Chip crowded several hot words off his tongue, and gave up his hand for a temporary pump handle.
“How do you do, Blake? I didn't think you'd remember me.”
“You didn't? How could I help it? I can feel the cold of the water yet, and your rope settling over my shoulders. You never gave me a chance to say 'God bless you' for that; you just coiled up your rope—swearing all the time you did it, because it was wet—and rode off, dripping like a muskrat. What did you do it for?”
“I was in a hurry to get back to camp,” grinned Chip, sinking into a chair. “And you weren't a senator then.”
“It would have been all the same if I had been, I reckon,” responded the senator, shaking Chip's hand again. “Well, well! So you are the genius—that sounds more likely. No offense, Miss Whitmore. Do you remember that picture you drew with charcoal on a piece of pine board? It stands on the mantel in my library, and I always point it out to my friends as the work of a young man with a future. And you painted 'The Last Stand!' Well, well! I think I'll have to send the price up another notch, just to get even with you for swearing at me when my lungs were so full of water I couldn't swear back!”
While he talked he was busy unwrapping the picture which he had brought with him, and he reminded the Little Doctor of a loquacious peddler opening his pack. He was much more genial and unpretentious since Chip entered the room, and she wondered why. She wanted to ask about that reference to the water, but he stood the painting against the wall, just then, and she forgot everything but that.
Chip's eyes clung to the scene greedily. After all, it was his—and he knew in his heart that it was good. After a minute he limped into his room and brought “The Spoils of Victory,” and stood it beside “The Last Stand.”
“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.