I want you to send me one of your boys for the rest of the summer [he wrote], for I find that the solitude I so earnestly wanted is being served to me in rather too large portions. I see that I want and need companionship, of a sort. But, please, don’t send me your prize lad, your huskiest and handiest Scout! I want instead the unlikeliest one in your troop. I want the most utter little gutter snipe you can lay hands on, and the most ignorant of the woods and wilds. What I need—which you have already guessed and I may as well confess—is a young person to whom I can exhibit my new-found wisdom; I want a trusting child who will look up to me and regard me as a brilliant and dashing admixture of Daniel Boone and Dan Beard and Bill Hart. Kindly ship same to me charges paid and I will at once remit!
His friend replied at once and told him, rather doubtfully, that in Elmer Bunty he had a youth who fulfilled all his specifications and more, but if, after a week or so, he found him more than he could stomach he might return him; the boy would be told that he was going for a fortnight only. He was an orphan and made his home, so-called, with a vinegar-visaged aunt and a mean and hectoring girl cousin; a really determined daddy longlegs could put him to flight. He—the friend of Dean Wolcott—had had something of a chore to make the aunt consent to the outing for Elmer; she had planned for him to spend his summer vacation in some gainful occupation, and he had only succeeded by painting a dark picture of the boy’s physical unfitness and the benefits which would unfailingly accrue to him. Not that the lady was unduly moved at that, but she had had, she asserted, more than her share of doctor’s bills for Elmer before—and she just taking him in and doing for him like he was her own, and precious little thanks for it, too! Dean Wolcott got a very sharp pen picture of Elmer’s aunt and he answered his friend immediately and told him to send the boy, and to tell his relative that he should receive a salary of ten dollars a week for such services as he might prove able to render, and that he would see that he sent the lion’s share home to her.
The boy arrived at Pfeiffer’s by stage a few days later. He was, he stated, thirteen, but it seemed improbable. He was thin to emaciation—pipe-stem arms and legs which dangled from his lean little torso as if they hardly belonged to it but had been carelessly hooked on—a hollow chest, huge, flanging ears which looked ready to fly away with his pinched small face and quite capable of doing it, friendly and frightened eyes, and gopher teeth, all of which he was never able to keep in his mouth at the same time.
He sat beside the good-natured driver, huddled in the corner of the seat and clinging desperately to the iron rod which supported the top of the stage, and the man told Dean that he didn’t believe the poor young one had shifted his position once since they had left Monterey.
“Hello, old top!” said Dean, robustly, swinging him to the ground. “Come along and meet Snort and Rusty, and your pony!” (He had succeeded in renting a small and amiable old horse for him from one of the ranchers.)
The boy went with him, setting his cramped legs stiffly to walk again. He kept the Ranger’s hand and shrank back against him when they came nearer the animals. “Does he bite?” he whispered when the Airedale rose languidly and approached him, sniffing indifferently. “Do—do they kick?” he wanted fearfully to know when he found himself within range of the horses’ heels.
“Never!” said the Ranger, cheerily. He tied Elmer’s bundle to his own saddle and lifted him on to the small horse. “Let’s see about these stirrups—must always have your stirrups right, Scout.” He adjusted them swiftly and capably. “Now, then, all set?”
“I g-guess so,” said Elmer Bunty, palely.
“We’re just going to walk our horses, this time—and lots of times till you get used to it. Then we’ll ‘Ride ’em, Cowboy!’ like they do in the movies, won’t we?”