Promptly at nine o’clock they were to depart for Silver Creek Junction, at which lonely station the trains would stop, when flagged, or when passengers had so requested.
Poor Uncle Tex, dressed in a linen suit and wearing a wide panama hat, was miserably uncomfortable, and, as he stood at the window in the big living-room, he looked longingly toward the distant mountains. Even yet he could escape, but if his “gal” needed his help at this play acting, he’d try to do his best, but how he did wish that he might change places with Slim, the lithe young cow-boy who at that moment was within the range of the old man’s vision endeavoring to break the wild spirits of a bucking broncho.
Skipping to the side of the elderly man, in a manner much too frivolous for the wearer of such sombre attire.
Hearing an inner door open, he turned and beheld what might have been an elderly housekeeper in bonnet and shawl, a black bombazine dress the girl had borrowed from dear old Grandmother Slater.
Skipping to the side of the elderly man, in a manner much too frivolous for the wearer of such sombre attire, the girl caught his hand as she exclaimed merrily: “Why Uncle Tex, I mean Mr. Davis, how stylish you do look! If you have observed yourself in the mirror, I ’spect you will want to dress up like this every day in the year.”
The old man looked very miserable as he slowly shook his head. “No, ah won’t, Miss Virginia dearie,” he said. “Ah was jest thinkin’ as how ah’d rather rope the contrariest steer thar ever was than be play-actin’ this-a-way.” Then wheedlingly he added, “Don’t you spose as how you could get along jest as well without me? Couldn’t you be sayin’ as how her gardeen had gone away for a spell?”
The old man’s pleading was interrupted by a merry honking from without and Virginia caught his work-hardened hand and led him out to the waiting car.
The weather-bronzed features of Rusty Pete widened into a smile and he found it hard to keep his mirth within bounds. He wanted to shout. It was as good as a circus, he thought, to see Uncle Tex rigged up like a gentleman, but, when he saw how red and uncomfortable the old man looked, the kind hearted cow-boy refrained from uttering the bantering remark which the old overseer’s appearance had suggested. However, when he was alone on the front seat of the big touring car, his grin resembled that of the Cheshire cat, nor did it cease until the railway station was reached.
Several ponies were tied to the hitching posts and a spirited young mustang belonging to Slick Cy, a cow-boy from the Slater Ranch, reared as the car came to a stop nearby.