“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