“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.”
––––––––
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