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Updated: June 21, 2025
"You let out a yip and I'll slat you across the face!" Pinkey stared at the words at Wallie's voice at an expression he never had seen before. "I know how you feel, but it's pure murder to let him git into that crick." "Will you shut up?" Wallie looked at him with steely eyes, and there was a glint in them that silenced Pink. He waited, wonderingly, to see what it all meant.
Having the courage of his convictions, Wallie skinned and dressed the prairie-dogs he had caught out of their holes one sunshiny morning, and meant to eat them for his Christmas dinner if it was humanly possible. The subject of food occupied a large part of Wallie's time and attention since he was not yet sufficiently practised to make cooking easy.
"He gets 'ringy' that feller." Canby's cold gray eyes glittered, though he said nothing of his intentions. Pinkey put up Wallie's silk tent and staked it, showed him how to hobble and picket his horse and to make baking-powder biscuit, and left him.
We can eat a sheep at a settin' when we're all together." Biscuit-making was Wallie's special antipathy, and he now solaced himself with the thought that since they had eaten so many, they would eat less for dinner and he would have plenty of the fresh ones left for supper. But disappointment was again his portion.
The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomach with such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like someone beating a carpet.
It was upon Wallie's inability to "winter" that Canby was counting. He had hung on longer than Canby had thought he would, but the cattleman felt fairly sure that the first big snowstorm would see the last of Wallie. The hardships and loneliness would "get" him as it did most tenderfeet, Canby reasoned, and some morning he would saddle up in disgust, leaving another homestead open to entry.
Making a megaphone of his hands he yelled. Canby lifted his wild eyes to the bank. "Throw me a rope!" he shrieked. A slow, tantalizing smile came to Wallie's face. Very distinctly he called back: "How much damages will you give me for driving your cattle into my wheat?" "Not a damn cent!" The rope Wallie had been swinging about his head to test the loop promptly dropped.
With the money he had collected from Canby he had formed a partnership with Pinkey whereby the latter was to furnish the experience and his services as against his, Wallie's, capital.
"That's one chicken we counted before it was hatched," he observed, regretfully, to Wallie. The scenery was sublime that morning and the party were in ecstasies, but mere mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could not divert Wallie's mind from the disquieting fact that he must somehow convey the information to Mr. Hicks that his presence at table with the guests was undesirable.
He had not had time to visualize himself as Aunt Lizzie's father when she went on in a short-breathed fashion: "I fear that I shall have to leave you, Wallie, as soon as possible." Wallie's wonder grew, but he said nothing. "I think I fear I believe," she stammered, "that Mr. Hicks is of a very ardent temperament." Wallie could not have spoken now had he wanted to.
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