Chip of the Flying U Read online

  "I did beg, and tease, and entreat—but Cecil's in a hospital—as a physician, you understand, not as a patient, and can't get off just yet. In a month or two, perhaps—"

  Dinner, called shrilly by the Countess, interrupted her, and she flitted out of the room looking as little like a lovelorn maiden as she did like a doctor—which was little indeed.

  "She begged, and teased, and entreated," repeated Chip, savagely to himself when the door closed upon her, and fell into gloomy meditation, which left him feeling that there was no good thing in this wicked world—no, not one—that was not appropriated by some one with not sense enough to understand and appreciate his blessing.

  After dinner the Little Doctor spoke to the unsuspecting critics.

  "That picture which I started a couple of weeks ago is finished at last, and I want you good people to come and tell me what you think of it. I want you all—you, Slim, and Louise, you are to come and give your opinion."

  "Well, I don't know the first thing about paintin'," remonstrated the

  Countess, coming in from the kitchen.

  The Old Man lighted his pipe and followed her into the parlor with the others, and Slim rolled a cigarette to hide his embarrassment, for the role of art critic was new to him.

  There was some nervousness in the Little Doctor's manner as she set the easel to her liking and drew aside the curtain. She did not mean to be theatrical about it, but Chip, watching through the open door, fancied so, and let his lip curl a trifle. He was not in a happy frame of mind just then.

  A silence fell upon the group. The Old Man took his pipe from his mouth and stared.

  The cheeks of the Little Doctor paled and grew pink again. She laughed a bit, as though she would much rather cry.

  "Say something, somebody, quick!" she cried, when her nerves would bear no more.

  "Well, I do think it's awfully good, Dell," began the Countess.

  "By golly, I don't see how you done that without seein' it happen," exclaimed Slim, looking very dazed and mystified.

  "That's a Diamond Bar cow," remarked J. G., abstractedly. "That outfit never does git half their calves. I remember the last time I rode through there last winter, that cow—doggone it, Dell, how the dickens did you get that cow an' calf in? You must a had a photograph t' work from."

  "By golly, that's right," chimed in Slim. "That there's the cow I had sech a time chasin' out uh the bunch down on the bottom. I run her till I was plum sick, an' so was she, by golly. I'd know her among a thousand. Yuh got her complete—all but the beller, an', by golly, yuh come blame near gittin' that, too!" Slim, always slow and very much in earnest, gradually became infused with the spirit of the scene. "Jest look at that ole gray sinner with his nose r'ared straight up in the air over there! By golly, he's callin' all his wife's relations t' come an' help 'em out. He's thinkin' the ole Diamon' Bar's goin' t' be one too many fer 'em. She shore looks fighty, with 'er head down an' 'er eyes rollin' all ways t' oncet, ready fer the first darn cuss that makes a crooked move! An' they know it, too, by golly, er they wouldn't hang back like they're a-doin'. I'd shore like t' be cached behind that ole pine stub with a thirty—thirty an' a fist full uh shells— I'd shore make a scatteration among 'em! A feller could easy—"

  "But, Slim, they're nothing but paint!" The Little Doctor's eyes were shining.

  Slim turned red and grinned sheepishly at the others.

  "I kinda fergot it wasn't nothin' but a pitcher," he stammered, apologetically.

  "That is the gist of the whole matter," said Dunk. "You couldn't ask for a greater compliment, or higher praise, than that, Miss Della. One forgets that it is a picture. One only feels a deep longing for a good rifle. You must let me take it with me to Butte. That picture will make you famous among cattlemen, at least. That is to say, out West, here. And if you will sell it I am positive I can get you a high price for it."

  The eyes of the Little Doctor involuntarily sought the Morris chair in the next room; but Chip was looking out across the coulee, as he had a habit of doing lately, and seemed not to hear what was going on in the parlor. He was indifference personified, if one might judge from his outward appearance. The Little Doctor turned her glance resentfully to her brother's partner.

  "Do you mean all that?" she demanded of him.

  "I certainly do. It is great, Miss Della. I admit that it is not quite like your other work; the treatment seems different, in places, and—er— stronger. It is the best picture of the kind that I have ever seen, I think. It holds one, in a way—"

  "By golly, I bet Chip took a pitcher uh that!" exclaimed Slim, who had been doing some hard thinking. "He was tellin' us last winter about ridin' up on that ole Diamon' Bar cow with a pack uh wolves around her, an' her a-standin' 'em off, an' he shot two uh the wolves. Yes, sir; Chip jest about got a snap shot of 'em."

  "Well, doggone it! what if he did?" The Old Man turned jealously upon him. "It ain't everyone that kin paint like that, with nothin' but a little kodak picture t' go by. Doggone it! I don't care if Dell had a hull apurn full uh kodak pictures that Chip took—it's a rattlin' good piece uh work, all the same."

  "I ain't sayin' anything agin' the pitcher," retorted Slim. "I was jest wonderin' how she happened t' git that cow down s' fine, brand 'n all, without some kind uh pattern t' go by. S' fur 's the pitcher goes, it's about as good 's kin be did with paint, I guess. I ain't ever seen anything in the pitcher line that looked any natcherler."

  "Well, I do think it's just splendid!" gurgled the Countess. "It's every bit as good 's the one Mary got with a year's subscription t' the Household Treasure fer fifty cents. That one's got some hounds chasin' a deer and a man hidin' in 'the bushes, sost yuh kin jest see his head. It's an awful purty pitcher, but this one's jest as good. I do b'lieve it's a little bit better, if anything. Mary's has got some awful nice, green grass, an' the sky's an awful purty blue—jest about the color uh my blue silk waist. But yuh can't expect t' have grass an' sky like that in the winter, an' this is more of a winter pitcher. It looks awful cold an' lonesome, somehow, an' it makes yuh want t' cry, if yuh look at it long enough."

  The critics stampeded, as they always did when the Countess began to talk.

  "You better let Dunk take it with him, Dell," was the parting advice of the Old Man.

  CHAPTER XIV. Convalescence.

  "You don't mind, do you?" The Little Doctor was visibly uneasy.

  "Mind what?" Chip's tone was one of elaborate unconsciousness. "Mind Dunk's selling the picture for you? Why should I? It's yours, you know."

  "I think you have some interest in it yourself," she said, without looking at him. "You don't think I mean to—to—"

  "I don't think anything, except that it's your picture, and I put in a little time meddling with your property for want of something else to do. All I painted doesn't cover one quarter of the canvas, and I guess you've done enough for me to more than make up. I guess you needn't worry over that cow and calf—you're welcome to them both; and if you can get a bounty on those five wolves, I'll be glad to have you. Just keep still about my part of it."

  Chip really felt that way about it, after the first dash of wounded pride. He could never begin to square accounts with the Little Doctor, anyhow, and he was proud that he could do something for her, even if it was nothing more than fixing up a picture so that it rose considerably above mediocrity. He had meant it that way all along, but the suspicion that she was quite ready to appropriate his work rather shocked him, just at first. No one likes having a gift we joy in bestowing calmly taken from our hands before it has been offered. He wanted her to have the picture for her very own—but—but—He had not thought of the possibility of her selling it, or of Dunk as her agent. It was all right, of course, if she wanted to do that with it, but—There was something about it that hurt, and the hurt of it was not less, simply because he could not locate the pain.

  His mind fidgeted with the subject. If he could have saddled Silver and gone for a long gallop over the prairie lan
d, he could have grappled with his rebellious inner self and choked to death several unwelcome emotions, he thought. But there was Silver, crippled and swung uncomfortably in canvas wrappings in the box stall, and here was himself, crippled and held day after day in one room and one chair—albeit a very pleasant room and a very comfortable chair—and a gallop as impossible to one of them as to the other.

  "I do wish—" The Little Doctor checked herself abruptly, and hummed a bit of coon song.

  "What do you wish?" Chip pushed his thoughts behind him, and tried to speak in his usual manner.

  "Nothing much. I was just wishing Cecil could see 'The Last Stand.'"

  Chip said absolutely nothing for five minutes, and for an excellent reason. There was not a single thought during that time which would sound pretty if put into words, and he had no wish to shock the Little Doctor.

  After that day a constraint fell upon them both, which each felt keenly and neither cared to explain away. "The Last Stand" was tacitly dismissed from their conversation, of which there grew less and less as the days passed.

  Then came a time when Chip strongly resented being looked upon as an invalid, and Johnny was sent home, greatly to his sorrow.

  Chip hobbled about the house on crutches, and chafed and fretted, and managed to be very miserable indeed because he could not get out and ride and clear his brain and heart of some of their hurt—for it had come to just that; he had been compelled to own that there was a hurt which would not heal in a hurry.

  It was a very bitter young man who, lounging in the big chair by the window one day, suddenly snorted contempt at a Western story he had been reading and cast the magazine—one of the Six Leading—clean into the parlor where it sprawled its artistic leaves in the middle of the floor. The Little Doctor was somewhere—he never seemed to know just where, nowadays—and the house was lonesome as an isolated peak in the Bad Lands.

  "I wish I had the making of the laws. I'd put a bounty on all the darn fools that think they can write cowboy stories just because they rode past a roundup once, on a fast train," he growled, reaching for his tobacco sack. "Huh! I'd like to meet up with the yahoo that wrote that rank yarn! I'd ask him where he got his lack of information. Huh! A cow-puncher togged up like he was going after the snakiest bronk in the country, when he was only going to drive to town in a buckboard! 'His pistol belt and dirk and leathern chaps'—oh, Lord; oh, Lord! And spurs! I wonder if he thinks it takes spurs to ride a buckboard? Do they think, back East, that spurs grow on a man's heels out here and won't come off? Do they think we SLEEP in 'em, I wonder?" He drew a match along the arm of the chair where the varnish was worn off. "They think all a cow-puncher has to do is eat and sleep and ride fat horses. I'd like to tell some of them a few things that they don't—"

  "I've brought you a caller, Chip. Aren't you glad to see him?" It was the Little Doctor at the window, and the laugh he loved was in her voice and in her eyes, that it hurt him to meet, lately.

  The color surged to his face, and he leaned from the window, his thin, white hand outstretched caressingly.

  "I'd tell a man!" he said, and choked a little over it. "Silver, old boy!"

  Silver, nickering softly, limped forward and nestled his nose in the palm of his master.

  "He's been out in the corral for several days, but I didn't tell you— I wanted it for a surprise," said the Little Doctor. "This is his longest trip, but he'll soon be well now."

  "Yes; I'd give a good deal if I could walk as well as he can," said Chip, gloomily.

  "He wasn't hurt as badly as you were. You ought to be thankful you can walk at all, and that you won't limp all your life. I was afraid for a while, just at first—"

  "You were? Why didn't you tell me?" Chip's eyes were fixed sternly upon her.

  "Because I didn't want to. It would only have made matters worse, anyway. And you won't limp, you know, if you're careful for a while longer. I'm going to get Silver his sugar. He has sugar every day."

  Silver lifted his head and looked after her inquiringly, whinnied complainingly, and prepared to follow as best he could.

  "Silver—oh, Silver!" Chip snapped his fingers to attract his attention. "Hang the luck, come back here! Would you throw down your best friend for that girl? Has she got to have you, too?" His voice grew wistfully rebellious. "You're mine. Come back here, you little fool—she doesn't care."

  Silver stopped at the corner, swung his head and looked back at Chip, beckoning, coaxing, swearing under his breath. His eyes sought for sign of his goddess, who had disappeared most mysteriously. Throwing up his head, he sent a protest shrilling through the air, and looked no more at Chip.

  "I'm coming, now be still. Oh, don't you dare paw with your lame leg!

  Why didn't you stay with your master?"

  "He's no use for his master, any more," said Chip, with a hurt laugh. "A woman always does play the—mischief, somehow. I wonder why? They look innocent enough."

  "Wait till your turn comes, and perhaps you'll learn why," retorted she.

  Chip, knowing that his turn had come, and come to tarry, found nothing to say.

  "Beside," continued the Little Doctor, "Silver didn't want me so much— it was the sugar. I hope you aren't jealous of me, because I know his heart is big enough to hold us both."

  She stayed a long half hour, and was so gay that it seemed like old times to listen to her laugh and watch her dimples while she talked. Chip forgot that he had a quarrel with fate, and he also forgot Dr. Cecil Granthum, of Gilroy, Ohio—until Slim rode up and handed the Little Doctor a letter addressed in that bold, up-and-down writing that Chip considered a little the ugliest specimen of chirography he had ever seen in his life.

  "It's from Cecil," said the Little Doctor, simply and unnecessarily, and led Silver back down the hill.

  Chip, gazing at that tiresome bluff across the coulee, renewed his quarrel with fate.

  CHAPTER XV. The Spoils of Victory.

  "I wish, while I'm gone, you'd paint me another picture. Will you,

  PLEASE?"

  When a girl has big, gray eyes that half convince you they are not gray at all, but brown, or blue, at times, and a way of using them that makes a fellow heady, like champagne, and a couple of dimples that will dodge into her cheeks just when a fellow is least prepared to resist them—why, what can a fellow do but knuckle under and say yes, especially when she lets her head tip to one side a little and says "please" like that?

  Chip tried not to look at her, but he couldn't help himself very well while she stood directly in front of him. He compromised weakly instead of refusing point-blank, as he told himself he wanted to do.

  "I don't know—maybe I can't, again."

  "Maybe you can, though. Here's an eighteen by twenty-four canvas, and here are all the paints I have in the house, and the brushes. I'll expect to see something worth while, when I return."

  "Well, but if I can't—"

  "Look here. Straight in the eye, if you please! Now, will you TRY?"

  Chip, looking into her eyes that were laughing, but with a certain earnestness behind the laugh, threw up his hands—mentally, you know.

  "Yes, I'll try. How long are you going to be gone?"

  "Oh, perhaps a week," she said, lightly, and Chip's heart went heavy.

  "You may paint any kind of picture you like, but I'd rather you did something like 'The Last Stand'—only better. And put your brand, as you call it, in one corner."

  "You won't sell it, will you?" The words slipped out before he knew.

  "No—no, I won't sell it, for it won't be mine. It's for yourself this time."

  "Then there won't be any picture," said Chip, shortly.

  "Oh, yes, there will," smiled the Little Doctor, sweetly, and went away before he could contradict her.

  Perhaps a week! Heavens, that was seven days, and every day had at least sixteen waking hours. How would it be when it was years, then? When Dr. Cecil Granthum—(er—no, I won't. The invective attached to that gentleman's
name was something not to be repeated here.) At any rate, a week was a long, long time to put in without any gray eyes or any laugh, or any dimples, or, in short, without the Little Doctor. He could not see, for his part, why she wanted to go gadding off to the Falls with Len Adams and the schoolma'am, anyway. Couldn't they get along without her? They always had, before she came to the country; but, for that matter, so had he. The problem was, how was he going to get along without her for the rest of his life? What did they want to stay a week for? Couldn't they buy everything they wanted in a day or so? And the Giant Spring wasn't such great shakes, nor the Rainbow Falls, that they need to hang around town a week just to look at them. And the picture—what was he such a fool for? Couldn't he say no with a pair of gray eyes staring into his? It seemed not. He supposed he must think up something to daub on there—the poorer the better.

  That first day Chip smoked something like two dozen cigarettes, gazed out across the coulee till his eyes ached, glared morosely at the canvas on the easel, which stared back at him till the dull blankness of it stamped itself upon his brain and he could see nothing else, look where he might. Whereupon he gathered up hat and crutches, and hobbled slowly down the hill to tell Silver his troubles.

  The second day threatened to be like the first. Chip sat by the window and smoked; but, little by little, the smoke took form and substance until, when he turned his eyes to the easel, a picture looked back at him—even though to other eyes the canvas was yet blank and waiting.

  There was no Johnny this time to run at his beckoning. He limped about on his crutches, collected all things needful, and sat down to work.

  As he sketched and painted, with a characteristic rapidity that was impatient of the slightest interruption yet patient in its perfectness of detail, the picture born of the smoke grew steadily upon the canvas.