Winter passed. Spring came with roundups too numerous for Pan to keep track of. And a swift happy summer sped by.

  That fall a third uncle settled in the valley. He was an older brother of Pan’s father, whom they called Old Uncle Ike. He was a queer old bachelor, lived alone, and did not invite friendliness. Pan was told to stay away from him. Old Uncle Ike was crabby and hard; when a boy, his heart had been broken by an unfaithful sweetheart; he had shot her lover and run away to war. After serving through the Civil War he fought Indians, and had lived an otherwise wild life.

  But Pan was only the keener to see and know Old Uncle Ike. He went boldly to make his acquaintance. He found a sad-faced, gray old man, sitting alone.

  Pan said bravely: “Uncle, I’m Pan Smith, your brother Bill’s boy, an’ I’ve come to see you because I’m sure I’ll like you.”

  He did not find the old man unfriendly. Pan was welcome, and soon they became fast friends. Every Saturday Pan rode over to Uncle Ike’s place, stealing some of the time he was supposed to be spending with Lucy. The little girl pouted and cried and railed at Pan for such base desertion, but he only laughed at her. Any time he wanted he could have Lucy. She grew sweeter and more lovable as she grew older, facts Pan took to his heart, but he chose the old man’s stories of war and Indians in preference to Lucy’s society.

  Months passed, and Pan grew tall and supple, with promise of developing the true horseman’s build. Then the spring when he was twelve years old arrived and his father consented to let him ride for wages at the roundup.

  He joined a big outfit. There were over fifty cowboys, two bed wagons, two chuck wagons, and strings of horses too numerous to count. A new horse to ride twice a day! This work was as near paradise as Pan felt he had ever been. But for one circumstance, it would have been absolutely perfect, and that was that he had no boots. A fast-riding cowboy without boots!

  In the heat of action, amid the whirling loop of bawling calves and cows, when the dry dust rose to stop up Pan’s nostrils and cake on his hot sweaty face, when the ropes were whistling, the cowboys yelling, the brand iron sizzling, all he felt was the wild delight of it, the thrill of the risk, the excitement, the constant stirring life and motion. During leisure hours, however, he was always confronted with his lack of rider’s equipment.

  “Say, kid, who built them top boots of yourn?” asked one cowboy.

  “Shore, I’ll trade spurs with you,” drawled another.

  “Whar’s yore fur chaps there, cowboy?” queried a third.

  And so it went always and forever. The cowboys could not help that. It was born in them, born of the atmosphere and spirit of the singular life they lived. Nevertheless Pan loved them, and they were good to him.

  His best friends in this outfit were Si and Slick, both horse wranglers, whose real names Pan never learned.

  That roundup was prolific of wonderful experiences. One night when a storm threatened the foreman called to the cowboys not on duty; “Talk to ’em low, boys, fer they’re gettin’ ready.”

  He meant that the herd of cattle was likely to stampede. And when the thunder and rain burst the herd broke away with a trampling roar. Pan got soaked to the skin and lost in the rain. When he returned to camp only the cook and wagons were there. Next morning the cowboys straggled in in bunches, each driving part of the stampeded herd.

  At breakfast one morning Pan heard a yell. “Ride him, cowboy!”

  “Whoopee! Look at that outlaw comin’ high, wide an’ handsome!”

  Pan just had time to see a terribly pitching red horse come tearing into the circle of cowboys. His rider went shooting over his head to alight among them. Then what a scattering! That red fiend spoiled the breakfast and cleaned out the camp. How the cowboys reviled the poor fellow who had been thrown!

  “Huh! Broke yore collar bone?” yelled one. “Why you dod-blasted son of a sea cook, he oughta hev broke yore neck!”

  And Si, the horse wrangler said: “Charlie, I reckon it’s onconsiderate of you to exercise yore pet hoss on our stummicks.”

  One of the amazing things that happened during the winter was the elopement of Miss Amanda Hill with a cowboy. Pan did not like this fellow very well, but the incident heightened his already magnificent opinion of cowboys.

  Pan never forgot Lucy’s first day of school when he rode over with her sitting astride behind him, “ringin’ his neck,” as a cowboy remarked. Pan had not particularly been aware of that part of the performance for he was used to having Lucy cling to him. That embarrassed him. He dropped her off rather unceremoniously at the door, and went to put his horse in the corral. She was little and he was big, which fact further bore upon his consciousness, through the giggles of the girls and gibes of the boys. But they did not make any change in his attitude toward Lucy. All winter he took her to and from school on his horse. The summer following, he worked for his Uncle Ike.

  As Pan grew older time seemed so much shorter than when he was little. There was so much to do. And all at once he was fifteen years old. His mother gave him a party on that birthday, which was marked on his memory by the attention his boy friends paid to Lucy. She was by far the prettiest girl in the valley. He did not know exactly what to make of his resentment, nor of the queer attitude of proprietorship he had assumed over her.

  He was destined to learn more about his state of mind. It happened the next day at school during the noon hour. That late November, a spell of Indian summer weather had lingered, and the pupils ate their lunches out under the trees.

  Suddenly Lucy came running up to Pan, who as usual was having a care for his horse. Her golden hair was flying, disheveled. She was weeping. Her big violet eyes streamed with tears. She was wiping her face with most expressive disgust.

  “Pan — you go right off — and thrash Dick Hardman,” she cried, passionately.

  “Lucy! — What’s he done?” queried Pan, after a sudden sense of inward shock.

  “He’s always worrying me — when you’re not around. I never told ‘cause I knew you’d fight...But now he’s done it. He grabbed me and kissed me! Before all the boys!”

  Pan looked steadily at her tear-wet face, seeing Lucy differently. She was not a baby any more. For some strange reason beyond his understanding he was furious with her. Pushing her aside he strode toward the group of boys, leering close by.

  Dick Hardman, a strapping big lad now, edged back into the crowd. Pan violently burst into it, forcing the boys back, until he confronted his adversary. On Dick’s sallow face the brown freckles stood out prominently. Something in the look and advance of Pan had intimidated him. But he blustered, he snarled.

  “You’re a skunk,” said Pan fiercely, and struck out with all his might.

  One hour from that moment they were still fighting. They had fought from the grove to the schoolyard, from there down the road and back again. Bloody, ragged, black, they beat, tore, hit, bit and clawed each other. The teacher, wringing her hands, called upon the other boys to separate the belligerents. They had tried, but in vain, and only got kicked for their pains. The girls, most of them, screamed and cried. But not Lucy! White faced and with dilated eyes she watched that struggle. All the spectators, even the youngest, seemed to recognize it as a different kind of a fight from any that had ever occurred before. At last the teacher sent some of the children for help from the nearest farmhouse.

  Dick would lower his head and lunge at Pan, trying to butt him in the abdomen. Twice he had bowled Pan over, to his distinct advantage. But the crafty Pan, timing another and last attack of this kind, swung up his knee with terrific force, square into Dick’s face.

  Down Dick plumped, rolled over on his back, yelling loudly. Suddenly he ceased, he raised up on one elbow, he spat blood, and something that rattled on the gravel. A tooth! His grimy hand went trembling to his blood-stained mouth. He felt of his front teeth. One was gone, others were loose. Vanity, Dick’s distinguishing characteristic, suffered a terrible blow. Staggering to his feet, fetching a stone with him, he glared at Pan: “I’ll — kill — you!”

  He flung the stone with deadly intent. But Pan dodged it and leaped at him. Dick ran hard toward the schoolhouse, stooping to snatch up stones, and turning to fling them at Pan. The yelling boys scattered, the frightened girls fled. Pan was not to be outdone at any kind of fight. He returned stone for stone, the last of which struck Dick low down in the leg. Like a crippled beast Dick shrieked and plunged into the schoolhouse, slamming shut the door. But Pan, rushing after, grabbed up a rock and flung it so powerfully that it split the door and knocked it off the hinges.

  Pan rushed in to receive full in the face a long, thick teacher’s ruler thrown by Dick. It knocked him flat. Picking it up Pan brandished it and charged his enemy. Dick ran along the blackboard, and jerking up one eraser after another he threw them. His aim was poor. His strength waning. His courage had gone. As for Pan it was as if the long fight had only inspired him to renewed ferocity and might. The truth was that a hot dancing fire in Pan’s blood had burned to white intensity, unquenchable and devastating.

  Suddenly Dick made for the teacher’s table. An idea, an inspiration showed in his renewed speed. Pan divined its purpose. Leaping upon the desks he endeavored to head Dick off. Too late! When Pan sprang off the last desk to the platform Dick had turned — with the teacher’s long paper knife in his hand and baleful hate in his prominent eyes.

  Later, when the children outside dared to peep into the schoolroom they neither saw nor heard anything of the fighters. But fearing they were just hiding behind the benches, ready for a renewed fusillade, not one of the pupils dared go in. The teacher had hurried down the road to meet the men some of the boys had fetched.

  And these men were Jim Blake and Bill Smith who had been riding home from the range. When they entered the schoolroom with the teacher fearfully following, and only Lucy of all the scholars daring to come too, they found the fight was over.

  Dick lay unconscious on the floor with a bloody forehead. Pan sat crouched on the platform, haggard and sullen, with face, shirt, hands all bloody.

  “Ah-uh! Reckon you’ve been fightin’ like a cowboy for shore this time,” said Pan’s father in his matter of fact way. “Stand up. Let’s look at you...Jim, take a look at that lad on the floor.”

  While Pan painfully endeavored to get up, Blake knelt beside Dick.

  “Bill, this heah rooster has had a wallop,” said Blake.

  “You little cowpunchin’ ruffian,” exploded Smith angrily, reaching a large arm for Pan. “Now then...What the hell?...Boy, you’ve been stabbed!”

  “Yes — Dad — he stuck me — with teacher’s knife,” replied Pan faintly. He tottered on his feet, and his right hand was pressed tight to his left shoulder, high up, where the broken haft of the paper knife showed between his red-stained fingers.

  Bill Smith’s anger vanished in alarm, and something stern and grim took its place. Just then Lucy broke away from the teacher and confronted him.

  “Oh — please don’t punish him, Mr. Smith,” she burst out poignantly. “It was all my fault. I — I stuck up my nose at Dick. He said things that — that weren’t nice...I slapped him. Then he grabbed me, kissed me...I ran to Pan — and — and told him...Oh, that made Pan fight.”

  Smith looked gravely down into the white little face with the distended violet eyes, slowly losing their passion. He seemed to be struck with something that he had never seen before.

  “Wal, Lucy, I’ll not punish Pan,” he said, slowly. “I think more of him for fightin’ for you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY DID NOT meet again during the winter. It was a hard winter. Pan left school and stayed close to home, working for his mother, and playing less than any time before.

  “I heard Dick say he’d kill you someday,” said one cowboy seriously. “An’ take it from me, kid, he’s a bad hombre.”

  “Ah-uh!” was all the reply Pan vouchsafed, as he walked away. He did not like to be reminded of Dick. It sent an electric spark to the deep-seated smoldering mine in his breast.

  When springtime came Pan joined the roundup in earnest, for part of the cattle and outfit now belonged to his father. Out on the range the forty riders waited for the wagons. There were five cowboys from Big Sandy in Pan’s bunch and several more arrived from the Crow Roost country. Old Dutch John, a famous range character, was driving the chuck wagon. At one time he had been a crony of Pan’s father, and that attracted Pan to the profane old grizzled cook. He could not talk without swearing and, if he replied to a question that needed only yes or no, he would supplement it with a string of oaths.

  Next day the outfit rode the west side of Dobe Creek, rounding up perhaps a thousand cattle. Pete Blaine and Hookey roped calves while Pan helped hold up.

  On the following day the riders circled Blue Lakes, where cattle swarmed. Old John had yelled to the boys: “Hey, punchers, heave at them today. You gotta throw an awful mess of ’em heah.”

  These two lakes were always dry, except during the spring; and now they were full, with green grass blanketing the range as far as eye could see. By Monday long lines of cattle moved with flying dust down to the spot chosen for the roundup. As the herds closed in, the green range itself seemed to be moving. When thrown together all these cattle formed a sea of red and white, from which roared an incessant bawling. It looked impossible to separate cows and calves from the others. But dozens of fearless cowboys, riding in here and in there, soon began to cut out the cows and calves.

  It was a spectacle that inspired Pan as never before. The wagons were lined up near the lake, their big white canvas tops shining in the afternoon sun, and higher on a bench stood the “hoodelum” or bed wagon, so stocked with bedrolls that it resembled a haystack. Beyond the margin of the lake, four hundred fine saddle horses grazed and kicked and bit at one another. Beyond the saddle horses grazed the day herd of cattle. And over on the other side dinned the melee over the main herd, the incessant riding, yelling of the cowboys and the bawling of the cows.

  When all the cows and calves were cut out, a rider of each outfit owning cattle on that range would go through to claim those belonging to his brand. Next the herd of bulls and steers, old cows and yearlings, would be driven back out upon the range.

  Fires were started, and as there was no wood on that range, buffalo chips were used instead. It took many cowboys to collect sufficient for their needs.

  At sunset, when the branding of calves was finished, each cowboy caught a horse for night duty. Pan got one he called Old Paint.

  “Say, kid,” called one of the Crow Nest cowboys, “ain’t you tyin’ up a pretty fancy hoss fer night work?”

  “Oh, I guess not,” laughed Pan.

  “Come heah, Blowy,” called the cowboy to another. “See what I found.”

  A long lanky red-faced rider detached himself from the others, and strode with jingling spurs over to look at Pan’s horse.

  “Wal, I’ll go to hell, Ben Bolt, if it ain’t ol’ Calico!” he ejaculated, in amaze and pleasure. “Kid, whar’d you ever git him?”

  “Dad made a trade,” replied Pan.

  “Kid, look a heah. Don’t ever tie that hoss to a stake pin. He’s the best cow hoss I ever slung a leg over. The puncher who broke him an’ reached him all he knows was my pard, long ago. An’ he’s daid. Kid, he’d roll over in his grave if he knowed ol’ Cal was tied to a picket pin.”

  “Aw, is that so?” replied Pan. “Fact is, I don’t know much about him. We called him Old Paint. Haven’t forked him yet. Dad got him from a lady last winter. She was trying to work him to a cart. But he balked. She said she poured some hot water on...”

  “Lady, hell!” shouted the cowboy, growing redder of face. “She wasn’t no lady if she treated that grand hoss that way...See heah, kid, I’ll stake you to a good night hoss. Turn Ol’ Cal loose, an’ whenever you need to do some real fancy separatin’ jest set your frusky on ol’ Cal. Better tie to your stirrups if you’re perticler aboot keepin’ your seat, ‘cause ‘at ol’ pony can sure git from under a cowhand.”

  “All right, I’ll turn Old Calico loose,” replied Pan. “And I’ll remember what you said about him.”

  Blowy pointed out one of his horses. “Kid, screw your wood to thet Jasper, an’ you’ll never be walkin’.”

  “Thanks, but I got lots of horses,” said Pan.

  “Aw go on — lots of horses. Why bunkie, I got more mean horses than I can start to keep gentle. I just fetched thet one to stake my friends.”

  Pan saddled up the horse indicated, and found him the best he had ever mounted. That experience led to his acquaintance with Blowy. He was a ceaseless talker, hence his name, but beloved by all the outfit. Pan learned something from every cowboy he met and it was not all for the best.

  That roundup was Pan’s real introduction to the raw range. When the time came for the outfit to break up, with each unit taking its own cattle, the boss said to Pan, “Come ride fer me.”

  Pan, flushed and pleased, mumbled his thanks, but he had to work for his father. Then he and the boy with him, Joe Crawley, bade their comrades good-by, especially loath to part with Old Dutch, and started home with their cows and calves. They crossed the old Indian battlefield where Colonel Shivington gave the famous order to his soldiers: “Kill ’em all. Nits make lice!”

  Pan and Joe set out from there for Limestone Creek with their small herd and extra horses. Pan wanted to bring Old Calico, but he had drifted off to the range.

  “Heel flies are workin’, kid,” said Joe, who was older and more experienced. “We’re shore goin’ to be on the mud fer the next month.”

  There was something in the air, storm perhaps, or such conditions that have strange effect upon beasts. Pan and Joe fought their cattle and horses all that day, and most of the night. They could not make them travel. Halting where they were they kept guard till dawn, then tried to drive their outfit on. But not for several hours could they move them. At length, however, the stock began to get dry, and string out and travel.