“I want that short, fat man to help” (Slim squirmed at this blunt identification of himself) “and Mr. Weary, also.” Miss Whitmore might have spoken with a greater effect of dignity had she not been clinging to the top of the fence with two dainty slipper toes thrust between the rails not so very far below. Under the circumstances, she looked like a pretty, spoiled little schoolgirl.
“Oh. You've turned horse doctor, have yuh?” J. G. leaned suddenly upon his branding iron and laughed. “Doggone it, that ain't a bad idea. I've got two box stalls, and there's an old gray horse in the pasture—the same old gray horse that come out uh the wilderness—with a bad case uh string-halt. I'll have some uh the boys ketch him up and you can start a horsepital!”
“Is that supposed to be a joke, J. G.? I never can tell YOUR jokes by ear. If it is, I'll laugh. I'm going to use whatever I need and you can do without Mr.—er—those two men.”
“Oh, go ahead. The horse don't belong to ME, so I'm willing you should practice on him a while. Say! Dell! Give him that truck you've been pouring down me for the last week. Maybe he'll relish the taste of the doggone stuff—I don't.”
“I suppose you've labeled THAT a 'Joke—please laugh here,'” sighed Miss Whitmore, plaintively, climbing gingerly down.
CHAPTER IV. — An Ideal Picture.
“I guess I'll go down to Denson's to-day,” said J. G. at the breakfast table one morning. “Maybe we can get that grass widow to come and keep house for us.”
“I don't want any old grass widow to keep house,” protested Della. “I'm getting along well enough, so long as Patsy bakes the bread, and meat, and cake, and stuff. It's just fun to keep house. The only trouble is, there isn't half enough to keep me busy. I'm going to get a license to practice medicine, so if there's any sickness around I can be of some use. You say it's fifty miles to the nearest doctor. But that needn't make a grass widow necessary. I can keep house—it looks better than when I came, and you know it.” Which remark would have hurt the feelings of several well-meaning cow-punchers, had they overheard it.
“Oh, I ain't finding fault with your housekeeping—you do pretty well for a green hand. But Patsy'll have to go with the round-up when it starts, and what men I keep on the ranch will have to eat with us. That's the way I've been used to fixing things; I was never so good I couldn't eat at the same table with my men; if they wasn't fit for my company I fired 'em and got fellows that was. I've had this bunch a good long while, now. You can do all right with just me, but you couldn't cook for two or three men; you can't cook good enough, even if it wasn't too much work.” J. G. had a blunt way of stating disagreeable facts, occasionally.