Not the least of Whitey's enjoyments was getting letters from the boys back East—scarcely a week passed that Bobby and George and Tom did not collaborate in a letter with plenty of news about baseball and the other things that Whitey used to be interested in. I say "used to be"—he really was yet, but in a secondary way. So engrossing did he find life on the ranch, that he had, in a measure, put many of those things behind him. He found that riding a horse and throwing a lariat and fishing and hunting were fully as interesting as watching The Giants and The Cubs, or trying to curve a ball away from the plate and fool the batter. He had a feeling—and in a sense, he was right—that the former were men's doings, and that he was fitting himself to be a man among these men about him.
[CHAPTER XXIII]
WHITEY HIS OWN BOSS
As the days went by Whitey found that he had "increased in wisdom and stature" to a considerable degree. Although he had been the strongest boy at school, he knew that, after two months or so on the ranch, he had not only gained remarkably in strength, but in agility and suppleness the gain had been proportionately much greater. He had developed muscles that he did not know he possessed, and his almost continuous life in the open air had strengthened his lungs, and had hardened and toughened him. He did not know what "a cold" meant, now; or, in fact, illness of any kind; and he was impervious to any sort of weather that had, as yet, presented itself. In short, he fitted into ranch life like "a duck's foot in the mud," as Bill Jordan expressed it.
"Do you think, Son, you could manage to get along without me here for a time?" asked Mr. Sherwood, as he and Jordan and the two boys sat on the piazza at sunset, one evening.
"Sure, I could get along," said Whitey, "but where are you going?"
"I find my affairs in the East need some attention and I must go back, at least for a time. Do you want to go back with me?"
"I do not!" said Whitey, emphatically. "I think I won't ever want to go East again!" Bill Jordan smiled behind his hand.
"How about seeing your mother and sisters and the boys?" asked Mr. Sherwood.