But Elmer Bunty broke the silence, before he had formulated his plan of announcement. “Ranger—say, I don’t guess Edna could call me ’Fraid-Cat now, could she?— Riding to a forest fire’n everything?”
“She could not, Scout,” said Dean, cordially. This was an excellent opening. “And speaking of Edna——”
The boy appeared not to have heard him. “Ranger,” he said shyly, “do you think I—oh, not yet, but sometime—do you think I’ll be—not just a good Scout, but—but like men call each other—‘a good scout’? You know how they say, ‘He’s a good scout’? Do you guess I ever will, Ranger?”
“I guess you will,” said Dean Wolcott, roundly. “I consider you a ‘good scout’ now.”
“Honest-to-goodness, Ranger?” He flushed so riotously that even his flanging ears grew rosy. “Cross-your-heart-hope-never-to-see-the-back-of-your-neck?”
The Ranger nodded gravely. “In speaking of you to a friend I feel I should be certain to use that term. ‘Who is this fellow Bunty you’re always talking about?’ some one might say to me, and I would say, ‘Oh, he’s a great friend of mine,’ and then if the other fellow said, ‘What sort of a person is he?’— I should without hesitation reply, ‘He’s a good scout; he’s—a good scout!’”
Elmer Bunty was silent from pure pleasure; it fairly pulsated from him. He leaned forward and put his arms warmly about the neck of the lady horse, and then he leaned down out of the saddle (much as the Indians did, he firmly believed) and petted Rusty.
“And, feeling that way,” said Dean Wolcott, “it’s going to be pretty hard for me just to shake hands with you and let you go, when your vacation is over, and my time here in the Big Sur.”
“I know,” said the boy, soberly. “But we can write each other postcards and maybe letters, can’t we, Ranger? And maybe, next summer——”
“How would you like to—well, belong to me, Scout? If it can be arranged— I mean, not go back to your aunt and cousin, but stay with me, and go to one of those mountain schools and have a horse to ride—all that sort of thing? Take a trip east with me, and see the Grand Cañon on the way, and perhaps Niagara”—he turned to look at him.