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

anybody hear the last of it. Down t’ Mary’s—”

      “Twenty cakes! Good gracious! I’ll have to order my stock of medicine, for I’ll surely have a houseful of patients if the guests eat twenty cakes.”

      “Well, as the sayin’ is: ‘Patience an’ perseverance can git away with most anything,’” observed the Countess, naively.

      The Little Doctor retired behind her handkerchief.

      “My stars alive, I do b’lieve my bread’s beginnin’ t’ scorch!” cried the Countess, and ran to see. The Little Doctor followed her inside and sat down.

      “We must make a list of the things we’ll need, Louise. You—”

      “Dell! Oh-h. Dell!” The voice of the Old Man resounded from the parlor.

      “I’m in the kitchen!” called she, remaining where she was. He tramped heavily through the house to her.

      “I’ll send the rig in, t’morrow, if there’s anything yuh want,” he remarked. “And if you’ll make out a list uh dope, I’ll send the order in t’ the Falls. We’ve got plenty uh saws an’ cold chisels down in the blacksmith shop—you can pick out what yuh want.” He dodged and grinned. “Got any cake, Countess?”

      “Well, there ain’t a thing cooked, hardly. I’m going t’ bake up something right after dinner. Here’s some sponge cake—but it ain’t fit t’ eat, hardly. I let Dell look in the oven, ‘cause my han’s was all over flour, an’ she slammed the door an’ it fell. But yuh can’t expect one person t’ know everything—an’ too many han’s can’t make decent soup, as the sayin’ is, an’ it’s the same way with cake.”

      The Old Man winked at the Little Doctor over a great wedge of feathery delight. “I don’t see nothing the matter with this—only it goes down too easy,” he assured the Countess between mouthfuls. “Fix up your list, Dell, and don’t be afraid t’ order everything yuh need. I’ll foot the—”

      The Old Man, thinking to go back to his work, stepped into the puddle of soft soap and sat emphatically down upon the top step, coasting rapidly to the bottom. A carpet slipper shot through the open door and landed in the dishpan; the other slipper disappeared mysteriously. The wedge of cake was immediately pounced upon by an investigative hen and carried in triumph to her brood.

      “Good Lord!” J. G. struggled painfully to his feet. “Dell, who in thunder put that stuff there? You’re a little too doggoned anxious for somebody t’ practice on, seems t’ me.” A tiny trickle of blood showed in the thin spot on his head.

      “Are you hurt, J. G.? We—I spilled the soap.” The Little Doctor gazed solicitous, from the doorway.

      “Huh! I see yuh spilled the soap, all right enough. I’m willin’ to believe yuh did without no affidavit. Doggone it, a bachelor never has any such a man-trap around in a fellow’s road. I’ve lived in Montana fourteen years, an’ I never slipped up on my own doorstep till you got here. It takes a woman t’ leave things around—where’s my cake?”

      “Old Specie took it down by the bunk house. Shall I go after it?”

      “No, you needn’t. Doggone it, this wading through ponds uh soft soap has got t’ stop right here. I never had t’ do it when I was baching, I notice.” He essayed, with the aid of a large splinter, to scrape the offending soap from his trousers.

      “Certainly, you didn’t. Bachelors never use soap,” retorted Della.

      “Oh, they don’t, hey? That’s all you know about it. They don’t use this doggoned, slimy truck, let me tell yuh. What d’yuh want, Chip? Oh, you’ve got t’ grin, too! Dell, why don’t yuh do something fer my head? What’s your license good f er, I’d like t’ know? You didn’t see Dell’s license, did yuh, Chip? Go and get it an’ show it to him, Dell. It’s good fer everything but gitting married—there ain’t any cure for that complaint.”

Chapter VII. Love and a Stomach Pump

       Table of Contents

      An electrical undercurrent of expectation pervaded the very atmosphere of Flying U ranch. The musicians, two supercilious but undeniably efficient young men from Great Falls, had arrived two hours before and were being graciously entertained by the Little Doctor up at the house. The sandwiches stood waiting, the coffee was ready for the boiling water, and the dining-room floor was smooth as wax could make it.

      For some reason unknown to himself, Chip was “in the deeps.” He even threatened to stop in the bunk house and said he didn’t feel like dancing, but was brought into line by weight of numbers. He hated Dick Brown, anyway, for his cute, little yellow mustache that curled up at the ends like the tail of a drake. He had snubbed him all the way out from town and handled Dick’s guitar with a recklessness that invited disaster. And the way Dick smirked when the Old Man introduced him to the Little Doctor—a girl with a fellow in the East oughtn’t to let her eyes smile that way at a pin-headed little dude like Dick Brown, anyway. And he—Chip—had given, her a letter postmarked blatantly: “Gilroy, Ohio, 10:30 P. M.”—and she had been so taken up with those cussed musicians that she couldn’t even thank him, and only just glanced at the letter before she stuck it inside her belt. Probably she wouldn’t even read it till after the dance. He wondered if Dr. Cecil Granthum cared—oh, hell! Of COURSE he cared—that is, if he had any sense at all. But the Little Doctor—she wasn’t above flirting, he noticed. If HE ever fell in love with a girl—which the Lord forbid—he’d take mighty good care she didn’t get time to make dimples and smiles for some other fellow to go to heaven looking at.

      There, that was her, laughing like she always laughed—it reminded him of pines nodding in a canyon and looking wise and whispering things they’d seen and heard before you were born, and of water falling over rocks, somehow. Queer, maybe—but it did. He wondered if Dick Brown had been trying to say something funny. He didn’t see, for the life of him, how the Little Doctor could laugh at that little imitation man. Girls are—well, they’re easy pleased, most of them.

      Down in the bunk house the boys were hurrying into their “war togs”—which is, being interpreted, their best clothes. There was a nervous scramble over the cracked piece of a bar mirror—which had a history—and cries of “Get out!” “Let me there a minute, can’t yuh?” and “Get up off my coat!” were painfully frequent.

      Happy Jack struggled blindly with a refractory red tie, which his face rivaled in hue and sheen—for he had been generous of soap.

      Weary had possessed himself of the glass and was shaving as leisurely as though four restive cow-punchers were not waiting anxiously their turn.

      “For the Lord’s sake, Weary!” spluttered Jack Bates. “Your whiskers grow faster’n you can shave ‘em off, at that gait. Get a move on, can’t yuh?”

      Weary turned his belathered face sweetly upon Jack. “Getting in a hurry, Jacky? YOUR girl won’t be there, and nobody else’s girl is going to have time to see whether you shaved to-day or last Christmas. You don’t want to worry so much about your looks, none of you. I hate to say it, but you act vain, all of you kids. Honest, I’m ashamed. Look at that gaudy countenance Happy’s got on—and his necktie’s most as bad.” He stropped his razor with exasperating nicety, stopping now and then to test its edge upon a hair from his own brown head.

      Happy Jack, grown desperate over his tie and purple over Weary’s remarks, craned his neck over the shoulder of that gentleman and leered into the mirror. When Happy liked, he could contort his naturally plain features into a diabolical grin which sent prickly waves creeping along the spine of the beholder.

      Weary looked, stared, half rose from his chair.

      “Holy smithereens! Quit it, Happy! You look like the devil by lightning.”

      Happy, watching, seized the hand that held the