Jimmy was off like a flash. When the other scouts entered the place where meals were served, they discovered him busily at work.
“Saved you places alongside me!” he called out; “and say, there’s plenty of chow for everybody. That Chink knows his business, and I’m goin’ to be great friends with him all the time we’re here.”
“It takes you to make up to the cook, Jimmy,” laughed Jack.
“That’s all right,” replied the other, with a broad grin, “sure it’s a wise boy that knows which side of his bread is buttered. And Chin Chin Charley is the boss cook, let me tell you right now. I ain’t much in that line myself, but then I know a good thing when I run across it. And don’t the rest of you get jealous if you see how thick me’n him are expectin’ to be; ain’t we, Chin Chin?”
The slant-eyed Mongolian must have already taken quite a liking for jolly, good-natured Jimmy, for upon being thus appealed to he nodded his head until his pigtail bobbed up and down, smiled affably, and was heard to murmur:
“Much good frien’s, Jimmy, me; heap like Melicanboy; much eat; come back more many times, alle samee!”
Apparently Jimmy was in for a good time while staying at the Double Cross Ranch, and he believed in starting things right by making sure that the food supply would be unlimited.
After the midnight supper had been disposed Of the punchers strolled forth again. Ned and Chunky were in consultation, for the puncher, knowing that Mrs. Haines had somehow conceived the idea that the young scout leader had a long head for a boy and could be depended on in an emergency, realized that it was the right thing to put certain things up to him. Of course, Chunky knew best what should be done, and Ned quickly told him to exercise his own judgment in the matter of guarding the big stockade in which the cattle had been shut up.
The boys were all tired after such a long and arduous experience. Even Jack, who as a rule could stand for almost anything, admitted that he could hardly put one foot in front of the other, he felt so stiff.
“That’s because I’m not used to being so long in the saddle and playing the game they have out here,” he acknowledged, “but given a chance, and we’ll show our friends, the punchers, that scouts can ride pretty decently. I’m going to pick up all the kinks of the job while I’m on it; and before we leave here we ought to know how to throw a rope, drop a steer, use the branding iron on his flank, and ride the trickiest broncho there is to a stand-still.”