The Complete Flying U Series – 24 Westerns in One Edition. B. M. Bower
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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,”