The ranger glanced toward Wayland. “All right, Miss Berrie, but perhaps your tenderfoot needs a doctor.”
Wayland rose painfully but resolutely. “Oh no, I am not sick. I’m a little lame, that’s all. I’ll go along with you.”
“No,” said Berrie, decisively. “You’re not well enough for that. Get up your horses, Tony, and by that time I’ll have some dinner ready.”
“All right, Miss Berrie,” replied the man, and turned away.
Hardly had he crossed the bridge on his way to the pasture, when Berrie cried out: “There comes daddy.”
Wayland joined her at the door, and stood beside her watching the Supervisor, as he came zigzagging down the steep hill to the east, with all his horses trailing behind him roped together head-to-tail.
“He’s had to come round by Lost Lake,” she exclaimed. “He’ll be tired out, and absolutely starved. Wahoo!” she shouted in greeting, and the Supervisor waved his hand.
There was something superb in the calm seat of the veteran as he slid down the slope. He kept his place in the saddle with the air of the rider to whom hunger, fatigue, windfalls, and snowslides were all a part of the day’s work; and when he reined in before the door and dropped from his horse, he put his arm about his daughter’s neck with quiet word: “I thought I’d find you here. How is everything?”
“All right, daddy; but what about you? Where have you been?”
“Clean back to Mill Park. The blamed cayuses kept just ahead of me all the way.”