For a second he rode with his arm outstretched as if gauging the distance, then Helene grew rigid as she saw him leave the saddle.

He made it--barely. The gap was so big that it seemed as if it were not humanly possible more than to touch the short mane on the animal's neck with his finger-tips. But he clung somehow, his feet and body dragging, while the steer's speed increased rather than slackened. First with one hand and then the other he worked his way to a grip on the horns, which was what he wanted.

The steer stopped to fight him. Its feet ploughed up the dirt as it braced them to resist him. Then they struggled. The steer was a big one, raw-boned, leggy, a typical old-time long-horn of the Texas ranges, and now in fear and rage it put forth all the strength of which it was capable.

With his teeth grinding, Wallie fought it in desperation, trying to give the twist that drops the animal. Its breath in his face, the froth from its mouth blinded him, but still he clung while it threw him this and that way. He himself never knew where his strength came from. Suddenly the steer fell heavily and the two lay panting together.

Helene drew the back of her hand across her eyes and brushed away the tears that blurred her vision, while a lump rose in her throat too big to swallow. "Gentle Annie" of The Colonial veranda, erstwhile authority on Battenburg and sweaters, had accomplished the most reckless of the dare-devil feats of the cow-country--he had "bull-dogged" a steer from horseback!

CHAPTER XXI

"WORMAN! WORMAN!"

Business which had to do with the cache they had lifted from Tucker detained Pinkey in town longer than expected. He returned in the night and did not get up when the triangle jangled for breakfast. In fact, it was well into the forenoon when he appeared, only to learn that Miss Eyester had gone off with old Mr. Penrose to look at an eagle's nest.

"What did he do that for?" Pinkey demanded of Wallie.

"I presume he wanted her company," Wallie replied, composedly, entertained by the ferocity of Pinkey's expression.

"Is he a dude or is he a duder that he has to go guidin' people to see sights they prob'ly don't want to look at?"

"She seemed willing enough to go," Wallie answered.

Pinkey sneered:

"Mebbe I'd better git me a blue suit with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and stand around and open gates and unsaddle fer 'em."

Wallie regarded his partner calmly.

"Pinkey, you're _jealous_."

"Jealous! Me jealous of an old Methuselah that don't know enough to make a mark in the road?" Unconsciously Pinkey's hand sought his eyebrows, as he laughed hollowly. "Why, I could show her a barrel of eagles' nests! I know whur there's a coyote den with pups in it! I know whur there's a petrified tree and oceans of Injun arrer heads, if she'd jest waited.

But if anybody thinks I'm goin' to melt my boot-heels down taggin' a worman, they're mistaken!" Pinkey stamped off to the bunk-house and slammed the door behind him.

"Where's Pinkey?" The question was general when it was observed that his chair was vacant at dinner.

"Still reposing, I imagine," Wallie answered, humorously.

Mrs. Budlong commented:

"A night ride like that must be very fatiguing."

"Oh, very." Wallie winked at himself figuratively, thinking that the 99 per cent. alcoholic content of one of Mr. Tucker's bottles undoubtedly accounted for his weariness.

"You are sure he's not ill?" inquired Miss Eyester. She had not enjoyed her revenge upon Pinkey, for going away without telling her, as much as she had antic.i.p.ated; besides, the eagle's nest turned out to be a crows'

nest with no birds in it, and that was disappointing.

Mr. Hicks, who frequently joined in the conversation when anything interested him, snorted from the kitchen doorway:

"Ill? You couldn't make him 'ill' with a club with nails in it--that feller."

"Oh, how dread-ful!" Aunt Lizzie clasped her hands, and looked at the brutal cook reprovingly.

"Perhaps one of us had better awaken him," Miss Eyester suggested. "He should eat something."

"Hor! Hor! Hor!" Mr. Hicks laughed raucously. "Maybe he don't feel like eating. Let him alone and he'll come out of it."

Miss Eyester resented the aspersion the meaning of which was now plain to everybody, and said with dignity, rising:

"If no one else will call him, I shall."

"Rum has been the curse of the nation," observed Mr. Budlong to whom even a thimbleful gave a headache.

"I wish I had a barrel of it," growled old Mr. Penrose. "When I get home I'm going to get me a worm and make moonshine."

"Oh, how dread-ful!"

"'Tain't," Mr. Penrose contradicted Aunt Lizzie, curtly.

"'Tis!" retorted Aunt Lizzie.

They glared at each other balefully, and while everybody waited to hear if she could think of anything else to say to him, Miss Eyester returned panting:

"The door's locked and there's a towel pinned over the window."

"No!" They exclaimed in chorus, and looked at Wallie. "Do you suppose any thing's happened?"

"He locked the door because he does not want to be disturbed, and the towel is to keep the light out," Mr. Stott deduced.

"Of _course_!" They all laughed heartily and admired Mr. Stott's shrewdness.

"Any fool would have thought of that," growled Mr. Penrose.

"You think you know everything," said Aunt Lizzie, in whom his threat to make moonshine and break the law still rankled.

"I know quite a lot, if I could just think of it," replied Mr. Penrose almost good-naturedly.

"All the same," declared the cook, scouring a frying-pan in the doorway, "it's not like him to go to all that trouble just to sleep. I'll go up and see if I can raise him."

Even in the dining room they could hear Mr. Hicks banging on the door with the frying-pan, and calling. He returned in a few minutes.

"There's something queer about it. It's still as a graveyard. He ain't snoring."

"Could he have made way with himself?" Mr. Appel's tone was sepulchral.