Pink moved uneasily. "I--I don"t remember that I ever was," he answered guardedly.
"I was. My gang come along and cut me down just as I was about all in.
I was leading a gang----"
"Excuse me a minute," Pink interrupted hurriedly. "I think the overseer is motioning for me."
He hastened over to where Chip was standing alone, and asked if he should change his clothes and get ready to go to work.
Chip told him it wouldn"t be a bad idea, and Pink, carrying his haughty suit-case and another bulky bundle, disappeared precipitately into the bed-tent.
"By golly!" spoke up Slim, "it looks good enough to eat."
"Where did yuh pluck that modest flower, Chip?" Jack Bates wanted to know.
Chip calmly sifted some tobacco in a paper. "I picked it in town," he told them. "I hired it to punch cows, and its name is--wait a minute."
He put away the tobacco sack, got out his book, and turned the leaves.
"Its name is Percival Cadwallader Perkins."
"Oh, mamma! Percival Cadwolloper--what?" Weary looked utterly at sea.
"Perkins," supplied Chip.
"Percival--Cad-wolloper--Perkins," Weary mused aloud. "Yuh want to double the guard to-night, Chip; that name"ll sure stampede the bunch."
"He"s sure a sweet young thing--mamma"s precious lamb broke out uh the home corral!" said Jack Bates. "I"ll bet yuh a tall, yellow-haired mamma with flowing widow"s weeds"ll be out here hunting him up inside a week. We got to be gentle with him, and not rub none uh the bloom uh innocence off his rosy cheek. Mamma had a little lamb, his cheeks were red and rosy. And everywhere that mamma went--er--everywhere--that mamma--went----"
"The lamb was sure to mosey," supplied Weary.
"By golly! yuh got that backward," Slim objected. "It ought uh be: Everywhere the lambie went; his mamma was sure to mosey."
The reappearance of Pink cut short the discussion. Pink as he had looked before was pretty as a poster. Pink as he reappeared would have driven a matinee crowd wild with enthusiasm. On the stage he would be in danger of being Hobsonized; in the Flying U camp the Happy Family looked at him and drew a long breath. When his back was turned, they shaded their eyes ostentatiously from the blaze of his splendor.
He still wore his panama, and the dainty pink-and-white striped silk shirt, the gray trousers, and russet-leather belt with silver buckle.
But around his neck, nestling under his rounded chin, was a gorgeous rose-pink silk handkerchief, of the hue that he always wore, and that had given him the nickname of "Pink."
His white hands were hidden in a pair of wonderful silk-embroidered buckskin gauntlets. His gray trousers were tucked into number four tan riding-boots, high as to heel--so high that they looked two sizes smaller--and gorgeous as to silk-st.i.tched tops. A shiny, new pair of silver-mounted spurs jingled from his heels.
He smiled trustfully at Chip, and leaned, with the studiously graceful pose of the stage, against a hind wheel of the mess-wagon. Then he got papers and tobacco from a pocket of the silk shirt and began to roll a cigarette. Inwardly he hoped that the act would not give him away to the Happy Family, whom he felt in honor bound to deceive, and bewailed the smoke-hunger that drove him to take the risk.
The Happy Family, however, was unsuspicious. His pink-and-white prettiness, his clothes, and the baby innocence of his dimples and his long-lashed blue eyes branded him unequivocally in their eyes as the tenderest sort of tenderfoot.
"Get onto the way he rolls "em--backward!" murmured Weary into Cal"s ear.
"If there"s anything I hate," Cal remarked irrelevantly to the crowd, "it"s to see a girl chewing a tutti-frutti cud--or smoking a cigarette!"
Pink looked up from under his thick lashes and opened his lips to speak, then thought better of it. The jingling of the cavvy coming in cut short the incipient banter, and Pink turned and watched intently the corralling process. To him the jangling bells were sweetest music, for which ears and heart had hungered long, and which had come to him often in dreams. His blood tingled as might a lover"s when his sweetheart approaches.
"Weary, you and Cal better relieve the boys on herd," Chip called.
"I"ll get you a horse, P--Perkins"--he had almost said "Pink"--"and you can go along. Then to-night you"ll go on guard with Cal."
"Yes, sir," said Pink, with a docility that would have amazed any who knew him well, and followed Chip out to the corral, where Cal and Weary were already inside with their ropes, among the circling ma.s.s.
Chip led out a gentle little cow-pony that could almost day-herd without a rider of any sort, and Pink bridled him before the covertly watching crew. He did not do it as quickly as he might have done, for he "played to the gallery" and deliberately fumbled the buckle and pinned one ear of the pony down flat with the head-stall.
A new saddle, stiff and unbroken, is ever a vexation unto its proud owner, and its proper adjustment requires time and much language. Pink omitted the language, so that the process took longer than it would naturally have done; but Cal and Weary, upon their mounts, made cigarettes and waited, with an air of endurance, and gave Pink much advice. Then he got somehow into the saddle and flapped elbows beside them, looking like a gorgeous-hued canary with wings a-flutter.
Happy Jack, who had been standing herd disconsolately with two aliens, stared open-mouthed at Pink"s approach and rode hastily to camp, fair bursting with questions and comments.
The herd, twelve hundred range-fattened steers, grazed quietly on a side hill half a mile or more from camp. Pink ran a quick, appraising eye over the bunch estimating correctly the number, and noting their splendid condition.
"Never saw so many cattle in one bunch before, did yuh?" queried Cal, misinterpreting the glance.
Pink shook his head vaguely. "Does one man own all those cows?" he wanted to know, with just the proper amount of incredulous wonder.
"Yeah--and then some. This ain"t any herd at all; just a few that we"re shipping to get "em out uh the way uh the real herds."
"About how many do you think there are here?" asked Pink.
Cal turned his back upon his conscience and winked at Weary. "Oh, there"s only nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one," he lied boldly. "Last bunch we gathered was fifty-one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine and a half. Er--the half," he explained hastily in answer to Pink"s look of unbelief, "was a calf that we let in by mistake. I caught it, after we counted, and took it back to its mother."
"I should think," Pink ventured hesitatingly, "it would be hard to find its mother. I don"t see how you could tell."
"Well," said Cal gravely, sliding sidewise in the saddle, "it"s this way. A calf is always just like its mother, hair for hair. This calf had white hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh diamonds on its left side. All I had to do was ride the range till I found the cow that matched."
"Oh!" Pink looked thoughtful and convinced.
Weary, smiling to himself, rode off to take his station at the other side of the herd. Even the Happy Family must place duty a pace before pleasure, and Cal, much as he would liked to have continued the conversation, resisted temptation and started down along the nearest edge of the bunch. Pink showed inclination to follow.
"You stay where you"re at, sonny," Cal told him, over his shoulder.
"What must I do?" Pink straightened his tie and set his panama more firmly on his yellow curls, for a brisk wind was blowing.
Cal"s voice came back to him faintly: "Just dub around here and don"t do a darn thing; and don"t bother the cattle."
"Good advice, that," Pink commented amusedly. "Hits day-herding off to a T." He prepared for a lazy afternoon, and enjoyed every minute.
On his way back to camp at suppertime, Pink rode close to Cal and looked as if he had something on his mind. Cal and Weary exchanged glances.
"I"d like to ask," Pink began timidly, "how you fed that calf--before you found his mother. Didn"t he get pretty hungry?"
"Why, I carried a bottle uh milk along," Cal lied fluently. "When the bottle went empty I"d catch a cow and milk it."
"Would it stand without being tied?"
"Sure. All range cows"ll gentle right down, if yuh know the right way to approach "em, and the words to say. That"s a secret that we don"t tell anybody that hasn"t been a cowboy for a year, and rode fourteen broncos straight up. Sorry I can"t tell yuh."
Pink went diplomatically back to the calf. "Did you carry it in your arms, or--"