The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
those young bulls alone or he'd break a leg; meaning, of course, a bull's leg. But no one asked where he was going or suggested that he come back and stay with the bunch; which was not like the Happy Family, as any one who knows them will observe.
The Kid understood, or thought he did. They were sore because he had told them the truth last night. Probably he had made a fool of himself—he should have known they didn't want to be disturbed in their delusions. But he was hurt and disappointed nevertheless and he felt considerably let down after his careful diagnosis of their case and his good resolutions and all.
So he packed an emergency ration of one package of raisins and a few hardtack which he kept in camp for his long rides, changed his saddle to Blazes, who needed exercise that day, and rode off into the hills toward the river. Not that he wanted to go off and sulk, but because he was pursuing a somewhat rigid training for himself and his horses, and several hours in the saddle each day, riding through rough country, was a part of his program to toughen his mounts and himself.
He liked the solitude of those long, twisty canyons and the high, windy ridges between. He liked to follow them at random, losing himself in the labyrinth of little gulches for awhile, just for the pleasure of working his way out; not always an easy thing to do, though his sense of location was splendidly developed. It was wilderness unspoiled, in spite of the occasional little ranches nested in deep, shut-in valleys. Sometimes he liked to ride through the small pastures and imagine himself a hermit living there away from the world, but mostly he avoided them and tried to ignore the fact that they were near.
To-day, with the talk of the Happy Family fresh in his mind and with their attitude toward him rankling in his heart, he turned aside from his usual route and burrowed deeper and deeper into the wild, scarcely conscious of the way he took but wanting only to ride and ride and turn back only when he must. So eventually he awoke to the fact that the day was far spent and he had not the faintest notion of the way he had come, nor the way he should go. It had been hunger that gnawed its way to his attention, so now he ate a little, drank from a spring that, unlike many other springs in the Bad Lands, happened to be good water, and gave himself to the problem of finding the way home.
Before, when he had lost himself purposely, it had been sheer pretense and he had always kept a fair record in his mind of the general course he had taken. To-day he had been glooming along thinking of other things and had lost himself with a vengeance. It was late when he started back, and it was dark before he had found a way out of that canyon.
It was late the next afternoon when he arrived at a ranch and found the place deserted, every one having gone out somewhere to celebrate the Fourth, no doubt. Too bad. The folks were having a picnic party for all the old-timers in the country, and it might be that these ranchers were old acquaintances of Weary and the others. The Kid went in and borrowed some bread, gathered half a hatful of eggs at the stable, milked a tame cow in the little pasture and feasted beside a camp fire down by the creek. It was not the way he had expected to spend this Fourth of July, and the folks were probably worrying about him, but that did not impair his appetite for bread and milk and hard-boiled eggs.
Blazes, too, was hungry. The Kid decided to let him graze for an hour before he started home, and in the meantime he lay back in the shade of the willows and took a nap, his big hat tilted down over his face. It was dark when he awoke—indeed, by the stars it was close to midnight. The Kid got up, caught his horse and saddled in haste and started homeward along the rough ranch road that crawled crookedly through the canyons to where it finally debouched into a river trail which the Kid recognized. Even then he was miles from the Flying U and the dawn wind was creeping over the hills.
The night was graying to that ghostly translucence that precedes daybreak when the Kid unsaddled Blazes at his own camp and sent him off nickering to join his companions in the meadow. It was hours too early for breakfast. He crawled into his bed, tired and sleepy and considerably crestfallen over his mischance, and immediately he fell into deep, dreamless slumber.
The midday meal was over when the Kid, whistling a meaningless jazz tune, came sauntering up the path with his hands in his pockets and his big Stetson tilted at a rakish angle over one eyebrow just to show he didn't care. But he did care. In back of that nonchalant pose he was squirming with apprehension over the reception he would receive. Were they mad, and would they give him the devil? Had they worried, thinking something had happened to him? Parents did worry upon the slightest provocation. The Kid would almost rather they got up on their ear about it.
There they all were, sitting around on the porch talking and looking almost as if they had not moved from the spot since he left. The Kid's saunter grew a shade more arrogant, trying to hide his dread of the battery of glances that turned upon him in varying degrees of disapproval. But after all he passed the ordeal very well, it seemed to him, though he grew hot inside at the transparent effort to accept his return as a matter of course; something of no moment because he had not been missed. But his lips did not lose their pucker and his tune did not miss a note until his foot was upon the lowest step of the porch, Pink moving aside to make room for him. He nodded a negligent greeting that included them all, flung a careless sentence after it for good measure and went into the house.
"Claude Bennett, where have you been since day before yesterday?" the Little Doctor demanded with hard, bright eyes.
"Oh, riding around," the Kid told her smilingly, though a premonitory tightening of his throat shortened the sentence perforce.
"Riding around! You're getting more impossible every day of your life! You—"
"I'll have a talk with this young hound, Dell," Chip's voice behind the Kid interrupted her. "Nothing you can say would hit the spot. If he hasn't any more decency than to pull a stunt like this, he's got to be taught a few things. No boy of mine can insult the best friends I've got on earth—"
"How?" the Kid turned to face the storm he felt was coming. But his mother stepped between the two and with a hand on Chip's shoulder shook her head in a gesture of complete understanding.
"Not now, honey. I want to talk to Claude myself. I've got to. And I don't want you present, my dear. Go back to the boys until I've finished, and then if you have anything you feel you must say, I'll turn Claude over to you; and I won't," she promised him hastily when she saw rebellion in his face, "I won't interfere. But he's my son too, you know. If we've spoiled him, I'm as much to blame as you and I must have my chance. Go on, before J. G. gets all upset!"
The Kid, thus warned, turned and set his hat upon a chair, smoothed back his heavy brown mane that had one deep wave across the top, and folded his arms.
"Who's going to administer the anæsthetic?" he inquired lightly, as the door closed behind his dad.
It needed just that note of levity, perhaps, to stiffen the Little Doctor's determination and furnish the cue she needed for the most unpleasant speech of her life. And the Kid stood and took the lash of her eloquence, immobile as a figure in bronze; arms folded, head bent a little so that he looked down into her blazing eyes. But as she talked she saw the soul of him withdraw itself farther and farther from her, until his eyes were as cold as ice; which was a strange way the Kid had brought up with him from babyhood. It frightened her a little now; made her feel as if she were upbraiding a man stone deaf.
"Courtesy and consideration, Claude, are indispensable to a doctor, whose whole life is given to serving humanity," she finished a bit desperately. "You can't go on like this, ignoring the common courtesies of life—"
"Just a minute, Mother. It might simplify matters for you a little to know that I have no intention of being a doctor."
She drew a long breath, staring up at him blankly for an appreciable moment.
"I know you've been taking that for granted, and I hated to disappoint you, so I didn't say anything about it. But seeing I'm the weeds anyway in your estimation and Dad's, I may as well give you the complete list of my crimes."
"If you're not going to be a doctor," she managed to say, "why have you gone on for two whole years studying—"
"Knowledge is power," the Kid told her unemotionally. "Nowadays a fellow needs the background of some good school; if he can get it,