him making love!"
+
+"Yuh would?" said Weary, innocently, disregarding the irony of her tone.
+"Well, if yuh ever do, I tell yuh right now you'll see the real thing.
+If he makes love like he does other things, there won't any female girl
+dodge his loop, that's straight.  What about the pictures?"
+
+"Well, he drew a picture of J. G. sliding down the kitchen steps, before
+he was out of bed.  And he made a picture of Dunk, that time Banjo bucked
+him off--you saw that happen, I suppose--and it was great!  Dunk was
+standing on his head in front of his horse, but I can't show you it,
+because it blew out of the window and landed at Dunk's feet in the path,
+and he picked it up and tore it into little bits.  And he doesn't play
+in Chip's yard any more."
+
+"He never did," grinned Weary.  "Dunk's a great hand to go around
+shooting off his mouth about things he's no business to buy into,
+and old Splinter let him down on his face once or twice.  Chip can
+sure give a man a hard fall when he wants to, and not use many words,
+either.  What little he does say generally counts."
+
+The Little Doctor's memory squirmed assentingly.  "It's the tone he
+uses," she said, reflectively.  "The way he can say 'yes,' sometimes--"
+
+"You've bumped into that, huh?  Bert Rogers lit into him with a tent
+peg once, for saying yes at him.  They sure was busy for a few minutes.
+I just sat in the shade of a wagon wheel and laughed till I near cracked
+a rib.  When they got through they laughed, too, and they played ten
+games uh pool together that night, and got--"  Weary caught himself up
+suddenly.  "Pool ain't any gambling game," he hastened to explain.
+"It's just knocking balls into the pockets, innocent like, yuh see."
+
+"Mr. Davidson, there's something I'd like to tell you about.  Will you
+wait a few minutes more for your supper?"
+
+"Sure," said Weary; wonderingly, and sat down upon the edge of the
+watering trough.
+
+The Little Doctor, her arms still around Silver's neck, told him all
+about "The Last Stand," and "The Spoils of Victory," and Chip, and Dunk,
+and herself.  And Weary listened silently, digging little trenches in
+the hard soil with the rowels of his spurs, and, knowing Chip as he did,
+understanding the matter much better than did the Little Doctor.
+
+"And he doesn't seem to know that I never meant to claim the picture
+as my work, and I can't explain while he acts so--oh, you know how he
+can act.  And Dunk wouldn't have sold the picture if he had known Chip
+painted it, and it was wrong, of course, but I did so want Chip to have
+some real encouragement so he would make that his life work.  YOU know
+he is fitted for something better than cow-punching.  And now the
+picture has made a hit and brought a good price, and he must own it.
+Dunk will be furious, of course, but that doesn't matter to me--it's
+Chip that I can't seem to manage."
+
+Weary smiled queerly down at his spurs.
+
+"It's a cinch you could manage him, easy enough, if you took the right
+way to do it," he said, quietly.
+
+"Probably the right way would be too much trouble," said the Little
+Doctor, with her chin well up.  "Once I get this picture deal settled
+satisfactorily, I'm quite willing to resign and let him manage himself.
+Senator Blake is coming to-morrow, and I'm so glad you will be here to
+help me."
+
+"I'd sure like to see yuh through with the deal.  Old Blake won't be hard
+to throw--I know him, and so does Chip.  Didn't he tell yuh about it?"
+
+"Tell me!" flashed the Little Doctor.  "I told him Senator Blake was
+coming, and that he wanted to buy the picture, and he just made him
+a cigarette and said, 'Ye--e-es?'  And after that there wasn't any
+conversation of any description!"
+
+Weary threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"That sure sounds just like him," he said, and at that minute Chip
+himself hobbled into the corral, and the Little Doctor hastened to
+leave it and retreat to the house.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+When a Maiden Wills.
+
+
+
+It was Dunk who drove to meet the train, next day, and it was an
+extremely nervous young woman who met Senator Blake upon the porch.
+Chip sprawled in the hammock on the east porch, out of sight.
+
+The senator was a little man whose coat did not fit, and whose hair was
+sandy and sparse, and who had keen, twinkling blue eyes which managed
+to see a great deal more than one would suspect from the rest of his
+face.  He pumped the Little Doctor's hand up and down three times and
+called her "My dear young lady."  After the first ten minutes, the
+Little Doctor's spirits rose considerably and her heart stopped
+thumping so she could hear it.  She remembered what Weary had told
+her--that "Old Blake won't be hard to throw."  She no longer feared
+the senator, but she refused to speculate upon what Chip might do.
+He seemed more approachable to-day, but that did not count--probably
+he was only reflecting Weary's sunshine, and would freeze solid the
+minute--
+
+"And so you are the mysterious genius who has set the Butte critics by
+the ears!" chuckled the senator.  "They say your cloud treatment is all
+wrong, and that your coloring is too bold--but directly they forget all
+that and wonder which wolf will make the first dash, and how many the
+cow will put out of business before she goes under herself.  Don't be
+offended if I say that you look more capable of portraying woolly white
+lambs at play than ravening wolves measuring the strength of their
+quarry.  I must confess I was looking for the--er MAN behind that brush."
+
+"I told the senator coming out that it was a lady he would have to make
+terms with.  He would hardly believe it," smiled Dunk.
+
+"He needn't believe it," said the Little Doctor, much more calmly
+than she felt.  "I don't remember ever saying that I painted
+'The Last Stand.'"
+
+Dunk threw up his head and looked at her sharply.
+
+"Genius is certainly modest," he said, with a laugh that was not nice
+to hear.
+
+"In this case, the genius is unusually modest," assented she, getting
+rather white.  "Unfortunately for myself, senator, I did not paint the
+'ravening wolves' which caught your fancy.  It would be utterly beyond
+my brush."
+
+A glimmering of the truth came to Dunk, and his eyes narrowed.
+
+"Who did paint it for you?  Your friend, Chip?"
+
+The Little Doctor caught her breath at the venomous accent he employed,
+and the Old Man half rose from his chair.  But Della could fight her
+own battles.  She stood up and faced Dunk, tight-lipped and proud.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Whitaker, my friend, Mr. Bennett, of whose friendship I am
+rather proud, painted the best part of 'The Last Stand.'"
+
+"Senator Blake must forgive my being misled by your previous statement
+that the picture was yours," sneered Dunk.
+
+"I made no previous statement, Mr. Whitaker."  The Little Doctor's tone
+was sweetly freezing.  "I said that the picture which I had begun was
+finished, and I invited you all to look at it.  It was your misfortune
+that you took too much for granted."
+
+"It's a mistake to take anything for granted where a woman is concerned.
+At the same time I shouldn't be blamed if I take it for granted Chip--"
+
+"Suppose you say the rest to me, Dunk," suggested Chip from the doorway,
+where he leaned heavily upon his cane.  "It begins to look as though I
+held a hand in this game."
+
+Dunk wheeled furiously upon him.
+
+"You're playing a high hand for a forty-dollar man," he grated, "and
+you've about reached your limit.  The stakes are beyond your reach,
+my friend."
+
+Chip went white with anger at the thrust, which struck deeper than Dunk
+knew.  But he stood his ground.
+
+"Ye--es?  Wait till the cards are all turned."  It turned him sick,
+though, the emptiness of the boast.  It was such a pitiful, ghastly
+bluff--for the cards were all against him, and he knew it.  A man in
+Gilroy, Ohio, would take the trick which decided the game.  Hearts
+were trumps, and Dr. Cecil Granthum had the ace.
+
+The little senator got out of his chair and faced Chip tactfully.
+
+"Kid Bennett, you rascal, aren't you going to shake hands?"  His own
+was outstretched, waiting.
+
+Chip crowded several hot words off his tongue, and gave up his hand for
+a temporary pump handle.
+
+"How do you do, Blake?  I didn't think you'd remember me."
+
+"You didn't?  How could I help it?  I can feel the cold of the water
+yet, and your rope settling over my shoulders.  You never gave me a
+chance to say 'God bless you' for that; you just coiled up your rope--
+swearing all the time you did it, because it was wet--and rode off,
+dripping like a muskrat.  What did you do it for?"
+
+"I was in a hurry to get back to camp," grinned Chip, sinking into a
+chair.  "And you weren't a senator then."
+
+"It would have been all the same if I had been, I reckon," responded
+the senator, shaking Chip's hand again.  "Well, well!  So you are the
+genius--that sounds more likely.  No offense, Miss Whitmore.  Do you
+remember that picture you drew with charcoal on a piece of pine board?
+It stands on the mantel in my library, and I always point it out to my
+friends as the work of a young man with a future.  And you painted
+'The Last Stand!'  Well, well!  I think I'll have to send the price
+up another notch, just to get even with you for swearing at me when
+my lungs were so full of water I couldn't swear back!"
+
+While he talked he was busy unwrapping the picture which he had brought
+with him, and he reminded the Little Doctor of a loquacious peddler
+opening his pack.  He was much more genial and unpretentious since Chip
+entered the room, and she wondered why.  She wanted to ask about that
+reference to the water, but he stood the painting against the wall,
+just then, and she forgot everything but that.
+
+Chip's eyes clung to the scene greedily.  After all, it was his--and he
+knew in his heart that it was good.  After a minute he limped into his
+room and brought "The Spoils of Victory," and stood it beside "The Last
+Stand."
+
+"A--h-h!"  The senator breathed the word deep in his throat and fell
+silent.  Even the Old Man leaned forward in his chair that he might
+see the better.  The Little Doctor could not see anything, just then,
+but no one noticed anything wrong with her eyes, for they were all
+down in the Bad Lands, watching an old range cow defend her calf.
+
+"Bennett, do the two go together?" asked the senator, at last.
+
+"I don't know--I painted it for Miss Whitmore," said Chip, a dull glow
+in his cheeks.
+
+The Little Doctor glanced at him quickly, rather startled, if the truth
+be known.
+
+"Oh, that was just a joke, Mr. Bennett.  I would much rather have you
+paint me another one--this one makes me want to cry--and a doctor must
+forego the luxury of tears.  I have no claim upon either of them, Mr.
+Blake.  It was like this.  I started 'The Last Stand,' but I only had
+the background painted, and one day while I was gone Mr. Bennett
+finished it up--and it is his work that makes the picture worth anything.
+I let it pass as mine, for the time, but I never intended to wear the
+laurel crown, really.  I only borrowed it for a little while.  I hope
+you can make Mr. Bennett behave himself and put his brand on it, for if
+he doesn't it will go down to posterity unsigned.  This other--'The Spoils
+of Victory'--he cannot attempt to disown, for I was away at Great Falls
+when he painted it, and he was here alone, so far as help of any kind
+is concerned.  Now do make him be sensible!"
+
+The senator looked at Chip, then at the Little Doctor, chuckled and sat
+down on the couch.
+
+"Well, well!  Kid Bennett hasn't changed, I see.  He's just as ornery
+as he ever was.  And you're the mysterious, modest genius!  How did you
+come out after that dip into the old Missouri?" he asked, abruptly.
+"You didn't take cold, riding in those wet clothes, I hope?"
+
+"I?  No, I was all right.  I stopped at that sheep camp and borrowed
+some dry clothes."  Chip was very uncomfortable.  He wished Blake
+wouldn't keep bringing up that affair, which was four years old and
+quite trivial, in his opinion.  It was a good thing Dunk pulled out
+when he saw he'd got the worst of it, or there'd have been trouble,
+most likely.  And Blake--
+
+The senator went on, addressing the others.
+
+"Do you know what this young fellow did, four years ago this last spring?
+I tried to cross the river near my place in a little boat, while the
+water was high.  Bennett, here, came along and swore that a man with
+no more sense than I had ought to drown--which was very true, I admit.
+I had just got out a nice little distance for drowning properly, when
+a tree came bobbing along and upset my boat, and Kid Bennett, as we
+called him then, rode in as far as he could--which was a great deal
+further than was safe for him--and roped me, just as he would have roped
+a yearling.  Ha! ha!  I can see him yet, scowling at me and whirling the
+loop over his head ready to throw.  A picture of THAT, now!  When he had
+dragged me to the bank he used some rather strong language--a cowboy does
+hate to wet his rope--and rode off before I had a chance to thank him.
+This is the first time I've seen him since then."
+
+Chip got very red.
+
+"I was young and foolish, those days, and you weren't a senator," he
+repeated, apologetically.
+
+"My being a senator wouldn't have mattered at all.  They've been
+changing your name, over this side the river, I see.  How did that
+happen?"
+
+Again Chip was uncomfortable.
+
+"We've got a cook that is out of sight when it comes to Saratoga chips,
+and I'm a fiend for them, you see.  The boys got to calling me Saratoga
+Chip, and then they cut it down to Chip and stuck to it."
+
+"I see.  There was a fellow with you over there--Davidson.  What has
+become of him?"
+
+"Weary?  He works here, too.  He's down in the bunk house now, I guess."
+
+"Well, well!  Let's go and hunt him up--and we can settle about the
+pictures at the same time.  You seem to be crippled.  How did that
+happen?  Some dare-devil performance, I expect."
+
+The senator smiled reassuringly at the Little Doctor and got Chip out
+of the house and down in the bunk house with Weary, and whatever means
+he used to make Chip "behave himself," they certainly were a success.
+For when he left, the next day, he left behind him a check of generous
+size, and Chip was not so aloof as he had been with the Little Doctor,
+and planned with her at least a dozen pictures which he meant to paint
+some time.
+
+There was one which he did paint at once, however--though no one saw it
+but Della.  It was the picture of a slim young woman with gray eyes and
+an old felt hat on her head, standing with her fingers tangled in the
+mane of a chestnut horse.
+
+If there was a heartache in the work, if the brush touched the slim
+figure caressingly and lingered wistfully upon the face, no one knew but
+Chip, and Chip had learned long ago to keep his own counsel.  There were
+some thoughts which he could not whisper into even Silver's ear.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+Dr. Cecil Granthum.
+
+
+
+The Little Doctor leaned from the window and called down the hill to
+her recovered patient--more properly, her nearly recovered patient;
+for Chip still walked with the aid of a cane, though by making use
+of only one stirrup he could ride very well.  He limped up the hill
+to her, and sat down on the top step of the porch.
+
+"What's the excitement now?" he asked, banteringly.
+
+"I've got the best, the most SPLENDID news--you couldn't guess what in a
+thousand years!"
+
+"Then I won't try.  It's too hot."  Chip took off his hat and fanned
+himself with it.
+
+"Well, can't you LOOK a little bit excited?  Try and look the way
+I feel!  Anybody as cool as you are shouldn't suffer with the heat."
+
+"I don't know--I get pretty hot, sometimes.  Well, what is the most
+splendid news?  Can't you tell a fellow, after calling him up here
+in the hot sun?"
+
+"Well, listen.  The Gilroy hospital--you know, where Cecil is"--Chip knew--
+"has a case of blighted love and shattered hopes"--Chip's foolish, man-
+heart nearly turned a somersault.  Was it possible?--"and it's the
+luckiest thing ever happened."
+
+"Yes?"  Chip wished to goodness she would get to the point.  She could
+be direct enough in her statements when what she said was going to hurt
+a fellow.  His heart was thumping so it hurt him.
+
+"Yes.  A doctor there was planning to get married and go away on his
+honeymoon, you know--"
+
+Chip nodded, half suffocated with crowding, incredulous hopes.
+
+"Well, and now he isn't.  His ladylove was faithless and loves another,
+and his honeymoon is indefinitely postponed.  Do you see now where the
+good news comes in?"
+
+Chip shook his head once and looked away up the grade.  Funny, but
+something had gone wrong with his throat.  He was half choked.
+
+"Well, you ARE dull!  Now that fellow isn't going to have any vacation,
+so Cecil can come out, right away!  Next week!  Think of it!"
+
+Chip tried to think of it, but he couldn't think of anything, just then.
+He was only conscious of wishing Whizzer had made a finish of the job,
+up there on the Hog's Back that day.  His heart no longer thumped--it
+was throbbing in a tired, listless fashion.
+
+"Why can't you look a little bit pleased?" smiled the torturer from the
+window.  "You sit there like a--an Indian before a cigar store.  You've
+just about the same expression."
+
+"I can't help it.  I never was fierce to meet strangers, somehow."
+
+"Judging from my own experience, I think you are uncommonly fierce at
+meeting strangers.  I haven't forgotten how unmercifully you snubbed me
+when I came to the ranch, or how you risked my neck on the grade, up
+there, trying to make me scared enough to scream.  I didn't, though!
+I wanted to, I'll admit, when you made the horses run down the steepest
+part--but I didn't, and so I could easily forgive you."
+
+"Could you?" said Chip, in a colorless tone.
+
+"If you had gained your object, I couldn't have," remarked she.
+
+"I did, though."
+
+"You did?  Didn't you do it just to frighten me?"
+
+Chip gave her a glance of weary tolerance.  "You must think I've about
+as much sense as a jack rabbit; I was taking long chances to run that
+hill."
+
+"Well, for pity's sake, what did you do it for?"
+
+"It was the only thing to do.  How do you think we'd have come out of
+the mix-up if we had met Banjo on the Hog's Back, where there isn't
+room to pass?  Don't you think we'd have been pretty well smashed up,
+both of us, by the time we got to the bottom of that gully, there?
+A runaway horse is a nasty thing to meet, let me tell you--especially
+when it's as scared as Banjo was.  They won't turn out; they just go
+straight ahead, and let the other fellow get out of the way if he can."
+
+"I--I thought you did it just for a joke," said the Little Doctor, weakly.
+"I told Cecil you did it to frighten me, and Cecil said--"
+
+"I don't think you need to tell me what Cecil said," Chip remarked,
+with the quiet tone that made one very uncomfortable.
+
+"It wasn't anything so dreadful, you know--"
+
+"I don't want to know.  When is he coming, did you say?"
+
+"Next Wednesday--and this is Friday.  I know you'll like Cecil."
+
+Chip made him a cigarette, but he hadn't heart enough to light it.
+He held it absently in his fingers.
+
+"Everybody likes Cecil."
+
+"Yes?"  Secretly, Chip had his doubts.  He knew one that didn't--and
+wouldn't.
+
+"We'll have all kinds of fun, and go everywhere and do everything.
+As soon as the round-up is over, I think I'll make J. G. give another
+dance, but I'll take care that the drug store is safely locked away.
+And some day we'll take a lunch and go prowling around down in the
+Bad Lands--you'll have to go, so we won't get lost--and we'll have Len
+Adams and Rena and the schoolma'am over here often, and--oh, my brain
+just buzzes with plans.  I'm so anxious for Cecil to see the Countess
+and--well, everybody around here.  You, too."
+
+"I'm sure a curiosity," said Chip, getting on his feet again.  "I've
+always had the name of being something of a freak--I don't wonder you
+want to exhibit me to your--friends."  He went down the hill to the
+bunk house, holding the unlighted cigarette still in his fingers.
+
+When Slim opened the door to tell him supper was ready, he found Chip
+lying on his bed, his face buried in his arms.
+
+If Chip never had understood before how a man can stand up straight on
+the gallows, throw back his shoulders and smile at his executioner, he
+learned the secret during that twenty-two mile drive to Dry Lake with
+the Little Doctor.  He would have shirked the ordeal gladly, and laid
+awake o' nights planning subterfuges that would relieve him, but the
+Little Doctor seemed almost malignantly innocent and managed to
+checkmate every turn.  She could not trust anyone else to manage the
+creams; she was afraid Slim might get drunk while they waited for the
+train, or forget his duties in a game.  She hated J. G.'s way of
+fussing over trifles, and wouldn't have him along.  Chip was not able
+to help much with the ranch work, and she knew he could manage the
+horses so much better than anyone else--and Cecil had been in a runaway
+once, and so was dreadfully nervous behind a strange team--which last
+declaration set Chip's lips a-curl.
+
+The woman usually does have her own way in the end, and so Chip marched
+to the gallows with his chin well up, smiling at his executioner.
+
+The train was late.  The Little Doctor waited in the hotel parlor, and
+Chip waited in the hotel saloon, longing to turn a deluge of whisky down
+his throat to deaden that unbearable, heavy ache in his heart--but instead
+he played pool with Bert Rogers, who happened to be in town that day, and
+took cigars after each game instead of whiskey, varying the monotony
+occasionally by lemon soda, till he was fairly sick.
+
+Then the station agent telephoned up that the train was coming, and Chip
+threw down his billiard cue, swallowed another glass of lemon soda and
+gagged over it, sent Bert Rogers to tell the Little Doctor the train
+was coming, and went after the team.
+
+He let the creams lope in the harness all the way to the depot, excusing
+himself on the plea that the time was short; the fact was, Chip wanted
+the agony over as soon as possible; nothing so wears a man's patients
+as to have a disagreeable duty drag.  At the depot he drove around to
+the back where freight was unloaded, with the explanation that the
+creams were afraid of the train--and the fact of that matter was, that
+Chip was afraid Dr. Cecil might greet the Little Doctor with a kiss--
+he'd be a fool if he didn't--and Chip did not want to witness the salute.
+
+Sitting with his well foot in the brake, he pictured the scene on the
+other side of the building when the train pulled in and stopped.
+He could not hear much, on account of the noise the engine made pumping
+air, but he could guess about what was taking place.  Now, the fellow
+was on the platform, probably, and he had a suit case in one hand and
+a light tan overcoat over the other arm, and now he was advancing
+toward the Little Doctor, who would have grown shy and remained by the
+waiting-room door.  Now he had changed his suit case to the other hand,
+and was bending down over--oh, hell!  He'd settle up with the Old Man
+and pull out, back across the river.  Old Blake would give him work on
+his ranch over there, that was a cinch.  And the Little Doctor could
+have her Cecil and be hanged to him.  He would go to-morrow--er--no, he'd
+have to wait till Silver was able to make the trip, for he wouldn't
+leave him behind.  No, he couldn't go just yet--he'd have to stay with
+the deal another month.  He wouldn't stay a day longer than he had to,
+thought you could gamble on that.
+
+There--the train was sliding out--say, what if the fellow hadn't come,
+though?  Such a possibility had not before occurred to Chip--wouldn't
+the Little Doctor be fighty, though?  Serve her right, the little
+flirt--er--no, he couldn't think anything against the Little Doctor,
+no matter what she did.  No, he'd sure hate to see her disappointed--
+still, if the fellow HADN'T come, Chip wouldn't be to blame for that,
+and Dr. Cecil--
+
+"Can't you drive around to the platform now, to load in the trunk?"
+
+"Sure," said Chip, with deceitful cheerfulness, and took his foot off
+the brake, while the Little Doctor went back to her Cecil.
+
+The agent had the trunk on the baggage truck and trundled it along the
+platform, and Chip's eyes searched for his enemy.  They were in the
+waiting room; he could hear that laugh of the Little Doctor's--Lord,
+how he hated to hear it--directed at some other fellow, that is.  Yes,
+there was the suit case--it looked just as he had expected it would--
+and there was a glimpse of tan cloth just inside the door.  Chip turned
+to help the agent push the suit case under the seat, where it was an
+exceeding tight fit getting it there, with the trunk taking up so much
+room.
+
+When he straightened up the Little Doctor stood ready to get into the
+buggy, and behind her stood Dr. Cecil Granthum, smiling in a way that
+disclosed some very nice teeth.
+
+"Cecil, this is Mr. Bennett--the 'Chip' that I have mentioned as being
+at the ranch.  Chip, allow me to present Dr. Cecil Granthum."
+
+Dr. Cecil advanced with hand out invitingly.  "I've heard so much about
+Chip that I feel very well acquainted.  I hope you won't expect me to
+call you Mr. Bennett, for I shan't, you know."
+
+Too utterly at sea to make reply, Chip took the offered hand in his.
+Hate Dr. Cecil?  How could he hate this big, breezy, blue-eyed young
+woman?  She shook his hand heartily and smiled deep into his troubled
+eyes, and drew the poison from his wounds in that one glance.
+
+The Little Doctor plumped into the seat and made room for Cecil, like
+the spoiled little girl that she was, compared with the other.
+
+"I'm going to sit in the middle.  Cecil, you're the biggest and you can
+easily hang on--and, beside, this young man is so fierce with strangers
+that he'd snub you something awful if we'd give him a chance.  He's been
+scheming, ever since I told him you were coming, to get out of driving
+in to meet you.  He tried to make me take Slim.  Slim!"
+
+Dr. Cecil smiled at Chip behind the Little Doctor's back, and Chip could
+have hugged her then and there, for he knew, somehow, that she understood
+and was his friend.
+
+I should like very much to say that it seemed to Chip that the sun shone
+brighter, and that the grass was greener, and the sky several shades
+bluer, on that homeward drive--but I must record the facts, which are
+these:
+
+Chip did not know whether the sun shone or the moon, and he didn't care--
+just so there was light to see the hair blowing about the Little Doctor's
+face, and to watch the dimple come and go in the cheek next him.  And
+whether the grass was green and the sky blue, or whether the reverse was
+the case, he didn't know; and if you had asked him, he might have said
+tersely that he didn't care a darn about the grass--that is, if he gave
+you sufficient attention to reply at all.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+Love Finds Its Hour.
+
+
+
+"Bay Denver's broke out uh the little pasture," announced the Old Man,
+putting his head in at the door of the blacksmith shop where Chip was
+hammering gayly upon a bent branding iron, for want of a better way to
+kill time and give vent to his surplus energy.  "I wish you'd saddle up
+an' go after him, Chip, if yuh can.  I just seen him takin' down the
+coulee trail like a scared coyote."
+
+"Sure, I'll go.  Darn that old villain, he'd jump a fence forty feet
+high if he took a notion that way."  Chip threw down the hammer and
+reached for his coat.
+
+"I guess the fence must be down som'ers.  I'll go take a look.  Say!
+Dell ain't come back from Denson's yit.  Yuh want t' watch out Denver
+don't meet her--he'd scare the liver out uh her."
+
+Chip was well aware that the Little Doctor had not returned from
+Denson's, where she had been summoned to attend one of the children,
+who had run a rusty nail into her foot.  She had gone alone, for Dr.
+Cecil was learning to make bread, and had refused to budge from the
+kitchen till her first batch was safely baked.
+
+Chip limped hurriedly to the corral, and two minutes later was clattering
+down the coulee upon Blazes, after the runaway.
+
+Denver was a beautiful bay stallion, the pride and terror of the ranch.
+He was noted for his speed and his vindictive hatred of the more plebeian
+horses, scarcely one of which but had, at some time, felt his teeth in
+their flesh--and he was hated and feared by them all.
+
+He stopped at the place where the trail forked, tossed his crinkly
+mane triumphantly and looked back.  Freedom was sweet to him--sweet
+as it was rare.  His world was a roomy box stall with a small, high
+corral adjoining it for exercise, with an occasional day in the little
+pasture as a great treat.  Two miles was a long, long way from home,
+it seemed to him.  He watched the hill behind a moment, threw up his
+head and trotted off up the trail to Denson's.
+
+Chip, galloping madly, caught a glimpse of the fugitive a mile away,
+set his teeth together, and swung Blazes sharply off the trail into
+a bypath which intersected the road further on.  He hoped the Little
+Doctor was safe at Denson's, but at that very moment he saw her ride
+slowly over a distant ridge.
+
+Now there was a race; Denver, cantering gleefully down the trail, Chip
+spurring desperately across the prairie.
+
+The Little Doctor had disappeared into a hollow with Concho pacing
+slowly, half asleep, the reins drooping low on his neck.  The Little
+Doctor loved to dream along the road, and Concho had learned to do
+likewise--and to enjoy it very much.
+
+At the crest of the next hill she looked up, saw herself the apex of
+a rapidly shortening triangle, and grasped instantly the situation;
+she had peeped admiringly and fearsomely between the stout rails of
+the little, round corral too often not to know Denver when she saw him,
+and in a panic turned from the trail toward Chip.  Concho was rudely
+awakened by a stinging blow from her whip--a blow which filled him with
+astonishment and reproach.  He laid back his ears and galloped angrily--
+not in the path--the Little Doctor was too frightened for that--but
+straight as a hawk would fly.  Denver, marking Concho for his prey
+and not to be easily cheated, turned and followed.
+
+Chip swore inwardly and kept straight ahead, leaving the path himself
+to do so.  He knew a deep washout lay now between himself and the Little
+Doctor, and his only hope was to get within speaking distance before she
+was overtaken.
+
+Concho fled to the very brink of the washout and stopped so suddenly
+that his forefeet plowed a furrow in the grass, and the Little Doctor
+came near going clean over his head.  She recovered her balance, and
+cast a frightened glance over her shoulder; Denver was rushing down
+upon them like an express train.
+
+"Get off--your--H-O-R-S-E!" shouted Chip, making a trumpet of his hands.
+"Fight Denver off--with--your whip!"
+
+The last command the Little Doctor did not hear distinctly.  The first
+she made haste to obey.  Throwing herself from the saddle, she slid
+precipitately into the washout just as Denver thundered up, snorting
+a challenge.  Concho, scared out of his wits, turned and tore off down
+the washout, whipped around the end of it and made for home, his enemy
+at his heels and Chip after the two of them, leaning low over his horse
+as Blazes, catching the excitement and urged by the spurs, ran like an
+antelope.
+
+The Little Doctor, climbing the steep bank to level ground, gazed
+after the fleeing group with consternation.  Here was she a long four
+miles from home--five, if she followed the windings of the trail--and it
+looked very much as if her two feet must take her there.  The prospect
+was not an enlivening one, but she started off across the prairie very
+philosophically at first, very dejectedly later on, and very angrily at
+last.  The sun was scorching, and it was dinner time, and she was hungry,
+and hot, and tired, and--"mad."  She did not bless her rescuer; she heaped
+maledictions upon his head--mild ones at first, but growing perceptibly
+more forcible and less genteel as the way grew rougher, and her feet
+grew wearier, and her stomach emptier.  Then, as if her troubles were
+all to come in a lump--as they have a way of doing--she stepped squarely
+into a bunch of "pincushion" cactus.
+
+"I just HATE Montana!" she burst out, vehemently, blinking back some
+tears.  "I don't care if Cecil did just come day before yesterday--I
+shall pack up and go back home.  She can stay if she wants to, but I
+won't live here another day.  I hate Chip Bennett, too, and I'll tell
+him so if I ever get home.  I don't see what J. G.'s thinking of, to
+live in such a God-forgotten hole, where there's nothing but miles
+upon miles of cactuses--"  The downfall of Eastern up-bringing!  To
+deliberately say "cactuses"--but the provocation was great, I admit.
+If any man doubts, let him tread thin-shod upon a healthy little
+"pincushion" and be convinced.  I think he will confess that "cactuses"
+is an exceedingly conservative epithet, and all too mild for the
+occasion.
+
+Half an hour later, Chip, leading Concho by the bridle rein, rode over
+the brow of a hill and came suddenly upon the Little Doctor, sitting
+disconsolately upon a rock.  She had one shoe off, and was striving
+petulantly to extract a cactus thorn from the leather with a hat pin.
+Chip rode close and stopped, regarding her with satisfaction from the
+saddle.  It was the first time he had succeeded in finding the Little
+Doctor alone since the arrival of Dr. Cecil Granthum--God bless her!
+
+"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 to-morrow,
+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 END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chip, of the Flying U, by B. M. Bower
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIP, OF THE FLYING U ***
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