"At your service," the man smiled, "though I'm better known as Jeb around these parts."
"We're very glad to know you and we want to thank you for sending the buckboard over for us," Bob assured him as he jumped to the ground.
"Oh, that's all right. Slim needed a vacation, anyway, and I don't suppose there's much about the country here that you don't know now," he grinned as he cast a searching glance toward the cowboy who was standing at the broncho's heads. "Slim sure does like to talk about the country and he's all right, unless he lets his imagination get away with him then you want to look out. Hope you haven't been stretching things, Slim," he added.
The cowboy turned his face away as he bent over ostensibly to examine one of the broncho's feet and muttered something in a tone too low for them to catch.
"I see," Jeb smiled as he began unroping the trunk, "you want to discount everything he's told you about five hundred percent and you'll probably get things about right."
"Supper's getting cold, Dad."
The boys looked up to see a girl about their own age standing in the doorway and, as Bob later confided to Jack, she was a sight for sore eyes. Her face, tanned a rich olive, bore a most engaging smile and her regular clean-cut features gave her a beauty which somehow seemed out of place in the rough setting. She wore a simple gingham dress, but it was spotlessly clean and fresh.
"This is my daughter, Sue," Mr. Stebbins introduced her.
Both boys felt the blood rushing to their faces as they acknowledged the introduction, but the girl greeted them with a grace which at once put them at their ease.
"The pump's out back and as soon's you've washed up we'll have supper," Jeb told them as he led the way into the house. "Musn't keep Charlie waiting," he cautioned them. "He's the chief cook and bottle washer here and if we don't humor him he's apt to get sulky and then it shows in his cooking."