Noon found them fifteen miles from home with a bag of six snipe and ten prairie chickens, and appet.i.tes that fairly clamored. Frank found an ideal camping place in a grove of walnut trees beside a small creek.

"I camped here once two years ago and there's a fine spring somewhere near. Come along, Katie, we'll go hunt it. Ernest, picket the horses--there's oats under the back seat. And Sherm, if you'll just start a fire for the coffee."

Marian and Alice spread the luncheon out on a long tablecloth laid over the dust robes on the ground. Gertie and Chicken Little fed the little grouse with some moistened bread crumbs, finding it difficult at first to induce them to eat. But they would swallow, when the girls pried open their tiny beaks and stuck a crumb inside. Captain Clarke showed them how, and patiently helped them until each tiny craw was at least partly filled.

Marian and Alice watched him furtively.

"He is gentle as a woman," Alice whispered, "and his face lights up wonderfully when he smiles, though it is stern usually."

"Yes, I can see now why Jane is so fascinated. Do you know his smile is very much like Sherm's? See--no, just wait a minute. Now--watch his upper lip--his mouth twists crooked exactly like Sherm's. Chicken Little spoke of his baby's picture having the same smile." Marian dropped her eyes hastily as the Captain chanced to turn in their direction.

"I imagine lots of people have that kind of a smile only we never noticed them," replied Alice.

"Of course, I didn't mean to suggest anything. Will you cut the lemon cake?"

After the luncheon was eaten, the shady grove tempted them to linger on with its woodsy coolness. The younger folk dragging the Captain, a willing victim, along with them, went off on an exploring expedition while the others stretched out luxuriously on the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s that grew rank along the slope.

It was four o'clock before they could tear themselves away for the homeward ride.

"You'd better hurry," Frank called to the stragglers, "it will be almost dark before we get home even if we don't stop to shoot."

They picked up a few quail on the divide soon after they started, but their zest for the sport seemed to have waned. Chicken Little declined to try any further.

"I know, it's the baby grouse," said Katy.

"Yes," said Captain Clarke, "I think the baby grouse have rather taken the zip out of it for all of us."

The moon was just peeping above the tree tops as they crossed the home ford. A huge grotesque shadow of the horses and wagon with its load, was reflected upon the silvered surface of a deep pool just beyond the ripples where they had stopped to let the horses drink. The blacks having satisfied their thirst, began to dash the water about with their hoofs.

"They love it, don't they?" Katy watched them.

"Yes," said the Captain thoughtfully, "I guess every living thing enjoys this beautiful world of ours--when it is given the chance."

CHAPTER VII

PIGS

"Take a hand to a wooster? Take a hand to a wooster!"

d.i.c.k Harding was standing out in the road near the white cottage one morning about two weeks after the hunting party, trying to decide whether he would take a walk or a ride to settle his breakfast. He glanced down into Jilly's sober little face lifted to his appealingly.

"Take a hand to a wooster? Charmed, I'm sure. Point out the rooster. But what has his rooster-ship done, and how can I make him keep still long enough to lay hands on him, Jilly Dilly?"

Jilly clasped five fat fingers around two of his, smiled confidingly and made her plea once more: "Take a hand to a wooster."

d.i.c.k looked puzzled, but Jilly was pulling and he meekly followed her guidance. "I haven't the faintest idea what you are getting me into, young lady, but go ahead, I'm at your service."

Jilly pattered along not deigning to reply to his remarks. Jilly considered words as something to be reserved for business purposes only.

She led him to the chicken yard, pressed her small face against the wire netting that enclosed it, and contemplated the fowls ecstatically. d.i.c.k contemplated also, trying to pick out the offending rooster.

"Which rooster, Jilly?"

But Jilly only smiled vaguely. "Feed a wooster," she commanded after another season of gazing.

"Yes, to be sure, but what would you suggest that I offer him? There doesn't seem to be anything edible round here."

The chickens seconded Jilly's suggestion, coming to the fence and clucking excitedly.

Jilly looked pained at d.i.c.k's indolence and, taking his hand, led him over to a covered wooden box, which was found to contain sh.e.l.led corn.

The chickens were duly fed, but d.i.c.k still puzzled over the unchastized rooster until Marian enlightened him later.

"I shall have to give you a key to Jilly's dialect," Marian laughed--"she merely wanted you to go with her to see the chickens."

Chicken Little was enjoying her guests. Her resolve to help mother was carried out only semi-occasionally when there were raspberries or currants to be picked or peas to be sh.e.l.led, under the grape arbor so they wouldn't be in Annie's way in the kitchen. At first, Mrs. Morton had counted on having the girls help with the breakfast dishes, but they developed such a genius for disappearing immediately after breakfast that she gave it up as more bother than it was worth.

They tramped and rode, and waded and splashed and finally swam, in the bathing hole down at the creek, under Marian's or Alice's supervision, till Katie and Gertie were brown and hearty.

"Mrs. Halford wouldn't know Gertie--she's fairly made over," Alice observed one morning.

Gertie was fast losing her timidity and had so much persistence in learning to ride that she bade fair to have a more graceful seat in the saddle than Jane herself. Sherm was deep in farm work and the girls saw little either of him or of Ernest, except in the evenings and on Sundays. d.i.c.k ran the reaper in the harvest field for Dr. Morton for three days, but his zeal waned as the weather got hotter.

"This is my vacation and I don't want to sweat my sweet self entirely away 'in little drops of water.' Think how pained you'd be, dearest," he told Alice.

"I never dreamed there was so much farming to a ranch," Alice remarked to Dr. Morton one day. "I thought you attended to the cattle----"

"And rode around in chaps and sombreros, looking picturesque, the rest of the time," interrupted d.i.c.k. "My precious wife is disappointed because she hasn't seen any cowboys cavorting about the place shooting each other up or gambling with nice picturesque bags of gold dust."

"d.i.c.k Harding! I didn't. But we'd hardly know there were any cattle round if we didn't go through the pasture occasionally."

"Our big pastures take them off our hands pretty well in summer, but in winter they have to be fed and herded and looked after generally, don't they, Chicken Little? Humbug has played herd boy herself more than once.

You are thinking of the big cattle ranges in Colorado and Montana and Wyoming, Alice. This country is cut up into farms and the ranges are gone. And we have to raise our corn and wheat and rye, not to mention fruits and vegetables. It's a busy life, but I love its independence."

A day or two after this conversation, Ernest came in late to dinner, exclaiming: "Father, the white sow and all her thirteen pigs are out."

"The d.i.c.kens, have you any idea where she's gone?" Dr. Morton looked decidedly annoyed. "I told Jim Bart that pen wasn't strong enough to hold her--she's the meanest animal on the place."

"One of the harvest hands said he thought he saw her down along the slough. I am sorry for the porkers if she is--they aren't a week old yet."

"Go down right after dinner and see if you can see anything of her. The old fool will lose them all in that marshy ground. And I don't see how we can spare a man to look after them. It looks like rain and that wheat must be in the barns by night."

Ernest came back from his search to report that the sow and one lone pig had wandered back to the barnyard and Jim Bart had got them into the pen.

"One pig! You don't mean she has lost the other twelve? That's costly business!"