"Oh, all right, all right!" Lark yielded wearily to end the argument. "But if this habit of hauling in the helpless is going to run in the family, son, we'll have to start in ridin' with a long rope and a runnin' iron, to feed 'em all. And what'll Bonnie say, Bud, when she hears about it? And a dozen other girls that have kept their dads broke buyin' hair ribbons for you to decorate yore bridle with?"
"Say, there aren't a dozen girls in the country; not white ones, and I don't take to color," Bud retorted equably. "And as for Bonnie—I'm not halter-broke yet, if you want to know, Lark."
At the porch Marge stood looking out over the dusky Basin to where the moon was beginning to gild the clouds on the hilltops beyond the Little Smoky.
"You know, I never dreamed that you had frogs away out West in Montana!" she cried in her pretty, eager way when the two approached. "They sound exactly like the frogs back in Iowa, too."
"Well, they're Iowa frogs, that's why," Bud explained matter-of-factly. "Way it happened was this: When the first white woman came with her husband and settled in this country, she had to teach the kids herself and she was a real conscientious mother. Whenever she sung them that song about 'There was a frog lived in a well, humble-jumble-jerry-jum,' they kept asking her what frogs were. So the next time a trainload of beef went to Chicago she had the cowboys stop off in Iowa and catch a few jars of pollywogglers and bring back with them. There were twice as many as she needed, so she sent a jar over to the Meddalark. They've done real well," he added, stopping to listen to the steady singsong chorus down in the meadow. "One trouble is, they brought in mosquitoes same time. Said the farmers back in Iowa told them frogs wouldn't live where they couldn't get mosquitoes in season. The boys sure brought a plenty—or else our breed of frogs are light eaters. We've got more mosquitoes than we need right now."
"Well," said Marge, all unsuspecting, "of course I knew the frogs must have come from somewhere, and I noticed that they sounded exactly like our frogs back home."
That is why Lark kept eyeing the girl curiously all through supper.
But the unexpected addition to the Meadowlark family could not crowd from Lark's mind the startling news of the tragedy in Smoky Ford; nor from the uneasy thoughts of Bud, who felt keenly that he had failed Lark in a certain important matter.
The two gravitated together without a word or look that signified intention and strolled silently out away from the house to a bowlder fallen from the crown of the bluff and lying solitary and conveniently out of earshot yet within sight of everything. Even in Lark's tempestuous youth the bowlder had been called the Council Rock because of its frequent occupation when confidences were to be exchanged. A faint trail led toward it through the sparse grass at the base of the bluff, proof that it was still popular. Bud climbed up to the broad, flat top and sat down, dangling his legs over the edge of the gray rock while he produced tobacco and papers.
"That check—Lark, I feel that I owe you fifteen hundred dollars," he began abruptly. "I was so darned thirsty and hot when I came down off the reservation that I didn't go straight to the bank as I should have done. I stopped at the Elkhorn for a glass of beer. Lightfoot was in there and let himself be bullied into dancing for Steve Godfrey's bunch of souses, and I played the mouth-harp for him. I guess I wasted nearly half an hour altogether before I started to the bank. At that," he added, pausing to run the tip of his tongue along the edge of the filled paper, "I was in time—or I would have been if the bank had been left alone. But if I had gone there at first I'd have been in time to prevent a murder and cash your check."