“’Course you’d ’member I wanted a baby bear cub; for a pet,” he assented gravely and with a certain satisfaction. “Is it a far ways to that mother bear’s home?”
“Why?” H. J. Owens turned from staring at the rolling smoke cloud, and looked at the Kid curiously. “Ain’t you big enough to ride far?”
“’Course I’m big enough” The Kid’s pride was touched. “I can ride as far as a horse can travel I bet I can ride farther and faster ’n you can, you pilgrims” He eyed the other disdainfully. “Huh! You can’t ride. When you trot you go this way!” The Kid kicked Silver into a trot and went bouncing along with his elbows flapping loosely in imitation of H. J. Owens’ ungraceful riding.
“I don’t want to go a far ways,” he explained when the other was again Riding alongside, “’cause Doctor Dell would cry if I didn’t come back to supper. She cried when I was out huntin’ the bunch. Doctor Dell gets lonesome awful easy.” He looked over his shoulder uneasily. “I guess I better go back and tell her I’m goin’ to git a baby bear cub for a pet,” he said, and reined Silver around to act upon the impulse.
“No—don’t do that, Buck.” H. J. Owens pulled his horse in front of Silver. “It isn’t far—just a little ways. And it would be fun to surprise them at the ranch Gee! When they saw you ride up with a pet bear cub in your arms—” H. J. Owens shook his head as though he could not find words to express the surprise of the Kid’s family.
The Kid smiled his Little Doctor smile. “I’d tell a man!” he assented enthusiastically. “I bet the Countess would holler when she seen it. She scares awful easy. She’s scared of a mice, even! Huh! My kitty ketched a mice and she carried it right in her mouth and brought it into the kitchen and let it set down on the floor a minute, and it started to run away—the mice did. And it runned right up to the Countess, and she jes’ hollered and yelled And she got right up and stood on a chair and hollered for Daddy Chip to come and ketch that mice. He didn’t do it though. Adeline ketched it herself. And I took it away from her and put it in a box for a pet. I wasn’t scared.”
“She’ll be scared when she sees the bear cub,” H. J. Owens declared absent-mindedly. “I know you won’t be, though. If we hurry maybe we can watch how he digs ants for his supper. That’s lots of fun, Buck.”
“Yes—I ’member it’s fun to watch baby bear cubs dig ants,” the Kid assented earnestly, and followed willingly where H. J. Owens led the way.
That the way was far did not impress itself upon the Kid, beguiled with wonderful stories of how baby bear cubs might be taught to do tricks. He listened and believed, and invented some very wonderful tricks that he meant to teach his baby bear cub. Not until the shadows began to fill the gullies through which they rode did the Kid awake to the fact that night was coming close and that they were still traveling away from home and in a direction which was strange to him. Never in his life had he been tricked by any one with unfriendly intent. He did not guess that he was being tricked now. He rode away into the wild places in search of a baby bear cub for a pet.
CHAPTER 25
“LITTLE BLACK SHACK’S ALL BURNT UP”
It is a penitentiary offense for anyone to set fire to prairie grass or timber; and if you know the havoc which one blazing match may work upon dry grassland when the wind is blowing free, you will not wonder at the penalty for lighting that match with deliberate intent to set the prairie afire.
Within five minutes after H. J. Owens slipped the bit of mirror back into his pocket after flashing a signal that the Kid was riding alone upon the trail, a line of fire several rods long was creeping up out of a grassy hollow to the hilltop beyond, whence it would go racing away to the east and the north, growing bigger and harder to fight with every grass tuft it fed on.
The Happy Family were working hard that day upon the system of irrigation by which they meant to reclaim and make really valuable their desert claims. They happened to be, at the time when the fire was started, six or seven miles away, wrangling over the best means of getting their main ditch around a certain coulee without building a lot of expensive flume. A surveyor would have been a blessing, at this point in the undertaking; but a surveyor charged good money for his services, and the Happy Family were trying to be very economical with money; with time, and effort, and with words they were not so frugal.
The fire had been burning for an hour and had spread so alarmingly before the gusty breeze that it threatened several claim-shacks before they noticed the telltale, brownish tint to the sunlight and smelled other smoke than the smoke of the word-battle then waging fiercely among them. They dropped stakes, flags and ditch-level and ran to where their horses waited sleepily the pleasure of their masters.
They reached the level of the benchland to see disaster swooping down upon them like a race-horse. They did not stop then to wonder how the fire had started, or why it had gained such headway. They raced their horses after sacks, and after the wagon and team and water barrels with which to fight the flames. For it was not the claim-shacks in its path which alone were threatened. The grass that was burning meant a great deal to the stock, and therefore to the general welfare of every settler upon that bench, be he native or newcomer.
Florence Grace Hallman had, upon one of her periodical visits among her “clients,” warned them of the danger of prairie fires and urged them to plow and burn guards around all their buildings. A few of the settlers had done so and were comparatively safe in the face of that leaping, red line. But there were some who had delayed—and these must fight now if they would escape.
The Happy Family, to a man, had delayed; rather they had not considered that there was any immediate danger from fire; it was too early in the season for the grass to be tinder dry, as it would become a month or six weeks later. They were wholly unprepared for the catastrophe, so far as any expectation of it went. But for all that they knew exactly what to do and how to go about doing it, and they did not waste a single minute in meeting the emergency.
While the Kid was riding with H. J. Owens into the hills, his friends, the bunch, were riding furiously in the opposite direction. And that was exactly what had been planned beforehand. There was an absolute certainty in the minds of those who planned that it would be so, Florence Grace Hallman, for instance, knew just what would furnish complete occupation for the minds and the hands of the Happy Family and of every other man in that neighborhood, that afternoon. Perhaps a claim-shack or two would go up in smoke and some grass would burn. But when one has a stubborn disposition and is fighting for prestige and revenge and the success of ones business, a shack or two and a few acres of prairie grass do not count for very much.
For the rest of that afternoon the boys of the Flying U fought side by side with hated nesters and told the inexperienced how best to fight. For the rest of that afternoon no one remembered the Kid, or wondered why H. J. Owens was not there in the grimy line of fire-fighters who slapped doggedly at the leaping flames with sacks kept wet from the barrels of water hauled here and there as they were needed. No one had time to call the roll and see who was missing among the settlers. No one dreamed that this mysterious fire that had crept up out of a coulee and spread a black, smoking blanket over the hills where it passed, was nothing more nor lees than a diversion while a greater crime was being committed behind their backs.
In spite of them the fire, beaten out of existence at one point, gained unexpected fury elsewhere and raced on. In spite of them women and children were in actual danger of being burned to death, and rushed weeping from flimsy shelter to find safety in the nearest barren coulee. The sick lady whom the Little Doctor had been tending was carried out on her bed and laid upon the blackened prairie, hysterical from the fright she had received. The shack she had lately occupied smoked while the tarred paper on the roof crisped and curled; and then the whole structure burst into flames and sent blazing bits of paper and boards to spread the fire faster.
Fire guards which