Chip

“ And Weary listened silently, digging little trenches in the hard soil with the rowels of his spurs, and, knowing Chip as he did, understanding the matter much better than did the Little Doctor.
“And he doesn't seem to know that I never meant to claim the picture as my work, and I can't explain while he acts so—oh, you know how he can act. And Dunk wouldn't have sold the picture if he had known Chip painted it, and it was wrong, of course, but I did so want Chip to have some real encouragement so he would make that his life work. YOU know he is fitted for something better than cow-punching. ”

“ Like a dog forever expecting a blow, like any dumb brute ever on guard against superior force, so had Chip grown to maturity, a cringing, helpless, almost hopeless creature, and yet one whose inborn impulses and desires revolted at her surroundings. ”

“ The most disagreeable trait of some disagreeable people is that their intentions are invariably good. She had her “crochy work,” and Chip groaned inwardly when he saw her settle herself comfortably in a rocking-chair and unwind her thread. The Countess had worked hard all her life, and her hands were red and big-jointed. There was no pleasure in watching their clever manipulation of the little, steel hook. If it had been the Little Doctor’s hands, now—Chip turned again to the decapitated, pale blue vine with its pink flowers and no leaves. ”

“ Then voices reached him through the open door, and a laugh—her laugh. Chip smiled sympathetically, though he had not the faintest notion of the cause of her mirth. As the voices drew nearer, the soft, smooth, hated tones of Dunk Whitaker untangled from the Little Doctor’s laugh, and Chip stopped whistling. Dunk was making a good, long stay of it this time; usually he came one day and went the next, and no one grieved at his departure.
“You find them an entirely new species, of course. How do you get on with them?” ”

“ But Johnny, peeping surreptitiously over Chip’s shoulder, stared at the change; then, feeling the spirit of it, shivered in sympathy with the barren hills.
“Hully gee,” he muttered under his breath, “he’s sure a corker t’ paint cold that fair makes yer nose sting.” And he curled up in a chair behind, where he could steal a look, now and then, without fear of detection.
But Chip was dead to all save that tiny basin in the Bad Lands—to the wolves and their quarry. His eyes burned as they did when the fever held him; each cheek bone glowed flaming red. ”

“ Silver stopped at the corner, swung his head and looked back at Chip, beckoning, coaxing, swearing under his breath. His eyes sought for sign of his goddess, who had disappeared most mysteriously. Throwing up his head, he sent a protest shrilling through the air, and looked no more at Chip.
“I’m coming, now be still. Oh, don’t you dare paw with your lame leg! Why didn’t you stay with your master?”
“He’s no use for his master, any more,” said Chip, with a hurt laugh. “A woman always does play the—mischief, somehow. I wonder why? They look innocent enough.” ”

“ They’re none of them as good as ‘The Old Maid.’”
“I wish you’d tear that thing up!” said Chip, vehemently.
“Why? The likeness is perfect. One would think you were designer for a fashion paper, the way you got the tucks in my sleeve and the braid on my collar—and you might have had the kindness to tell me my hat was on crooked, I think!”
There was a rustle in the loose straw, a distant slam of the stable door, and Chip sat alone with his horse, whittling abstractedly at his pencil till his knife blade grated upon the metal which held the eraser. ”

“ Chip, thinking of the morrow’s drive, groaned in real anguish of spirit.
“You won’t dast t’ roll a cigarette comin’ home, Chip,” predicted Happy Jack, mournfully. “Yuh want t’ smoke double goin’ in.”
“I don’t think I’ll smoke double going in,” returned Chip, dryly. “If the old girl don’t like my style, why the walking isn’t all taken up.”
“Say, Chip,” suggested Jack Bates, “you size her up at the depot, and, if she don’t look promising, just slack the lines on Antelope Hill. The creams’ll do the rest. If they don’t, we’ll finish the job here.” ”

“ Chip, in none the best humor with him, jerked the reins savagely and dug him with his spurs, and Whizzer, resenting the affront, whirled and bounded high in the air. Back down the grade he bucked with the high, rocking, crooked jumps which none but a Western cayuse can make, while Weary turned in his saddle and watched with sharp-drawn breaths. ”

“ Chip, chip, chip, always from left to right, a tier below, and then the tier below that. The toy piano is becoming a toy organ of many manuals; and the hue of the keys is not that of the rough outer surface: as they first see the light they are nearer the colour of cigar-ash.
Chip, chip, chip—chip, chip, chip; but swish, swish, swish is a thought nearer the sound. So soft that stone, so sharp that bit, so timorous and tentative the unpractised strokes of Robert Carlton!
Every now and then he would stop, and anxiously apply a straight lath to the spreading smoothness ”

“ Chip turned his head rebelliously upon the pillow and looked up at her. Something in his eyes brought to mind certain stormy crises in the headstrong childhood of the Little Doctor-crises in which she was forced to submission very much against her will. It was the same mutinous surrender to overwhelming strength, the same futile defiance of fate.
“I came to ask you who you would rather have to nurse you,” she said, trying to keep the erratic color from crimsoning her cheeks. ”

“ Chip sat where they had left him, staring unseeingly down at the uncompleted sketch. His cigarette went out, but he did not roll a fresh one and held the half-burned stub abstractedly between his lips, set in bitter lines.
Why should he care what a slip of a girl thought of him? He didn’t care; he only—that thought he did not follow to the end, but started immediately on a new one. He supposed he was ignorant, according to Eastern standards. Lined up alongside Dr. Cecil Granthum—damn him!—he would cut a sorry figure, no doubt. ”

“ Chip did not resume his whistling, though he might have done so if he had heard a little more, or a little less. As a matter of fact, it was the Densons, and the Pilgreens, and the Beckmans that were under discussion, and not the Flying U cowboys, as Chip believed. He no longer smiled sympathetically.
“We furnish her with some amusement, do we? That’s good! We’re a good-hearted lot, but so ignorant! The devil we are!” ”

“ Leaning on the balustrade, all faces turned one way, they fringed the promenade, leaving the broad, paved spaces empty.
For this reason Chip's eye caught the more quickly at the other end of the terrace the figures of a man and a woman who stood back from the line of gazers. They were almost in profile toward himself, the man's erect, stately form allowing the fact that a woman was clinging to his arm to be just perceptible. It required no such movement as that of a few minutes later—a movement by which the woman came more fully into view—for Chip to recognize Edith. ”

“ He lifted his head when he heard Chip's step, and neighed wistfully. Chip bent over him, black agony in his eyes. Miss Whitmore, looking on, realized for the first time that the suffering of the horse was a mere trifle compared to that of his master. Her eyes wandered to the loaded revolver which bulged his pocket behind, and she shuddered—but not for Silver. She went closer and laid her hand upon the shimmery mane. The horse snorted nervously and struggled to rise.
“He's not used to a woman,” said Chip, with a certain accent of pride. “I guess this is the closest he's ever been to one. ”

“ The door slammed with extreme violence, and Weary slashed his chin unbecomingly in consequence, but he felt no resentment toward Chip. He calmly stuck a bit of paper on the cut to stop the bleeding and continued to shave.
A short time after, the Little Doctor came across Chip glaring at Dick Brown, who was strumming his guitar with ostentatious ease upon an inverted dry-goods box at one end of the long dining room.
“I came to ask a favor of you,” she said, “but my courage oozed at the first glance.”
“It’s hard to believe your courage would ooze at anything. What’s the favor?” ”

“ Love Finds Its Hour.
“Bay Denver’s broke out uh the little pasture,” announced the Old Man, putting his head in at the door of the blacksmith shop where Chip was hammering gayly upon a bent branding iron, for want of a better way to kill time and give vent to his surplus energy. “I wish you’d saddle up an’ go after him, Chip, if yuh can. I just seen him takin’ down the coulee trail like a scared coyote.” ”

“ The Little Doctor never could remember getting down that bluff, and her sketching materials went to amuse the jack rabbits and the birds. Fast as she flew, Weary was before her and had raised Chip’s head upon one arm. She knelt beside him in the dust, hovering over the white face and still form like a pitying, little gray angel. Weary looked at her impersonally, but neither of them spoke in those first, breathless moments.
The Old Man, who had witnessed the accident, came puffing laboriously up the hill, taking the short cut straight across from the stable. ”

“ But Chip would have none of him or his wise intentions. He jerked the wet napkin from the Old Man’s fingers and threw it down behind the bed, knocked up the bowl of water into the Old Man’s face and called him some very bad names. The Countess came and looked in, and Chip hurled a pillow at her and called her a bad name also, so that she retreated to the kitchen with her feelings very much hurt. After that Chip had the south room to himself until the Little Doctor returned with Johnny.
The Old Man, looking rather scared, met her on the porch. ”

“ He let the creams lope in the harness all the way to the depot, excusing himself on the plea that the time was short; the fact was, Chip wanted the agony over as soon as possible; nothing so wears a man's patients as to have a disagreeable duty drag. At the depot he drove around to the back where freight was unloaded, with the explanation that the creams were afraid of the train—and the fact of that matter was, that Chip was afraid Dr. Cecil might greet the Little Doctor with a kiss—he'd be a fool if he didn't—and Chip did not want to witness the salute. ”

“ Chip really felt that way about it, after the first dash of wounded pride. He could never begin to square accounts with the Little Doctor, anyhow, and he was proud that he could do something for her, even if it was nothing more than fixing up a picture so that it rose considerably above mediocrity. He had meant it that way all along, but the suspicion that she was quite ready to appropriate his work rather shocked him, just at first. No one likes having a gift we joy in bestowing calmly taken from our hands before it has been offered. ”

“ It’s too hot.” Chip took off his hat and fanned himself with it.
“Well, can’t you look a little bit excited? Try and look the way I feel! Anybody as cool as you are shouldn’t suffer with the heat.”
“I don’t know—I get pretty hot, sometimes. Well, what is the most splendid news? Can’t you tell a fellow, after calling him up here in the hot sun?”
“Well, listen. The Gilroy hospital—you know, where Cecil is”—Chip knew—“has a case of blighted love and shattered hopes”—Chip’s foolish, man-heart nearly turned a somersault. ”

“ Any such interval as that was always the hardest feature in the day for him. But what smote him specially now was the air of emptiness and loneliness. It met him as an odor in the stale smell of the cigar he had smoked on coming up-town from the office, and which still lingered in the rooms. He had forgotten to open a window, and the house valet, whose duty it was to "tidy up," had evidently gone out.
In the small hall into which Chip entered there was a bookcase with but two or three odds and ends of books in it, for his habits of reading had dropped away from him with everything else. ”

“ It was obviously impossible for two little mites to kiss a man of that height at that distance. Chip dropped into an arm-chair, waiting jealously for the two dutiful little pecks that might pass as spontaneous, and then throwing his big arms about his young ones in a desperate embrace. After that the ice was broken, and, with the aid of the games and the picture-books provided by Lily Bland, the meeting could go forward to a glorious termination in ice-cream. ”

“ Shorty, who had just come in from riding, unbuckled his spurs and kicked them under his bed.
“It’ll be many a day b’fore we listen t’ the Little Doctor’s mandolin ag’in,” croaked Happy Jack.
“Aw, shut up!” admonished Cal.
“Come on, Chip,” sang out Weary. “You can spoil good paper when you can’t do anything else. Come and size up the look on Dunk’s face when we take possession of all the best chairs and get t’ pouring our incense and admiration on the Little Doctor.”
Chip took the cigarette from his lips and emptied his lungs of smoke. “You fellows go on. I’m not going.” ”

“ I'm so anxious for Cecil to see the Countess and—well, everybody around here. You, too.”
“I'm sure a curiosity,” said Chip, getting on his feet again. “I've always had the name of being something of a freak—I don't wonder you want to exhibit me to your—friends.” He went down the hill to the bunk house, holding the unlighted cigarette still in his fingers.
When Slim opened the door to tell him supper was ready, he found Chip lying on his bed, his face buried in his arms. ”

“ I'll drive around so you can get another shot at him,” cried Chip. He headed up the hill again until the coyote, crouching low, was fully revealed.
“That's a fine shot. Throw another shell in, quick! You better kneel on the seat, this time—the horses know what's coming. Steady, Polly, my girl!”
Miss Whitmore glanced down the hill, and then, apprehensively, at the creams, who were clanking their bits, wild-eyed and quivering. Only their master's familiar voice and firm grip on the reins held them there at all. Chip saw and interpreted the glance, somewhat contemptuously. ”