“Got on his Sunday jeans, too,” observed Wess. “Reckon he wants to look handsome.”

  “Wal, he never could — no matter what a dude he makes of himself,” added Pan Handle.

  “Rarin’ to go!” exclaimed Tim, mockingly.

  When Cal finally turned to the breakfast table the others had almost finished eating. Cal called into the kitchen: “Mother, won’t you or Molly bring me somethin’ to eat? These hawgs out here have grazed like sheep across a pasture.”

  “Cal,” replied his mother, “you oughta get up in the mawnin’.”

  Then his sister Molly appeared, carrying several smoking dishes which she set down before him. She was a wholesome-looking girl of about seventeen, unmistakably a Thurman in features.

  “Cal, can I go to town with you?” she asked, appealingly.

  “I should say not,” he replied.

  “But I want to buy some things,” she protested.

  “I’ll buy them for you,” replied Cal.

  “Miss Stockwell left a list of things she wants.”

  “All right. Has she gone to school?”

  “Yes. She went with father in the buckboard. She wanted to see you, but you weren’t up. Said good-bye and you weren’t to forget what she told you about meeting Georgiana.”

  “Now, Molly, cain’t you see there ain’t any danger of Cal’s forgettin’ his date with George-anner?” put in Wess, facetiously.

  Then Cal began his breakfast in silence, aware of the bland observance of his comrades, and he did not waste any time eating. Pushing back his empty plate, he looked square at them.

  “Not ridin’ today, huh?” he queried.

  “Nope,” replied Wess, laconically.

  “Nor tacklin’ any of the lot of work that ought to be done?”

  “Nope.”

  “Goin’ huntin’ with the dogs, maybe?”

  “Reckon it’s too dry an’ hot to hunt. But I’m shore goin’ soon as it rains an’ gets cooler. Lots of bear this fall. An’ a world of acorns up on the high ridges.”

  “Well, what are you goin’ to do today?” deliberately questioned Cal.

  “Reckon I’m takin’ a day off,” said Wess, serenely.

  “Goin’ to Ryson?” went on Cal, grimly.

  “Shore. There ain’t any excitement round heah. An’ I’ve got a world of stuff to buy. Tobacco an’ horseshoes an’ cartridges, an’ — —”

  “I’ll buy your stuff,” cut in Cal.

  “Couldn’t think of trustin’ you,” returned Wess, blandly. “Besides, I want to see Angie.”

  “She’s not home, an’ you know it,” rejoined Cal. Then he directed his gaze at Pan Handle Ames. “Reckon you’ve important reasons to show up in Ryson — huh?”

  “Cal, I jest naturally got to go. There’s a lot — —”

  “Bah!” interrupted Cal as he rose to his feet, shoving the bench seat backwards. He did not need to hear more subterfuge or question Arizona or Tim. They were too casual, too unnaturally uninterested. He judged the enormity of their machinations by the singular blankness of their faces.

  “Goin’ to ride in on horseback?” concluded Cal, with a last glimpse of hopelessness.

  “Nope. We’re takin’ the big car,” said Wess. “You see, Uncle Henry wants flour, grain, an’ a lot of supplies he ordered an’ needs bad. Oh, we’ll have a load comin’ back.”

  “I wanted the big car,” retorted Cal, hotly. “Didn’t father know I was goin’ to meet a lady?”

  “I reckon he did, for when we told him how bad we needed it to fetch back all the stuff, he said you could drive the Ford,” replied Wess, with a composure that indicated supreme self-control.

  “An’ father’s gone with the buckboard!” ejaculated Cal, almost showing distress.

  “Yes, he’s drivin’ teacher to school, an’ then he’s goin’ to Hiram Bowes’.”

  “Cal, seein’ what a meekanik you air an’ how you can drive, it seems to us heah thet you’ll go along in the Ford like a turkey sailin’ downhill,” said Pan Handle Ames, with astounding kindliness and admiration.

  Just then Tim doubled up and began to cough violently. Plain indeed were his heroic efforts to control mirth. Cal gazed at these four cronies in slow-gathering wrath. Finally he let go.

  “Wess, I’ll bet you a horse to a pouch of tobacco that you’ll get licked for this job.”

  “Say! What job are you ravin’ aboot? An’ who’s gonna lick me? You cain’t, Cousin Cal.”

  “I’m not afraid to tackle it again, an’ if I can’t, by golly! I’ll find some one who can,” retorted Cal, darkly.

  With that he abruptly turned away from his tormentors and strode for the corrals. The profound silence left behind him was further and final proof of a remarkable self-control exercised by these tricksters. It worried Cal, yet at the same time it began to arouse his antagonism. The task imposed upon him by the good school-teacher had assumed more than irksome possibilities. Manifestly it had furnished his cousin and comrade riders an unusual opportunity. But would they do anything really rude or unkind to Miss Stockwell’s sister? Cal could not, even in temper, believe that they would. But they were equal to any stretch of the imagination as far as he was concerned, and they would do anything under the sun to make him miserable.

  He went directly to look over the Ford car. It had seen three or four years more than its best days. But it miraculously held together and really did not look like the junkheap it actually was. That was because Cal’s father had covered it recently with a paint he wanted to get rid of.

  Cal Thurman loved horses, and as a rider he was second only to his famous brother Boyd. But he hated automobiles and simply could not understand what made them run or stop or get out of order. As mathematics had been the only study Miss Stockwell could not make clear to Cal, so the operation of a threshing-machine or automobile or of the age-old steam-engine at the sawmill, was the only thing about the ranch that Cal’s father could not teach him. To be sure, he had tried to learn to drive an automobile, and had succeeded to some extent. But it took a mechanical genius to make this Ford go. This morning, however, the deceitful engine started with a crack and a bang, and, to Cal’s amaze, in a moment was humming like a monster bee. Cal felt elated. He might fool that outfit, after all. Still, he reflected, it might have been within the bounds of possibility for them to fix this Ford to fit in with their scheme. All the same, he decided to take instant advantage of the humor of the car before it changed its mind. Forthwith he left the engine running, saw that there was plenty of gasoline and oil, and then hurried back to the house. Donning his jacket and his big black sombrero, he presented himself in the kitchen for orders from the feminine members of the family. His elder sister, Mary, was not there, but Molly, in her requests, made up for two. Cal’s mother was a slight, tall, gray-haired woman, with a wonderful record of pioneer service and sacrifice written on her worn face. The days of her ruggedness were past. She gave Cal money and instructions, and as he was about to go she called him back.

  “Son, listen,” she said, in lower tone. “Shore them tow-haids air up to some mischief. Now don’t forget your manners, whatever they do. It speaks well for you that you offered to meet teacher’s sister. Carry it through, Cal. In my youth the Thurmans of Texas knew how to be courteous to a guest. We’ve most forgot it heah in this hard Tonto country. Shore I look up to you an’ Molly.”

  “All right, mother, I’ll be good,” replied Cal, with a laugh, and bounded out on the porch and off toward the corral. He wanted to avoid meeting his tormentors again, and was fortunate in this. Upon reaching the Ford, he was relieved and amazed to find the engine still running — not only running, but actually softly humming, with an occasional purr.

  “Say, what’s gotten into this old bugg — wagon?” muttered Cal, as he climbed in. He experienced both an inward quake and a thrill. He was young, and his spirit was such that he rose to an occasion that seemed to him harder than any range task ever given him. Indeed, though he felt this, he had quite forgotten Miss Stockwell’s sister. The issue now was to perform a kindness, a duty to one who had been good to him, a task to please his mother, and to do this in spite of Wess Thurman and Tim Matthews and their allies in deviltry.

  Cal got out of the corral and down on the valley road without being hailed from behind — a fact that he took as a good start to his adventure. Then he forgot the boys and lost himself in attention to the car and the sensation of driving along the shady, beautiful road. For some unknown reason the Ford ran better than it ever had run for Cal. As he hummed along between the green walls of juniper and live-oak trees he gradually forgot his uneasiness.

  The morning was clear, and still cool in the shady road. Blue jays and gray squirrels gave noisy awareness of his approach. White-faced red cattle bearing the noted Four T brand browsed along the way. He came to where the road descended a hill, and entered a rocky gully shaded by sycamore trees. They had just begun to add a gold tinge to the green, and cast a wonderful amber light upon the pools of the brook. A flock of wild turkeys, surprised at their drinking, ran with low startled put-put-put into the brush. By and by Cal passed out of the forest of juniper and oak into the rolling hill-lands of manzanita, through which the road meandered and gradually descended.

  Four or five miles took Cal down out of the foothills into the level brush-covered valley lands that led to Ryson. Here and there, at long intervals, lay the ranch of a cattleman. All the old settlers in this country let their stock range over unfenced government lands. Most of them had homesteaded the one hundred and sixty acres allotted by the government, and whenever Cal rode through this district he was possessed of a stronger desire to settle on a place of his own.

  “I’ll homestead that Bear Flat, if father will let me, this very fall,” he soliloquized. “Wess has his eye on Mesa Hill, an’ I’ll bet he’s just waitin’ to save enough money to marry one of them darn twins — or maybe till he can find out which is Angie an’ which is Aggie! — But girls are the least of my trouble. No marryin’ for me. Give me my horses an’ a dog an’ a gun.”

  So young Thurman drove on along the road, with the dry, warm, fragrant breeze in his face, and his thoughts leisurely following idle, dreamy channels. At length he came out into country flat enough for him to see the blue peaks of the Mazatzal range to the south, and to the north the wonderful Mogollon Rim, a black-and-yellow wandering wall of mountain, horizon-long, and ending in the purple distance of the west. This valley was poor in grass, but rich in desert vegetation, such as low scrub oak, and thorny brush, and manzanita, and mescal cactus. On the flats a gray beached grass had been nipped short. The farther Cal progressed along this road the rougher became the country, and the less he liked it. Green Valley nestled high up in the foothills, and was not many miles from the great slopes, ridges, and canyons of the Tonto, and within half a day’s ride of the lofty Rim. How different his wonderful Bear Flat from this country!

  Several miles east of Ryson he turned a curve in the road to see a tall lanky young man plodding wearily along, bowed under the burden of a bundle wrapped in canvas. As Cal neared the fellow it became evident that he could hardly lift one foot after the other. His soiled worn garb attested to the possibility of contact with brush and a bed on the ground. Cal slowed up, naturally expecting the man to turn and ask for a ride. But he did neither. Then Cal stopped and hailed him.

  “Hey, want a lift?”

  The young man raised a cadaverous pale face that quickly aroused Cal’s sympathy.

  “Thanks. I’ll say I would,” replied the traveler, and he lifted the bundle down from his stooped shoulders.

  “Throw it in back an’ ride in front with me,” suggested Cal, eying him with growing interest. Upon closer view this individual appeared to Cal to be the most singularly built human being he had ever seen. He was very tall, and extremely thin, and so loose jointed that he seemed about to fall apart. His arms were so long as to be grotesque — like the arms of an ape — and his hands were of prodigious size. He had what Cal called a chicken neck, a small head, and the homeliest face Cal had ever looked into. Altogether he presented a ridiculous and pathetic figure.

  “I was all in — and lost in the bargain,” said he. The freckles stood out prominently on his wax-colored skin. He was so long and awkward, and his feet were so huge, that Cal thought he was not going to be able to get into the front seat. But he folded himself in, and slouched down with a heave of relief.

  “Lost? What place were you trying to find?” queried Cal as he started the car again.

  “I’ve hiked from Phoenix. And a couple of days this side of Roosevelt Dam I butted into a gas station along the road — Chadwick. The man there told me I could get a job at the Bar XX ranch, and where to find the trail. I found a trail all right, but it led nowhere. I got lost and couldn’t find my way back to Chadwick. Been ten days and nights.”

  “Huh! You must be hungry?”

  “I’ll say so.”

  “Well, you’re way off the track. Bar XX ranch is east. You’ve traveled north. An’ I happen to know Bloom, the foreman of that outfit. He doesn’t want any men.”

  “It’s kinda hard to get a job,” replied the fellow, with a sigh. “Made sure I could catch on in the Salt River Valley. But everybody’s broke there, same as me, and I guess they’d just as lief not see any service men.”

  “You were in the army?” asked Cal, with a heightening of sympathy.

  “No. I was a marine,” replied the other, briefly.

  His tone of aloofness rather reminded Cal of Boyd upon his return from France. These service men who had seen service were reticent, strange.

  “Marine? That’s a sailor, huh? Did you get over?”

  “I’ll say so. I went through Château Thierry, and now by God! I can’t get work in my own country,” he replied bitterly.

  “Say, Buddy, if you’re on the level you can get a job in the Tonto,” returned Cal, rather curtly. His companion vouchsafed no reply to this, and the conversation, so interestingly begun, languished. Cal thought the fellow seemed cast down by this remark. Meanwhile the car swung into the long stretch of gray road at the farther end of which lay the village of Ryson.

  Ranches gave place to cottages, widely separated, and these in turn to the row of square-fronted, old, and weather-beaten frame and stone structures that constituted Ryson. The one street appeared as wide as a public square. Along its quarter of a mile of business section could be seen several cattle, two horses, a burro, and some dogs, but no people. A couple of dilapidated automobiles marked the site of the garage, which had evidently once been a blacksmith’s shop. The town seemed enveloped in the warm, drowsy, sleepy air of midsummer.

  Cal stopped his Ford at the garage, not without a slight feeling of gratification at the amaze his advent would create. Upon the last occasion of his leaving the garage with this particular Ford one of the mechanics had remarked: “It’s a cinch we’ll never see this flivver ag’in!”

  “Say, will you have dinner with me?” queried Cal, of his silent companion.

  “Will I? Boy, lead me on,” replied the ex-marine. “I’ll say you’re a sport.”

  “Glad to have you,” responded Cal. “But we’re early. There’s the hotel — that gray house with the wide porch. You can wait for me there.”

  “You’ll find me anchored, and I’m hoping the dinner bell will ring quick,” he replied, taking his bundle and shuffling away in the direction indicated.

  The young man of the garage stood gaping. “Cal, what is thet you had with you?” inquired one.

  “Where’d it come from?” asked another.

  “It’s a scarecrow hitched on to a coupla bean-poles,” said a third.

  Cal laughed and explained: “Oh, that’s a chap I picked up on the road.”

  “Did he manipulate on this hyar Lizzie of yourn?” inquired the first garage man, indicating the Thurman Ford.

  “No, he didn’t,” retorted Cal. “I’ll have you understand I drove this car.”

  “Car? This ain’t no car. It’s a sheet-iron wagon with a milk-can fer an engine.”

  “Ahuh! Well, you lay off her with your monkey-wrenches,” returned Cal.

  Leaving the car there, Cal proceeded into the big barn-like general store and post-office, and set about the responsible and difficult task of selecting and purchasing the things enumerated by the women-folk of the Thurman household. In his anxiety during the performance of this duty he quite forgot the dinner engagement he had made with the hungry traveler until he had completed the selection to the best of his ability. Then he carried the packages out to the car and deposited them on the back seat. “Reckon she’ll have a lot of stuff to pack,” he muttered, suddenly reminded of his expected passenger.

  After this he repaired to the hotel porch, there to find the cadaverous individual waiting with hungry eyes.

  “Say, I’m sorry I was so long, but I had a lot to do,” said Cal. “Let’s go in an’ get it.”

  In the ensuing half-hour Cal was to learn that a kind action, however thoughtlessly entered into, could have singular effect, not only upon the recipient, but upon him who offered it. Naturally, being a range-rider, he had been many a time as hungry as a bear, but he had never seen a man apparently half starved. How good this meal must have been to the fellow! Cal’s curiosity followed his sympathy.

  “My name’s Cal Thurman,” he said, at the end of the dinner. “What’s yours?”

  “Tuck Merry,” was the reply.

  “Say, that’s a funny name. Merry! It sure doesn’t suit you, friend. An’ Tuck — never heard it before.”

  “It’s a nickname. Almost forgot I had another. But it was Thaddeus.”

  “Huh? How’d you ever get called Tuck?” asked Cal, curiously.

  “I was in the marines. They’re a scrappy bunch. An’ every time I punched a buddy I’d tuck him away to sleep. So they nicknamed me Tuck.”

  “Well, I’ll be darned!” exclaimed Cal, in wondering admiration. Nothing could have been more calculated to arouse his friendliness. “You must have a punch?”

  “Yes. It just comes natural,” replied Merry, simply. “I’ve got a couple of mitts, too. See there.”