Chip, of the Flying U Part 22

"A--h-h!" The senator breathed the word deep in his throat and fell silent. Even the Old Man leaned forward in his chair that he might see the better. The Little Doctor could not see anything, just then, but no one noticed anything wrong with her eyes, for they were all down in the Bad Lands, watching an old range cow defend her calf.

"Bennett, do the two go together?" asked the senator, at last.

"I don't know--I painted it for Miss Whitmore," said Chip, a dull glow in his cheeks.

The Little Doctor glanced at him quickly, rather startled, if the truth be known.

"Oh, that was just a joke, Mr. Bennett. I would much rather have you paint me another one--this one makes me want to cry--and a doctor must forego the luxury of tears. I have no claim upon either of them, Mr.

Blake. It was like this. I started 'The Last Stand,' but I only had the background painted, and one day while I was gone Mr. Bennett finished it up--and it is his work that makes the picture worth anything. I let it pa.s.s as mine, for the time, but I never intended to wear the laurel crown, really. I only borrowed it for a little while. I hope you can make Mr. Bennett behave himself and put his brand on it, for if he doesn't it will go down to posterity unsigned. This other--'The Spoils of Victory'--he cannot attempt to disown, for I was away at Great Falls when he painted it, and he was here alone, so far as help of any kind is concerned. Now do make him be sensible!"

The senator looked at Chip, then at the Little Doctor, chuckled and sat down on the couch.

"Well, well! Kid Bennett hasn't changed, I see. He's just as ornery as he ever was. And you're the mysterious, modest genius! How did you come out after that dip into the old Missouri?" he asked, abruptly. "You didn't take cold, riding in those wet clothes, I hope?"

"I? No, I was all right. I stopped at that sheep camp and borrowed some dry clothes." Chip was very uncomfortable. He wished Blake wouldn't keep bringing up that affair, which was four years old and quite trivial, in his opinion. It was a good thing Dunk pulled out when he saw he'd got the worst of it, or there'd have been trouble, most likely. And Blake-- The senator went on, addressing the others.

"Do you know what this young fellow did, four years ago this last spring? I tried to cross the river near my place in a little boat, while the water was high. Bennett, here, came along and swore that a man with no more sense than I had ought to drown--which was very true, I admit.

I had just got out a nice little distance for drowning properly, when a tree came bobbing along and upset my boat, and Kid Bennett, as we called him then, rode in as far as he could--which was a great deal further than was safe for him--and roped me, just as he would have roped a yearling. Ha! ha! I can see him yet, scowling at me and whirling the loop over his head ready to throw. A picture of THAT, now! When he had dragged me to the bank he used some rather strong language--a cowboy does hate to wet his rope--and rode off before I had a chance to thank him. This is the first time I've seen him since then."

Chip got very red.

"I was young and foolish, those days, and you weren't a senator," he repeated, apologetically.

"My being a senator wouldn't have mattered at all. They've been changing your name, over this side the river, I see. How did that happen?"

Again Chip was uncomfortable.

"We've got a cook that is out of sight when it comes to Saratoga chips, and I'm a fiend for them, you see. The boys got to calling me Saratoga Chip, and then they cut it down to Chip and stuck to it."

"I see. There was a fellow with you over there--Davidson. What has become of him?"

"Weary? He works here, too. He's down in the bunk house now, I guess."

"Well, well! Let's go and hunt him up--and we can settle about the pictures at the same time. You seem to be crippled. How did that happen?

Some dare-devil performance, I expect."

The senator smiled rea.s.suringly at the Little Doctor and got Chip out of the house and down in the bunk house with Weary, and whatever means he used to make Chip "behave himself," they certainly were a success. For when he left, the next day, he left behind him a check of generous size, and Chip was not so aloof as he had been with the Little Doctor, and planned with her at least a dozen pictures which he meant to paint some time.

There was one which he did paint at once, however--though no one saw it but Della. It was the picture of a slim young woman with gray eyes and an old felt hat on her head, standing with her fingers tangled in the mane of a chestnut horse.

If there was a heartache in the work, if the brush touched the slim figure caressingly and lingered wistfully upon the face, no one knew but Chip, and Chip had learned long ago to keep his own counsel. There were some thoughts which he could not whisper into even Silver's ear.

CHAPTER XVIII. -- Dr. Cecil Granthum.

The Little Doctor leaned from the window and called down the hill to her recovered patient--more properly, her nearly recovered patient; for Chip still walked with the aid of a cane, though by making use of only one stirrup he could ride very well. He limped up the hill to her, and sat down on the top step of the porch.

"What's the excitement now?" he asked, banteringly.

"I've got the best, the most SPLENDID news--you couldn't guess what in a thousand years!"

"Then I won't try. It's too hot." Chip took off his hat and fanned himself with it.

"Well, can't you LOOK a little bit excited? Try and look the way I feel!

Anybody as cool as you are shouldn't suffer with the heat."

"I don't know--I get pretty hot, sometimes. Well, what is the most splendid news? Can't you tell a fellow, after calling him up here in the hot sun?"

"Well, listen. The Gilroy hospital--you know, where Cecil is"--Chip knew--"has a case of blighted love and shattered hopes"--Chip's foolish, man-heart nearly turned a somersault. Was it possible?--"and it's the luckiest thing ever happened."

"Yes?" Chip wished to goodness she would get to the point. She could be direct enough in her statements when what she said was going to hurt a fellow. His heart was thumping so it hurt him.

"Yes. A doctor there was planning to get married and go away on his honeymoon, you know--"

Chip nodded, half suffocated with crowding, incredulous hopes.

"Well, and now he isn't. His ladylove was faithless and loves another, and his honeymoon is indefinitely postponed. Do you see now where the good news comes in?"

Chip shook his head once and looked away up the grade. Funny, but something had gone wrong with his throat. He was half choked.

"Well, you ARE dull! Now that fellow isn't going to have any vacation, so Cecil can come out, right away! Next week! Think of it!"

Chip tried to think of it, but he couldn't think of anything, just then.

He was only conscious of wis.h.i.+ng Whizzer had made a finish of the job, up there on the Hog's Back that day. His heart no longer thumped--it was throbbing in a tired, listless fas.h.i.+on.

"Why can't you look a little bit pleased?" smiled the torturer from the window. "You sit there like a--an Indian before a cigar store. You've just about the same expression."

"I can't help it. I never was fierce to meet strangers, somehow."

"Judging from my own experience, I think you are uncommonly fierce at meeting strangers. I haven't forgotten how unmercifully you snubbed me when I came to the ranch, or how you risked my neck on the grade, up there, trying to make me scared enough to scream. I didn't, though! I wanted to, I'll admit, when you made the horses run down the steepest part--but I didn't, and so I could easily forgive you."

"Could you?" said Chip, in a colorless tone.

"If you had gained your object, I couldn't have," remarked she.

"I did, though."

"You did? Didn't you do it just to frighten me?"

Chip gave her a glance of weary tolerance. "You must think I've about as much sense as a jack rabbit; I was taking long chances to run that hill."

"Well, for pity's sake, what did you do it for?"