“No—he’s the short, fat one. That bean-pole is Shorty.”
Miss Whitmore fixed these facts firmly in her memory and ran swiftly to where rose all the dust and noise from the further corral. She climbed up until she could look conveniently over the top rail. The fence seemed to her dreadfully high—a clear waste of straight, sturdy poles.
“J. G—e-e-e!”
“Baw—h-h-h!” came answer from a wholly unexpected source as a big, red cow charged and struck the fence under her feet a blow which nearly dislodged her from her perch. The cow recoiled a few steps and lowered her head truculently.
“Scat! Shoo, there! Go on away, you horrid old thing you! Oh, J. G—e-e-e!”
Weary, who was roping, had just dragged a calf up to the fire and was making a loop to catch another when the cow made a second charge at the fence. He dashed in ahead of her, his horse narrowly escaping an ugly gash from her long, wicked horns. As he dodged he threw his rope with the peculiar, back-hand twist of the practiced roper, catching her by the head and one front foot. Straight across the corral he shot to the end of a forty-foot rope tied fast to the saddle horn. The red cow flopped with a thump which knocked all desire for trouble out of her for the time. Shorty slipped the rope off and climbed the fence, but the cow only shook her aching sides and limped sullenly away to the far side of the corral. J. G. and the boys had shinned up the fence like scared cats up a tree when the trouble began, and perched in a row upon the top. The Old Man looked across and espied his sister, wide-eyed and undignified, watching the outcome.
“Dell! What in thunder the you doing on that fence?” he shouted across the corral.
“What in thunder are you doing on the fence, J. G. ?” she flung back at him.
The Old Man climbed shamefacedly down, followed by the others. “Is that what you call ‘getting put in the clear’?” asked she, genially. “I see now—it means clear on the top rail.”
“You go back to the house and stay there!” commanded J. G., wrathfully. The boys were showing unmistakable symptoms of mirth, and the laugh was plainly against the Old Man.
“Oh, no,” came her voice, honey-sweet and calm. “Shoo that cow this way again, will you, Mr. .Weary? I like to watch J. G. shin up the fence. It’s good for him; it makes one supple, and J. G.’s actually getting fat.”
“Hurry along with that calf!” shouted the Old Man, recovering the branding iron and turning his back on his tormentor.
The boys, beyond grinning furtively at one another, behaved with quite praiseworthy gravity. Miss Whitmore watched while Weary dragged a spotted calf up to the fire and the boys threw it to the ground and held it until the Old Man had stamped it artistically with a smoking U.
“Oh, J. G.!”
“Ain’t you gone yet? What d’yuh want?”
“Silver broke his leg.”
“Huh. I knew that long ago. Chip’s gone to shoot him. You go on to the house, doggone it! You’ll have every cow in the corral on the fight. That red waist of yours—”
“It isn’t red, it’s pink—a beautiful rose pink. If your cows don’t like it, they’ll have to be educated up to it. Chip isn’t either going to shoot that horse, J. G. I’m going to set his leg and cure him—and I’m going to keep him in one of your box stalls. There, now!”
Cal Emmett took a sudden fit of coughing and leaned his forehead weakly against a rail, and Weary got into some unnecessary argument with his horse and bolted across to the gate, where his shoulders were seen to shake—possibly with a nervous chill; the bravest riders are sometimes so affected. Nobody laughed, however. Indeed, Slim seemed unusually serious, even for him, while Happy Jack looked positively in pain.
“I want that short, fat man to help” (Slim squirmed at this blunt identification of himself) “and Mr. Weary, also.” Miss Whitmore might have spoken with a greater effect of dignity had she not been clinging to the top of the fence with two dainty slipper toes thrust between the rails not so very far below. Under the circumstances, she looked like a pretty, spoiled little schoolgirl.
“Oh. You’ve turned horse doctor, have yuh?” J. G. leaned suddenly upon his branding iron and laughed. “Doggone it, that ain’t a bad idea. I’ve got two box stalls, and there’s an old gray horse in the pasture— the same old gray horse that come out uh the wilderness—with a bad case uh string-halt. I’ll have some uh the boys ketch him up and you can start a horsepital!”
“Is that supposed to be a joke, J. G.? I never can tell your jokes by ear. If it is, I’ll laugh. I’m going to use whatever I need and you can do without Mr.—er—those two men.”
“Oh, go ahead. The horse don’t belong to me, so I’m willing you should practice on him a while. Say! Dell! Give him that truck you’ve been pouring down me for the last week. Maybe he’ll relish the taste of the doggone stuff—I don’t.”
“I suppose you’ve labeled that a ‘Joke—please laugh here,’” sighed Miss Whitmore, plaintively, climbing gingerly down.
CHAPTER IV
An Ideal Picture
“I guess I’ll go down to Denson’s today,” said J. G. at the breakfast table one morning. “Maybe we can get that grass widow to come and keep house for us.”
“I don’t want any old grass widow to keep house,” protested Della. “I’m getting along well enough, so long as Patsy bakes the bread, and meat, and cake, and stuff. It’s just fun to keep house. The only trouble is, there isn’t half enough to keep me busy. I’m going to get a license to practice medicine, so if there’s any sickness around I can be of some use. You say it’s fifty miles to the nearest doctor. But that needn’t make a grass widow necessary. I can keep house—it looks better than when I came, and you know it.” Which remark would have hurt the feelings of several well-meaning cow-punchers, had they overheard it.
“Oh, I ain’t finding fault with your housekeeping—you do pretty well for a green hand. But Patsy’ll have to go with the round-up when it starts, and what men I keep on the ranch will have to eat with us. That’s the way I’ve been used to fixing things; I was never so good I couldn’t eat at the same table with my men; if they wasn’t fit for my company I fired ’em and got fellows that was. I’ve had this bunch a good long while, now. You can do all right with just me, but you couldn’t cook for two or three men; you can’t cook good enough, even if it wasn’t too much work.” J. G. had a blunt way of stating disagreeable facts, occasionally.
“Very well, get your grass widow by all means,” retorted she with much wasted dignity.
“She’s a swell cook, and a fine housekeeper, and shell keep yuh from getting lonesome. She’s good company, the Countess is.” He grinned when he said it “I’ll have Chip ketch up the creams, and you get ready and go along with us. It’ll give you a chance to size up the kind uh neighbors yuh got.”
There was real pleasure in driving swiftly over the prairie land, through the sweet, spring sunshine, and Miss Whitmore tingled with enthusiasm till they drove headlong into a deep coulee which sheltered the Denson family.
“This road is positively dangerous!” she exclaimed when they reached a particularly steep place and Chip threw all his weight upon the brake.
“We’ll get the Countess in beside yuh, coming back, and then yuh won’t rattle around in the seat so much. She’s good and solid—just hang onto her and you’ll be all right,” said J. G.
“If I don’t like her looks—and I know I won’t—I’ll get into the front seat and you can hang onto her yourself, Mr. J. G. Whitmore.”
Chip, who had been silent till now, glanced briefly over his shoulder.
“It’s a cinch you’ll take the front seat,” he remarked, laconically.
“J.