The Flying U's Last Stand Part 19

He even remembered to sc.r.a.pe out the tell-tale prints of his small feet in the bare earth there, and the prints of Silver's feet where he went through. Yarns he had heard the Happy Family tell, in the bunk-house on rainy days, had taught him these tricks. He was extremely thorough in all that he did--being a good deal like his dad--and when he went the gra.s.s, no one would have suspected that he had pa.s.sed that way.

After a while he left that winding creek-bottom and climbed a long ridge. Then he went down hill and pretty soon he climbed another hill that made old Silver stop and rest before he went on to the top. The Kid stood on the top for a few minutes and stared wistfully out over the tumbled ma.s.s of hills, and deep hollows, and hills, and hill and hills--till he could not see where they left off. He could not see any of the bunch; but then, he could not see any brakes growing anywhere, either. The bunch was down in the brakes--he had heard that often enough to get it fixed firmly in his mind. Well, when he came to where the brakes grew--and he would know them, all right, when he saw them!--he would find the bunch. He thought they'd be s'prised to see him ride up!

The bunch didn't know that he could drive stock all his own self, and that he was a real, old cowpuncher now. He was a lot bigger. He didn't have to hunt such a big rock, or such a high bank, to get on Silver now.

He thought he must be pretty near as big as Pink, any way. They would certainly be s'prised!

The brakes must be farther over. Maybe he would have to go over on the other side of that biggest hill before he came to the place where they grew. He rode unafraid down a steep, rocky slope where Silver picked his way very, very carefully, and sometimes stopped and smelt of a ledge or a pile of rocks, and then turned and found some other way down.

The Kid let him choose his path--Daddy Chip had taught him to leave the reins loose and let Silver cross ditches and rough places where he wanted to cross. So Silver brought him safely down that hill where even the Happy Family would have hesitated to ride unless the need was urgent.

He could not go right up over the next hill--there was a rock ledge that was higher than his head when he sat on Silver. He went down a narrow gulch--ah, an awfully narrow gulch! Sometimes he was afraid Silver was too fat to squeeze through; but Silver always did squeeze through somehow. And still there were no brakes growing anywhere. Just choke-cherry trees, and service-berries, and now and then a little flat filled with cottonwoods and willows--familiar trees and bushes that he had known all his six years of life.

So the Kid went on and on, over hills or around hills or down along the side of hill. But he did not find the Happy Family, and he did not find the brakes. He found cattle that had the Flying U brand--they had a comfortable, homey look. One bunch he drove down a wide coulee, hazing them out of the brush and yelling "HY-AH!" at them, just the way the Happy Family yelled. He thought maybe these were the cattle the Happy Family were looking for; so he drove them ahead of him and didn't let one break back on him and he was the happiest Kid in all Montana with these range cattle, that had the Flying U brand, galloping awkwardly ahead of him down that big coulee.

CHAPTER 16. "A RELL OLD COWPUNCHER"

The hills began to look bigger, and kind of chilly and blue in the deep places. The Kid wished that he could find some of the boys. He was beginning to get hungry, and he had long ago begun to get tired. But he was undismayed, even when he heard a coyote yap-yap-yapping up a brushy canyon. It might be that he would have to camp out all night. The Kid had loved those cowboy yarns where the teller--who was always the hero--had been caught out somewhere and had been compelled to make a "dry camp." His favorite story of that type was the story of how Happy Jack had lost his clothes and had to go naked through the breaks. It was not often that he could make Happy Jack tell him that story--never when the other boys were around. And there were other times; when Pink had got lost, down in the breaks, and had found a cabin just--in--TIME, with Irish sick inside and a blizzard just blowing outside, and they were mad at each other and wouldn't talk, and all they had to eat was one weenty, teenty snow-bird, till the yearling heifer came and Pink killed it and they had beefsteak and got good friends again. And there were other times, that others of the boys could tell about, and that the Kid thought about now with pounding pulse. It was not all childish fear of the deepening shadows that made his eyes big and round while he rode slowly on, farther and farther into the breaks.

He still drove the cattle before him; rather, he followed where the cattle led. He felt very big and very proud--but he did wish he could find the Happy Family! Somebody ought to stand guard, and he was getting sleepy already.

Silver stopped to drink at a little creek of clear, cold water. There was gra.s.s, and over there was a little hollow under a rock ledge. The sky was all purple and red, like Doctor Dell painted in pictures, and up the coulee, where he had been a little while ago, it was looking kind of dark. The Kid thought maybe he had better camp here till morning. He reined Silver against a bank and slid off, and stood looking around him at the strange hills with the huge, black boulders that looked like houses unless you knew, and the white cliffs that looked--queer--unless you knew they were just cliffs.

For the first time since he started, the Kid wished guiltily that his dad was here or--he did wish the bunch would happen along! He wondered if they weren't camped, maybe, around that point. Maybe they would hear him if he hollered as loud as he could, which he did, two or three times; and quit because the hills hollered back at him and they wouldn't stop for the longest time--it was just like people yelling at him from behind these rocks.

The Kid knew, of course, who they were; they were Echo-boys, and they wouldn't hurt, and they wouldn't let you see them. They just ran away and hollered from some other place. There was an Echo-boy lived up on the bluff somewhere above the house. You could go down in the little pasture and holler, and the Echo-boy would holler back The Kid was not afraid--but there seemed to be an awful lot of Echo-boys down in these hills. They were quiet after a minute or so, and he did not call again.

The Kid was six, and he was big for his age; but he looked very little, there alone in that deep coulee that was really more like a canyon--very little and lonesome and as if he needed his Doctor Dell to take him on her lap and rock him. It was just about the time of day when Doctor Dell always rocked him and told him stories--about the Happy Family, maybe.

The Kid hated to be suspected of baby ways, but he loved these tunes, when his legs were tired and his eyes wanted to go shut, and Doctor Dell laid her cheek on his hair and called him her baby man. n.o.body knew about these times--that was most always in the bed room and the boys couldn't hear.

The Kid's lips quivered a little. Doctor Dell would be surprised when he didn't show up for supper, he guessed. He turned to Silver and to his man ways, because he did not like to think about Doctor Dell just right now.

"Well, old feller, I guess you want your saddle off, huh?" he quavered, and slapped the horse upon the shoulder. He lifted the stirrup--it was a little stock saddle, with everything just like a big saddle except the size; Daddy Chip had had it made for the Kid in Cheyenne, last Christmas--and began to undo the latigo, whistling self-consciously and finding that his lips kept trying to come unpuckered all the time, and trying to tremble just the way they did when he cried. He had no intention of crying.

"Gee! I always wanted to camp out and watch the stars," he told Silver stoutly. "Honest to gran'ma, I think this is just--simply--GREAT! I bet them nester kids would be scared. Hunh!"

That helped a lot. The Kid could whistle better after that. He pulled of the saddle, laid it down on its side so that the skirts would not bend out of shape--oh, he had been well-taught, with the whole Happy Family for his worshipful tutors!--and untied the rope from beside the fork.

"I'll have to anchor you to a tree, old-timer," he told the horse briskly. "I'd sure hate to be set afoot in this man's country!" And a minute later--"Oh, funder! I never brought you any sugar!"

Would you believe it, that small child of the Flying U picketed his horse where the gra.s.s was best, and the knots he tied were the knots his dad would have tied in his place. He unrolled his blanket and carried it to the sheltered little nook under the ledge, and dragged the bag of doughnuts and the jelly and honey and bread after it. He had heard about thievish animals that will carry off bacon and flour and such. He knew that he ought to hang his grub in a tree, but he could not reach up as far as the fox who might try to help himself, so that was out of the question.

The Kid ate a doughnut while he studied the matter out for himself. "If a coyote or a skink came pestering around ME, I'd frow rocks at him," he said. So when he had finished the doughnut he collected a pile of rocks.

He ate another doughnut, went over and laid himself down on his stomach the way the boys did, and drank from the little creek. It was just a chance that he had not come upon water tainted with alkali--but fate is kind sometimes.

So the Kid, trying very, very hard to act just like his Daddy Chip and the boys, flopped the blanket vigorously this way and that in an effort to get it straightened, flopped himself on his knees and folded the blanket round and round him until he looked like a large, gray coc.o.o.n, and cuddled himself under the ledge with his head on the bag of doughnuts and his wide eyes fixed upon the first pale stars and his mind clinging st.u.r.dily to his mission and to this first real, man-sized adventure that had come into his small life.

It was very big and very empty--that canyon. He lifted his yellow head and looked to see if Silver were there, and was comforted at the sight of his vague bulk close by, and by the steady KR-UP, KR-UP of bitten gra.s.ses.

"I'm a rell ole cowpuncher, all right," he told himself bravely; but he had to blink his eyelashes pretty fast when he said it. A "rell ole cowpuncher" wouldn't cry! He was afraid Doctor Dell would be AWFULLY s'prised, though...

An unexpected sob broke loose, and another. He wasn't afraid--but...

Silver, cropping steadily at the gra.s.s which must be his only supper, turned and came slowly toward the Kid in his search for sweeter gra.s.s-tufts. The Kid choked off the third sob and sat up ashamed. He tugged at the bag and made believe to Silver that his sole trouble was with his pillow.

"By cripes, that d.a.m.n' jelly gla.s.s digs right into my ear," he complained aloud, to help along the deception. "You go back, old-timer--I'm all right. I'm a--rell--ole cowpuncher; ain't I, old-timer? We're makin' a dry-camp, just like--Happy Jack. I'm a rell--ole--" The Kid went to sleep before he finished saying it. There is nothing like the open air to make one sleep from dusk till dawn. The rell ole cowpuncher forgot his little white bed in the corner of the big bedroom. He forgot that Doctor Dell would be awfully s'prised, and that Daddy Chip would maybe be cross--Daddy Chip was cross, sometimes. The rell ole cowpuncher lay with his yellow curls pillowed on the bag of doughnuts and the gray blanket wrapped tightly around him, and slept soundly; and his lips were curved in the half smile that came often to his sleeping place and made him look ever so much like his Daddy Chip.

CHAPTER 17. "LOST CHILD"

"Djuh find 'im?" The Old Man had limped down to the big gate and stood there bare headed under the stars, waiting, hoping--fearing to hear the answer.

"Hasn't he showed up yet?" Chip and the Little Doctor rode out of the gloom and stopped before the gate. Chip did not wait for an answer. One question answered the other and there was no need for more. "I brought Dell home," he said. "She's about all in--and he's just as likely to come back himself as we are to run across him. Silver'll bring him home, all right. He can't be--yuh can't lose a horse. You go up to the house and lie down, Dell. I--the Kid's all right."

His voice held all the tenderness of the lover, and all the protectiveness of the husband and all the agony of a father--but Chip managed to keep it firm and even for all that. He lifted the Little Doctor bodily from the saddle, held her very close in his arms for a minute, kissed her twice and pushed her gently through the gate.

"You better stay right here," he said authoritatively, "and rest and look after J.G. You can't do any good riding--and you don't want to be gone when he comes." He reached over the gate, got hold of her arm and pulled her towards him. "Buck up, old girl," he whispered, and kissed her lingeringly. "Now's the time to show the stuff you're made of. You needn't worry one minute about that kid. He's the goods, all right. Yuh couldn't lose him if you tried. Go up and go to bed."

"Go to bed!" echoed the Little Doctor and sardonically. "J.G., are you sure he didn't say anything about going anywhere?"

"No. He was settin' there on the porch tormenting the cat." The Old Man swallowed a lump. "I told him to quit. He set there a while after that--I was talkin" to Blake. I dunno where he went to. I was--"

"'S that you, Dell? Did yuh find 'im?" The Countess came flapping down the path in a faded, red kimono. "What under the shinin' sun's went with him, do yuh s'pose? Yuh never know what a day's got up its sleeve--'n I always said it. Man plans and G.o.d displans--the poor little tad'll be scairt plumb to death, out all alone in the dark--"

"Oh, for heaven's sake shut up!" cried the tortured Little Doctor, and fled past her up the path as though she had some hope of running away from the tormenting thoughts also. "Poor little tad, all alone in the dark,"--the words followed her and were like sword thrusts through the mother heart of her. Then Chip overtook her, knowing too well the hurt which the Countess had given with her blundering anxiety. Just at the porch he caught up with her, and she clung to him, sobbing wildly.

"You don't want to mind what that old hen says," he told her brusquely.

"She's got to do just so much cackling or she'd choke, I reckon. The Kid's all right. Some of the boys have run across him by this time, most likely, and are bringing him in. He'll be good and hungry, and the scare will do him good." He forced himself to speak as though the Kid had merely fallen on the corral fence, or something like that. "You've got to make up your mind to these things," he argued, "if you tackle raising a boy, Dell. Why, I'll bet I ran off and scared my folks into fits fifty times when I was a kid."

"But--he's--just a baby!" sobbed the Little Doctor with her face pressed hard against Chip's strong, comforting shoulder.

"He's a little devil!" amended Chip fiercely. "He ought to be walloped for scaring you like this. He's just as capable of looking after himself as most kids twice his size. He'll get hungry and head for home--and if he don't know the way, Silver does; so he can't--"

"But he may have fallen and--"

"Come, now! Haven't you got any more sense than the Countess? If you insist of thinking up horrors to scare yourself with, I don't know as anybody can stop you. Dell! Brace up and quit worrying. I tell you--he's--all right!"

That did well enough--seeing the Little Doctor did not get a look at Chip's face, which was white and drawn, with sunken, haggard eyes staring into the dark over her head. He kissed her hastily and told her he must go, and that he'd hurry back as soon as he could. So he went half running down the path and pa.s.sed the Countess and the Old Man without a word; piled onto his horse and went off up the hill road again.

They could not get it out of their minds that the Kid must have ridden up on the bluff to meet his mother, had been too early to meet her--for the Little Doctor had come home rather later than she expected to do--and had wandered off to visit the boys, perhaps, or to meet his Daddy Chip who was over there some where on the bench trying to figure out a system of ditches that might logically be expected to water the desert claims of the Happy Family--if they could get the water.

They firmly believed that the kid had gone up on the hill, and so they hunted for him up there. The Honorable Blake had gone to Dry Lake and taken the train for Great Falls, before ever the Kid had been really missed. The Old Man had not seen the Kid ride up the hill--but he had been sitting with his chair turned away from the road, and he was worried about other things and so might easily have missed seeing him.

The Countess had been taking a nap, and she was not expected to know anything about his departure. And she had not looked into the doughnut jar--indeed, she was so upset by supper time that, had she looked, she would not have missed the doughnuts. For the same reason Ole did not miss his blanket. Ole had not been near his bed; he was out riding and searching and calling through the coulee and up toward the old Denson place.

No one dreamed that the Kid had started out with a camp-outfit--if one might call it that--and with the intention of joining the Happy Family in the breaks, and of helping them gather their cattle. How could they dream that? How could they realize that a child who still liked to be told bedtime stories and to be rocked to sleep, should harbor such man-size thoughts and ambitions? How could they know that the Kid was being "a rell ole cowpuncher"?

That night the whole Happy Family, just returned from the Badlands and warned by Chip at dusk that the Kid was missing, hunted the coulees that bordered the benchland. A few of the nesters who had horses and could ride them hunted also. The men who worked at the Flying U hunted, and Chip hunted frantically. Chip just about worshipped that kid, and in spite of his calmness and his optimism when he talked to the Little Doctor, you can imagine the state of mind he was in.