The next day Cal Smith said that a joke was all very well, but twenty-five miles was far enough to carry it, and he staked Whitey to a horse to make the rest of the trip with, Whitey to return the horse on his way back. When they reached Zumbro Creek it hadn't gone down a bit, except to go down stream, and it was doing that like the dickens. It certainly was a very bad-tempered-looking creek, but Cal Smith wasn't afraid of it.
He had brought along all his sons, and a couple of ranch hands, and instructed them to stand by with ropes, while he took Whitey about a quarter of a mile up the creek, and the two of them plunged in. Cal Smith was not going to let any kid try to swim a horse across that creek by himself.
It was quite a sight to see all those Smith boys standing in a line on the bank. With the biggest one, Abe, at one end, and the smallest one, Cal, at the other, and the rest of them standing according to their sizes, they looked like a flight of steps. And little Cal was too small to be of any use, but he didn't know that, and some one had given him the end of a lariat to hold, and he clutched it, and looked as anxious and important as any one.
All went well with Cal Smith and Whitey until they got to about the middle of the creek, and then, zowie! the full force of the current hit them, and they went down the stream as though they were a couple of feathers. But the little range ponies were just as game as Cal Smith, and they kept fighting that stream as though they were humans, and kept edging over and edging over until they finally got a footing and scrambled out on the other bank, a full quarter of a mile below the ford. So Zumbro Creek had beat them a whole half-mile down stream, on that trip across.
"So long, son," said Cal Smith. "You've only got about twelve miles to go to reach the T Up and Down, and you'd better stay there a couple of days before you start back, to give this creek a chance to learn how to behave itself."
Then Cal Smith rode back a half-mile up the stream to make the return trip, and Whitey watched, and the flight of steps of Smith boys watched. And when Cal landed safely, and Whitey waved at them all from a distance, as he rode away, he felt, as I think you will feel, that it was no wonder Western men had the reputation of being big-hearted, when a man like Cal Smith would take all that trouble for a boy he never had seen before.
The T Up and Down was a rather small ranch, boasting not over a thousand head of cattle, but its manager, Dan Brayton, proved to be a very large man. That is, he was large around, for he was not tall. He must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds, and when Whitey first saw him, he at once wondered how he ever got on a horse, and then Whitey reflected that it sure would take a mighty strong horse to buck with Dan on it.
When Whitey arrived, Dan was in what he called his office, a small room all fitted up with saddles and bridles, and boots and spurs, and belts and guns, and—oh, yes; there was a little desk almost hidden in the litter, and Dan Brayton was seated at it, his face all wrinkled in the effort to solve some figures written on a piece of paper.
Dan received Whitey cordially, but seemed surprised to hear that he was the bearer of an important letter from Bill Jordan. He held the letter in his hand and looked at it critically, as people do who are not in the habit of receiving many letters, and he asked:
"How is Silent?"