The Flying U's Last Stand

  CHAPTER 21. THE FIGHT GOES ON

  It is amazing how quickly life swings back to the normal after even soharrowing an experience as had come to the Flying U. Tragedy had hoveredthere a while and had turned away with a smile, and the smile wasreflected upon the faces and in the eyes of everyone upon whose soulshad fallen her shadow. The Kid was safe, and he was well, and he hadnot suffered from the experience; on the contrary he spent most of hiswaking hours in recounting his adventures to an admiring audience. Hewas a real old cowpuncher. He had gone into the wilderness and he hadproven the stuff that was in him. He had made "dry-camp" just exactly aswell as any of the Happy Family could have done. He had slept out underthe stars rolled in a blanket--and do you think for one minute that hewould ever submit to lace-trimmed nighties again? If you do, ask thelittle Doctor what the Kid said on the first night after his return,when she essayed to robe him in spotless white and rock him, held tightin her starved arms. Or you might ask his Daddy Chip, who hoveredpretty close to them both, his eyes betraying how his soul gave thanks.Or--never mind, I'll tell you myself.

  The Little Doctor brought the nightie, and reached out her two eagerarms to take the kid off Chip's knees where he was perched contentedlyrelating his adventures with sundry hair-raising additions born of hisimagination. The Kid was telling Daddy Chip about the skunk he saw,and he hated to be interrupted. He looked at his Doctor Dell and at thefamiliar, white garment with lace at the neck and wristbands, and hewaved his hand with a gesture of dismissal.

  "Aw, take that damn' thing away!" he told her in the tone of the realold cowpuncher. "When I get ready to hit the bed-ground, a blanket isall I'll need."

  Lest you should think him less lovable than he really was, I must addthat, when Chip set him down hastily so that he himself could rush offsomewhere and laugh in secret, the Kid spread his arms with a littlechuckle and rushed straight at his Doctor Dell and gave her a real bearhug.

  "I want to be rocked," he told her--and was her own baby man again,except that he absolutely refused to reconsider the nightgown. "And Iwant you to tell me a story--about when Silver breaked his leg. Silver'sa good ole scout, you bet. I don't know what I'd a done 'theut Silver.And tell about the bunch makin' a man outa straw to scare you, and thehorses runned away. I was such a far ways, Doctor Dell, and I couldn'tget back to hear them stories and I've most forgot about 'em. And tellabout Whizzer, Doctor Dell."

  The Little Doctor rocked him and told him of the old days, and shenever again brought him his lace-trimmed nightie at bedtime. She nevermentioned his language upon the subject, either. The Little Doctor waslearning some things about her man-child, and one of them was this: Whenhe rode away into the Badlands and was lost, other things were lost,and lost permanently; he was no longer her baby, for all he liked tobe rocked. He had come back to her changed, so that she studied himamazedly while she worshipped. He had entered boldly into the life whichmen live, and he would never come back entirely to the old order ofthings. He would never be her baby; there would be a difference, evenwhile she held him in her arms and him rocked him to sleep.

  She knew that it was so, when the Kid insisted, next day, upon goinghome with the bunch; with Andy, rather, who was just now the Kid'sparticular hero. He had to help the bunch he said; they needed him, andAndy needed him and Miss Allen needed him.

  "Aw, you needn't be scared, Doctor Dell," he told her shrewdly. "I ain'tgoing to find them brakes any more. I'll stick with the bunch, cross myheart, and I'll come back tonight if you're scared 'theut me. Honest togran'ma, I've got to go and help the bunch lick the stuffen' outa themnesters, Doctor Dell."

  The Little Doctor looked at him strangely, hugged him tight--and lethim go. Chip would be with them, and he would bring the Kid home safely,and--the limitations of dooryard play no longer sufficed; her fledglinghad found what his wings were for, and the nest was too little, now.

  "We'll take care of him," Andy promised her understandingly. "If Chipdon't come up, this afternoon, I'll bring him home myself. Don't youworry a minute about him."

  "I'd tell a man she needn't!" added the Kid patronizingly.

  "I suppose he's a lot safer with you boys than he is here at theranch--unless one of us stood over him all the time, or we tied him up,"she told Andy gamely. "I feel like a hen trying to raise a duck! Go on,Buck--but give mother a kiss first."

  The Kid kissed her violently and with a haste that betrayed where histhoughts were, in spite of the fact that never before had his mothercalled him Buck.

  To her it was a supreme surrender of his babyhood--to him it was merelyhis due. The Little Doctor sighed and watched him ride away besideAndy. "Children are such self-centred little beasts!" she told J. G.rue-fully. "I almost wish he was a girl."

  "Ay? If he was a girl he wouldn't git lost, maybe, but some feller'dtake him away from yuh just the same. The Kid's all right. He's just thekind you expect him to be and want him to be. You're tickled to deathbecause he's like he is. Doggone it, Dell, that Kid's got the real stuffin him! He's a dead ringer fer his dad--that ought to do yuh."

  "It does," the Little Doctor declared. "But it does seem as if he mightbe contented here with me for a little while--after such a horribletime--"

  "It wasn't horrible to him, yuh want to recollect. Doggone it, I wishthat Blake would come back. You write to him, Dell, and tell him howthings is stacking up. He oughta be here on the ground. No tellin' whatthem nesters'll build up next."

  So the Old Man slipped back into the old channels of worry and thought,just as life itself slips back after a stressful period. The littleDoctor sighed again and sat down to write the letter and to discuss withthe Old Man what she should say.

  There was a good deal to say. For one thing, more contests had beenfiled and more shacks built upon claims belonging to the Happy Family.She must tell Blake that. Also, Blake must help make some arrangementwhereby the Happy Family could hire an outfit to gather their stock andthe alien stock which they meant to drive back out of the Badlands. Andthere was Irish, who had quietly taken to the hills again as soon asthe Kid returned. Blake was needed to look into that particular bit oftrouble and try and discover just how serious it was. The man whom Irishhad floored with a chair was apparently hovering close to death--andthere were these who emphasized the adverb and asserted that the hurtwas only apparent, but could prove nothing.

  "And you tell 'im," directed the Old Man querulously, "that I'll standgood for his time while he's lookin' after things for the boys. And tell'im if he's so doggoned scared I'll buy into the game, he needn't toshow up here at the ranch at all; tell him to stay in Dry Lake if hewants to--serve him right to stop at that hotel fer a while. But tellhim for the Lord's sake git a move on. The way it looks to me, thingsis piling up on them boys till they can't hardly see over the top, andsomething's got to be done. Tell 'im--here! Give me a sheet of paper anda pencil and I'll tell him a few things myself. Chances are you'd smooth'em out too much, gitting 'em on paper. And the things I've got to sayto Blake don't want any smoothing."

  The things he wrote painfully with his rheumatic hand were not smoothedfor politeness' sake, and it made the Old Man feel better to get themoff his mind. He read the letter over three times, and lingered over themost scathing sentences relishfully. He sent one of his new men to townfor the express purpose of mailing that letter, and he felt a glow ofsatisfaction at actually speaking his mind upon the subject.

  Perhaps it was just as well he did not know that Blake was in Dry Lakewhen the letter reached his office in Helena, and that it was forwardedto the place whence it had started. Blake was already "getting a moveon," and he needed no such spur as the Old Man's letter. But the letterdid the Old Man a lot of good, so that it served its purpose.

  Blake had no intention of handling the case from the Flying U porch,for instance. He had laid his plans quite independently of the Flying Uoutfit. He had no intention of letting Irish be arrested upon a trumpedup charge, and he managed to send a word of warning to that hot-headedyoung man not to pu
t himself in the way of any groping arm of the law;it was so much simpler than arrest and preliminary trial and bail, andall that. He had sent word to Weary to come and see him, before everhe received the Old Man's letter, and he had placed at Weary's disposalwhat funds would be needed for the immediate plans of the Happy Family.He had attended in person to the hauling of the fence material to theirboundary line on the day he arrived and discovered by sheer accidentthat the stuff was still in the warehouse of the general store.

  After he did all that, the Honorable Blake received the Old Man'sletter, read it through slowly and afterwards stroked down his Vandykebeard and laughed quietly to himself. The letter itself was bothperemptory and profane, and commanded the Honorable Blake to do exactlywhat he had already done, and what he intended to do when the time camefor the doing.