lly again. You see, he was in a very savage mood. He would get over
that, but he didn't realize it then.
As Injun heard these plans, he considered them. He was very well
satisfied where he was. There had been fighting there, there might be
more, and he liked fighting. Fishing and hunting were all very well, but
he'd had a lot of them in his young life, and they were no novelty. It
was like asking a sailor to go for a sail, on his day off. And Injun
couldn't fully understand Whitey's wanting to do all these things. But
do you think he voiced his objections to them? He did not. For in one
way Injun was like a faithful dog he accepted things he didn't
understand. So one liked his loyalty more than one pitied his ignorance.
No one paid any attention to the boys when they rode away from the Star
Circle Ranch. They might be going hunting, or just for a ride, for all
the ranchmen knew or cared. They struck off toward the northwest, in
which direction lay Jimtown, with Moose Lake far beyond, nestling in the
foothills of the Rockies.
It was a beautiful day, with the haze of fall shrouding the distance, a
hint of brown tingeing the prairie grass, the sun a bit milder with its
rays and paler in its face than in midsummer. And the old sun seemed a
trifle lazy, as if lying back awaiting the frost that would nip the
rolling mesa, to be followed by the gales that would sweep across it,
then by the whirling blizzards that would hold the plains in their
frigid grasp. Yes, it was a beautiful day--a day on which it was very
hard to stay mad.
Creeping across the northern distance the boys saw two wagons. Evidently
they had come from Jimtown. Wagons are as interesting sights on a
prairie as they are uninteresting in a city, so the boys shifted their
course slightly that they might investigate. And these were the rarest
wagons that crawled across the plains, for they carried a show!
During the many months that Whitey had been in the West only one show
had come to the Junction, and that at a time when Injun and Whitey had
been hunting in the mountains. Lives there a boy with soul so dead that
he does not hunger for a show? I leave you to answer that, and to guess
how hungry Whitey was for one.
But if you have in your mind any big, gilded wagons, with pictures of
beautiful women on their sides, and drawn by many prancing white horses
with red plumes on their heads, get that vision right out of your mind.
These were "prairie schoone
|