The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
the same complaint when the Happy Family rode the range. They, too, had been told that the old West was gone and the country was getting too settled and civilized. They had laughed at the notion, no doubt; but here they were, mourning in their turn the passing of the West. It angered the Kid, who loved every mile of it for its bigness, the wide sweep of its prairies, the unconquerable vastness of its mountain ranges, for the heady keenness of its whooping winds.
"They're wrong, dead wrong!" he told himself hotly, when he was lying in his camp bed gazing up at the purple sky with its millions of twinkling lights. "There are more fences and more towns and more people, but it isn't tame yet, by a long shot! They think it's slowed down, but it's just because they've slowed down themselves. The young fellows don't find it so tame! They don't hit the pace they used to hit. It—oh, heck, it's their youth that's gone, and they don't know it!"
Upon that pathetic thought the Kid meditated long and pityingly. It was a darned shame men had to grow old and soft, so they couldn't ride a bronk or throw a rope the way they used to do. He wished they had his muscle and endurance—he'd take them into country as wild as when the Indians painted their ponies and themselves and rode in breechclouts with feathers in their hair. Why a little more—just a few more years—and they'd be like his uncle J. G., just sitting in the house doing nothing but talk about old times!
"Gosh, I hadn't realized it, but the Happy Family's getting old! Too bad . . . good boys too, before they lost their stride . . ." Upon that commiserating thought the Kid's heavy-lashed eyelids drooped and stayed down. In the cool starlight he slept with the sound, untroubled slumber of youth.
In the guest room of the white house on the knoll a vastly different point of view was discussed at about that time, when Andy Green had at last felt the yearning for sleep after a hard day's drive and was making ready for bed. A muttered exclamation when he stubbed his bare toe against a rocker had roused his wife, and some conversation ensued. Part of it concerned the very thing the Kid was thinking about as he fell asleep.
"Has the Kid come back, Andy? Dell felt really put out about his going off that way when he knew we were here and all. Of course, she tried to hide it, but she kept making excuses for him—you saw him, didn't you? What's he like?"
Andy gave a grunt that might have meant anything.
"Isn't he—nice?"
"Oh-h—just a darned swell-headed goslin'—looks like Chip used to, quite a lot; something like his mother too. Thinks he's forgot more than the rest of us ever knew. I don't know where he gets it—if he was my kid I'd sure take a lot of that out of him. Chip's too easy."
"I can't imagine the Kid turning out like that," Rosemary made regretful comment. "He was the dearest boy—"
"It sure is too bad," Andy agreed. "High hat—that kind of thing. I guess maybe he'll get over it in time, but he sure as the world has got a bad attack of know-it-all now! Why—" he raised his voice indignantly, then dropped it to a mumble when his wife nudged him warningly "—he was even trying to tell us boys we didn't know what real riding and roping is! Can you beat that?"
"No!" Rosemary managed to express a world of incredulity in that one word.
"And that," Andy finished with gloomy finality, "is what a man gets when he sends a kid to college. Takes 'em ten years to get over it."
"What a shame!" yawned Mrs. Andy. "Dell is so proud she'd die before she'd own she's disappointed in Claude—"
"I don't know as she is. Mothers don't see their kids the way other folks do. Or fathers either—though I must say Chip don't seem overly keen about him."
"Too bad!" decided Rosemary, much as the Kid had done. "He was such a good boy, I hate to think of him spoiled—but of course you mustn't let on you notice it, Andy. It would hurt Dell terribly if she thought—"
"Oh, I ain't going to tell 'em what I think of him," Andy mumbled sleepily. "Gosh, it's good to get stretched out in a good bed, after some of them hotels we put up at! My old bones ache to-night—we'll take it easier going back. No sense in driving like Billy-be-damn just to get over the road. If Mig wants to step on 'er he can; I'm goin' to take it easy."
So Andy unconsciously proved the Kid's deductions were in a measure correct, though neither of them was aware of it.
Chapter IV. The Kid Rebels
The Kid awoke at daylight under the canopied, soft tints of summer sunrise, and lay for a time looking up at the changing hues of the clouds, basking wordlessly in the glory of life. Some of the artist's love of beauty must have come to the Kid from his father, though he had never taken to pencil or brush but contented himself so far with the secret glow of appreciation when sheer perfection such as this morning lay all about him. But his mind gradually returned to the thoughts of last night and revolved about the deplorable change he saw in the four members of the Happy Family who had come so far and so fast to spend the Fourth at the old ranch, and who had left so much in the past that they couldn't quite focus their eyes upon the present.
The Kid, stretching his long limbs luxuriously under the two blankets that covered him, thought what a pity it was that the boys couldn't face life as he faced it. No wonder they resented the years that had taken the horses they loved—he supposed they loved the horses they talked about, just as he loved Stardust and Blazes and Sunup. It must be pretty tough, all right, to feel yourself growing old, no longer toughened to the trails, having to leave all the good times behind you for the young fellows to enjoy.
In that mood of sincere sympathy the Kid began this day by determining to do all in his power to show the boys a nice time while they were here. He decided that it was all wrong to think of having a little exhibition of roping and riding. He had expected that the boys would fall in with the idea and take part in the fun, and perhaps give him some good pointers—they who were such experts. But now he saw that it would prove a one-man show, and that they would merely sit back and tolerate him and think he was showing off; and they would tell how they used to do it, and probably they would make him feel like a fool. So he cancelled his little Wild West program and set himself the task of finding out what they really would enjoy the most.
By noon he thought he knew. What they enjoyed most, it seemed to him, was sitting around on the porch talking about horses and round-ups and fights and men, with Chip and the Old Man. Even the women were absorbed in their own interests. Rosemary fussed with her two little tads, as she called them—pretty little things they were, questing like young quail and needing a watchful eye upon them—and talking with the Little Doctor, also about old times.
Nobody needed the Kid, and nobody paid any attention to him. Though he remembered a good many incidents they recalled, they did not seem to include him in any of their reminiscences or to care what he remembered, any more than if he were ten years old instead of twenty past. In the two hours and more after breakfast that he lingered on the porch, waiting for a chance to show his affectionate understanding and his friendly intentions toward them, not a dozen words were spoken to him directly. Once, Weary asked for a match and turned away when the Kid told him he didn't smoke; and once Rosemary, coming out to get Junior, paused and fixed her pretty brown eyes upon him and asked how he liked college. Not a head turned his way when the Kid said, "All right." Rosemary smiled and plucked her young child by the back of his rompers and scooted him into the house, and that was the end of the Kid's conversation with the company that morning. They were all too busy. Memory had carried them back into a time that shut him out as with a high wall.
The Kid enjoyed hearing them talk, but the inaction palled upon him and it looked as though this sort of thing would last all day. He did not know, you see, that they were consciously drawing the Old Man out of his brooding silence, trying to lure him back to an interest in life. At any rate, he grew tired of sitting still and letting his long legs dangle off the porch, so he got to his feet and started unobtrusively for the corral where he had left Stardust saddled when he rode up from his camp in the lower pasture. Chip, brought back to the present by the movement, called