"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."