"Mr. Watson!" shouted Bud with a laugh. "Do you mean Yellin' Kid?"
"Oh, I guess that's what you call him," assented Mrs. Merkel as she opened her letter. "But his name's Watson."
"Guess you're the only one who remembers that, Ma," chuckled Dick Shannon, for though Mrs. Merkel was only his aunt, she was almost universally called "Ma" on the ranch of Diamond X.
"Yellin' Kid isn't any worse, is he?" asked Bud.
"Oh, no, but your father wanted to change the bandages and it takes some time. You'll find him pretty nearly finished, I guess, though you'd better take his mail to him there."
There had been a slight accident the week before, in which the horse of Yellin' Kid had crowded him against a post in a corral fence, badly bruising and cutting the leg of the cowboy. A doctor had been called, and after the first dressing of the wound had said Mr. Merkel or some of the men could attend to it as much as was necessary, and the ranch owner was now in performance of this duty.
"I'll take the boys' mail, Bud," offered Old Billee, one of the veteran cow punchers of Diamond X. "Don't reckon you got any for me, have you?" he asked with a sort of wistful hope in his voice.
"Sorry, Billee, but there doesn't seem to be any," answered Bud. "Better luck next time."
"No, I don't reckon there will be," sighed Old Billee. "All my friends is dead an' gone, an' nobody else wants t' write t' an ole timer like me." He took the letters destined for the other cowboys who were engaged in various duties about the ranch, saying he would distribute them, while Bud took those destined for his father to the sleeping quarters of the men, where Yellin' Kid was forced to remain temporarily in his bunk.
Nort and Dick had letters from "home," as they called their residence in the East, though they had been west so long now that they might almost be said to live on the ranch. And while Bud's cousins were going over their missives, Mr. Merkel was doing the same with those his son handed him.