He jumped and clawed at the sides in his frenzy, and Wallie could see that Rufus well might do so, for even as Wallie looked the water rushed in and rose to Rufus's ankles, and before he could get the bucket over the edge and started downward it was well to his knees, bubbling faster with every second as the opening widened.

It was indeed time for action, and Wallie himself felt relief when the windla.s.s spun and he heard the splash of the bucket in the bottom.

Rufus's shrieks urged haste as he began to wind laboriously, and with reason, for Rufus was heavy and though Wallie put forth all his strength it was no easy task single-handed, and Rufus rose so slowly that the water gained rapidly.

It became a race between Wallie and the subterranean stream that had been tapped, and he was panting and all but exhausted when Rufus rose to the surface. As he stepped from the bucket the water reached the top, poured over the edge, and rushed down the "draw" to Skull Creek.

Wallie looked with bulging eyes for a moment and when he had recovered from his astonishment, he turned joyfully, his grudge forgotten, and shook Rufus's hand in congratulation.

A moment later his enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by the discovery that he had brought to the surface the strongest flow of salt water in the country!

CHAPTER XIII

WIPED OUT

"It's sh.o.r.e wicked the way you curse, Old Timer," said Pinkey, reprovingly, as Wallie came up from the corral carrying an empty milk bucket in one hand and testing the other for broken bones. "I could hear you talkin' to Rastus from whur I'm settin'."

Wallie exhibited a row of bruised knuckles and replied fiercely:

"If ever I had an immortal soul I've lost it since that calf came!

Between his bunting on one side and me milking on the other, the cow kicked the pail over."

"Quirl you a brownie and blow it threw your hackamore and forgit it,"

said Pinkey, soothingly, as he handed him a book of cigarette papers, with a sack of tobacco and made room for him on the door-sill. "I ain't used to cow milk anyhow; air-tight is better."

Wallie took the offering but remained standing, rolling it dextrously as he looked off at his eighty acres of spring wheat showing emerald green in the light of a July sunset.

Pinkey eyed him critically--the tufts of hair which stood out like brushes through the cracks in what had once been a fine Panama hat, his ragged shirt, the faded overalls, the riding boots with heels so run over that he walked on the side of them.

Unconscious of the scrutiny, Wallie continued to gaze in a kind of holy ecstasy at his wheat-field until Pinkey e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:

"My, but you've changed horrible!"

"How, changed?" Wallie asked, absently.

"You're so danged dirty! I should think you'd have to sand that shirt before you could hold it to git into it."

"I hardly ever take it off," said Wallie. "I've been so busy I haven't had time to think how I looked, but I hope now to have more leisure.

Pinkey," impressively, "I believe my troubles are about over."

"Don't you think it!" replied Pinkey, bluntly. "A dry-farmer kin have six months of hard luck three times a year for four and five years, hand-runnin'. In fact, they ain't no limit to the time and the kind of things that kin happen to a dry-farmer."

"But what _could_ happen now?" Wallie asked, startled.

"It's too clost to bed-time fer me to start in tellin' you," said Pinkey, drily.

"You're too pessimistic, Pinkey. I've prepared the soil and seed according to the instructions in the Farmers' Bulletins from Washington, and as a result I've got the finest stand of wheat around here--even Boise Bill said so when he rode by yesterday."

"Rave on!" Pinkey looked at him mockingly. "It's pitiful to hear you.

You read them bulletins awhile and you won't know nothin'. I seen a feller plant some corn his Congressman sent him and the ears was so hard the pigs used to stand and squeal in front of 'em. But of course I'm glad you're feelin' so lucky; I'm scairt of the feelin' myself for it makes me take chances and I always git a jolt for it."

Wallie's face was sober as he confided:

"If anything went wrong I'd be done for. I'm so near broke that I count my nickels like some old woman with her b.u.t.ter-and-egg money."

"I guessed it," said Pinkey, calmly, "from the rabbit fur I see layin'

around the dooryard."

"Nearly everything has cost double what I thought it would, but if I get a good crop and the price of wheat holds up I'll come out a-flying."

"If nothin' happens," Pinkey supplemented.

"I want to show you one of those bulletins."

"I've seen plenty of 'em. You can't stop 'em once you git 'em started.

Them, and pamphlets tellin' us why we went to war, has killed off many a mail-carrier that had to fight his way through blizzards, or be fined fer not deliverin' 'em on schedule. I ain't strong fer gover'mint literature."

Wallie stepped inside the cabin and brought out a pamphlet with an ill.u.s.tration of twelve horses. .h.i.tched to a combined harvester and thresher, standing in a wheat-field of boundless acreage.

"There," he said, proudly, "you see my ambition!"

Pinkey regarded it, unexcited.

"That's a real nice picture," he said, finally, "but I thought you aimed to go in for cattle?"

"I did. But I've soured on them since that calf came and I've been milking."

Pinkey agreed heartily:

"I'd ruther 'swamp' fer a livin' than do low-down work like milkin'."

"When I come in at night, dog-tired and discouraged, I get out this picture and look at it and tell myself that some day I'll be driving twelve horses on a thresher. A chap thinks and does curious things when he has n.o.body but himself for company."

"That's me, too," said Pinkey, understandingly. "When I'm off alone huntin' stock, I ride fer hours wonderin' if it's so that you kin make booze out of a raisin."

"Let's walk out and look at the wheat," Wallie suggested.

Pinkey complied obligingly, though farming was an industry in which he took no interest.

Wallie's pride in his wheat was inordinate. He never could get over a feeling of astonishment that the bright green grain had come from seeds of his planting--that it was his--and he would reap the benefit. Nature was more wonderful than he had realized and he never before had appreciated her. He always forgot the heart-breaking and back-breaking labour when he stood as now, surveying with glowing face the even green carpet stretching out before him. In such moments he found his compensation for all he had gone through since he arrived in Wyoming, and he smiled pityingly as he thought of the people at The Colonial, rocking placidly on the veranda.

"Did you ever see anything prettier?" Wallie demanded, his eyes shining.

"It's all right," Pinkey murmured, absently.