The Flying U's Last Stand by B. M. Bower (ebook reader with highlighter TXT) 📕

H. J. Owens glanced behind him with an uneasiness not altogether assumed.

“Let's go down into this next gully to talk it over, Buck,” he suggested with an air of secretiveness that fired the Kid's imagination. “They started out to follow me, and I don't want 'em to see me talking to you, you know.”

The Kid went with him unsuspectingly. In all the six years of his life, no man had ever offered him injury. Fear had not yet become associated with those who spoke him fair. Nesters he did not consider friends because they were not friends with his bunch. Personally he did not know anything about enemies. This man was a nester—but he called him Buck, and he talked very nice and friendly, and he said he knew where there were some little baby bear cubs. The Kid had never before realized how much he wanted a bear cub for a pet. So do our wants grow to meet our opportunities.

H. J. Owens led the way into a shallow draw between two low hills, glancing often behind him and around him until they were shielded by the higher ground. He was careful to keep where the grass was thickest and would hold no hoofprints to betray them, but the Kid never noticed. He was thinking how nice it would be to have a bear cub for a pet. But it was funny that the Happy Family had never found him one, if there were any in the country.

He turned to put the question direct to H. J. Owens, I but that gentleman forestalled him.

“You wait here a minute, Buck, while I ride back on this hill a little ways to see if those fellows are on our trail,” he said, and rode off before the Kid could ask him the question.

The Kid waited obediently. He saw H. J. Owens get off his horse and go sneaking up to the brow of the hill, and take some field glasses out of his pocket and look all around over the prairie with them. The sight tingled the Kid's blood so that he almost forgot about the bear cub. It was almost exactly like fighting Injuns, like Uncle Gee-gee told about when he wasn't cross.

In a few minutes Owens came back to the Kid, and they went on slowly, keeping always in the low, grassy places where there would be no tracks left to tell of their passing that way. Behind them a yellow-brown cloud drifted sullenly with the wind. Now and then a black flake settled past them to the ground. A peculiar, tangy smell was in the air—the smell of burning grass.

H. J. Owens related a long, full-detailed account of how he had been down in the hills along the river, and had seen the old mother bear digging ants out of a sand-hill for her cubs.

“I know—that's jes' 'zactly the way they do!” the Kid interrupted excitedly. “Daddy Chip seen one doing it on the Musselshell one time. He told me 'bout it.”

H. J. Owens glanced sidelong at the Kid's flushed face, smiled his twisted smile and went on with his story. He had not bothered them, he said, because he did not have any way of carrying both cubs, and he hated to kill them. He had thought of Buck, and how he would like a pet cub, so he had followed the bear to her den and had come away to get a sack to carry them in, and to tell Buck about it.

The Kid never once doubted that it was so. Whenever any of the Happy Family found anything in the hills that was nice, they always thought of Buck, and they always brought it to him. You would be amazed at the number of rattlesnake rattles, and eagle's claws, and elk teeth, and things like that, which the Kid possessed and kept carefully stowed away in a closet kept sacred to his uses.

“'Course you'd 'member I wanted a baby bear cub; for a pet,” he assented gravely and with a certain satisfaction. “Is it a far ways to that mother bear's home?”

“Why?” H. J. Owens turned from staring at the rolling smoke cloud, and looked at the Kid curiously. “Ain't you big enough to ride far?”

“'Course I'm big enough” The Kid's pride was touched. “I can ride as far as a horse can travel I bet I can ride farther and faster 'n you can, you pilgrims” He eyed the other disdainfully. “Huh! You can't ride. When you trot you go this way!” The Kid kicked Silver into a trot and went bouncing along with his elbows flapping loosely in imitation of H. J. Owens' ungraceful riding.

“I don't want to go a far ways,” he explained when the other was again Riding alongside, “'cause Doctor Dell would cry if I didn't come back to supper. She cried when I was out huntin' the bunch. Doctor Dell gets lonesome awful easy.” He looked over his shoulder uneasily. “I guess I better go back and tell her I'm goin' to git a baby bear cub for a pet,” he said, and reined Silver around to act upon the impulse.

“No—don't do that, Buck.” H. J. Owens pulled his horse in front of Silver. “It isn't far—just a little ways. And it would be fun to surprise them at the ranch Gee! When they saw you ride up with a pet bear cub in your arms—” H. J. Owens shook his head as though he could not find words to express the surprise of the Kid's family.

The Kid smiled his Little Doctor smile. “I'd tell a man!” he assented enthusiastically. “I bet the Countess would holler when she seen it. She scares awful easy. She's scared of a mice, even! Huh! My kitty ketched a mice and she carried it right in her mouth and brought it into the kitchen and let it set down on the floor a minute, and it started to run away—the mice did. And it runned right up to the Countess, and she jes' hollered and yelled And she got right up and stood on a chair and hollered for Daddy Chip to come and ketch that mice. He didn't do it though. Adeline ketched it herself. And I took it away from her and put it in a box for a pet. I wasn't scared.”

“She'll be scared when she sees the bear cub,” H. J. Owens declared absent-mindedly. “I know you won't be, though. If we hurry maybe we can watch how he digs ants for his supper. That's lots of fun, Buck.”

“Yes—I 'member it's fun to watch baby bear cubs dig ants,” the Kid assented earnestly, and followed willingly where H. J. Owens led the way.

That the way was far did not impress itself upon the Kid, beguiled with wonderful stories of how baby bear cubs might be taught to do tricks. He listened and believed, and invented some very wonderful tricks that he meant to teach his baby bear cub. Not until the shadows began to fill the gullies through which they rode did the Kid awake to the fact that night was coming close and that they were still traveling away from home and in a direction which was strange to him. Never in his life had he been tricked by any one with unfriendly intent. He did not guess that he was being tricked now. He rode away into the wild places in search of a baby bear cub for a pet.