Chapter 21. The Fight Goes On

It is amazing how quickly life swings back to the normal after even so harrowing an experience as had come to the Flying U. Tragedy had hovered there a while and had turned away with a smile, and the smile was reflected upon the faces and in the eyes of everyone upon whose souls had fallen her shadow. The Kid was safe, and he was well, and he had not suffered from the experience; on the contrary he spent most of his waking hours in recounting his adventures to an admiring audience. He was a real old cowpuncher. He had gone into the wilderness and he had proven the stuff that was in him. He had made "dry-camp" just exactly as well as any of the Happy Family could have done. He had slept out under the stars rolled in a blanket--and do you think for one minute that he would ever submit to lace-trimmed nighties again? If you do, ask the little Doctor what the Kid said on the first night after his return, when she essayed to robe him in spotless white and rock him, held tight in her starved arms. Or you might ask his Daddy Chip, who hovered pretty close to them both, his eyes betraying how his soul gave thanks. Or-- never mind, I'll tell you myself.

The Little Doctor brought the nightie, and reached out her two eager arms to take the kid off Chip's knees where he was perched contentedly relating his adventures with sundry hair- raising additions born of his imagination. The Kid was telling Daddy Chip about the skunk he saw, and he hated to be interrupted. He looked at his Doctor Dell and at the familiar, white garment with lace at the neck and wristbands, and he waved his hand with a gesture of dismissal.

"Aw, take that damn' thing away!" he told her in the tone of the real old cowpuncher. "When I get ready to hit the bed- ground, a blanket is all I'll need."

Lest you should think him less lovable than he really was, I must add that, when Chip set him down hastily so that he himself could rush off somewhere and laugh in secret, the Kid spread his arms with a little chuckle and rushed straight at his Doctor Dell and gave her a real bear hug.

"I want to be rocked," he told her--and was her own baby man again, except that he absolutely refused to reconsider the nightgown. "And I want you to tell me a story--about when Silver breaked his leg. Silver's a good ole scout, you bet. I don't know what I'd a done 'theut Silver. And tell about the bunch makin' a man outa straw to scare you, and the horses runned away. I was such a far ways, Doctor Dell, and I couldn't get back to hear them stories and I've most forgot about 'em. And tell about Whizzer, Doctor Dell."

The Little Doctor rocked him and told him of the old days, and she never again brought him his lace-trimmed nightie at bedtime. She never mentioned his language upon the subject, either. The Little Doctor was learning some things about her man-child, and one of them was this: When he rode away