“Oh, my!” gasped Helen. “Miss Cullam will think you are making fun of her.”
“No she won’t——the dear thing! She has too much good sense. But she has given me what Tom would call a dandy idea.”
“Isn’t it nice to have Tom—or somebody—to lay our use of slang to?” said Ruth’s chum demurely.
The party did not leave Handy Gulch the next day, nor the day following. There were several excuses given for this delay and they were all good.
One of the ponies had developed lameness; and a burro wandered away and Pedro had to spend half a day searching for him. Perhaps the Mexican lad would have been quicker about this had Min been on hand to hurry him. But having been close beside her father all night she lay down for needed sleep while Tom Cameron and the doctor took her place.
The report from the sickroom was favorable. In a few hours the man who had come so near to bringing about a tragedy in Handy Gulch would be fit to travel. Ruth declared that she would wait for him, and he should go along with the party to Freezeout.
“But you are our guide and general factotum, Min. We depend on you,” she told the sick man’s daughter.
“I dunno what that thing is you called me; but I guess it ain’t a bad name,” said Min Peters. “If you’ll jest let pop trail along so’s I kin watch him he’ll be as good as pie, I know.”
Then, there was Miss Cullam’s reason for not wishing to start. She said she was “saddle sick.”
“I have been seasick, and trainsick; but I think saddlesick must be the worst, for it lasts longer. I can lie in bed now,” said the poor woman, “and feel myself wabbling just as I do in that hateful saddle.