Injun and Whitey to the Rescue | Page 4

man hadn't taught him to do in all the years, and that was to quit, so
he kept on. And at last, as any one will who keeps going long enough,
he had to arrive somewhere and he reached the Bar O Ranch.
So you and I and the dog know how he got there, but Bill Jordan, the
punchers, and the boys didn't, and presently they gave up trying to
figure it out.
"'Tain't likely his owner'll show up, so he's ours," said Bill Jordan.
"He's Whitey's," Buck Higgins maintained. "He saw him first."
This law was older than any ranch house, or any cowpuncher, so it held
good, and Whitey became the proud owner of the dog. The matter of
his name came next in importance. Of course he had one, and he was
awakened, and asked to respond to as many dog names as the party
could think of. These were many, running from Towser to Nero, but
they brought no response from the sleepy animal.
"Must be somep'n unusual," Buck Higgins decided, and he ventured on
"Alphonse" and "Julius Cæsar," but they didn't fit.
"Well, we jest nachally got t' give him a name," said Shorty Palmer.
Again the list was gone over, but nothing seemed quite right. "Oughta
be somep'n' 'propriate," said Bill Jordan. "How 'bout Moses? He was
lost in th' wilderness."
"Wilderness nothin'!" objected Buck. "In the bullrushes. Them ain't
prairie grass."
"Besides," said Whitey, "he ought to have a fighting name. Napoleon!"
"'Tain't English."

"Wellington."
"Too long."
As he seemed to have no choice in naming his own dog, Whitey turned
in despair to Injun, who had stood solemnly by. "How about you?"
Whitey asked. "Haven't you a name to suggest?"
The dog knew that he was the subject of the talk, and possibly felt that
he ought to keep awake, for he sat on the veranda and blinked at the
humans. Injun gazed at him stolidly.
"Huh!" he grunted. "Sittin' Bull."
"Great!" cried all the others.
This matter settled, the men went away. Sitting Bull stretched himself
out on the veranda and again fell asleep, and Whitey told Injun that the
dog's coming probably was a good omen. That there ought to be
something doing on the ranch now.
CHAPTER II
A SURPRISE
It was early morning, and the Bar O Ranch slept, heedless of the keen
late-autumn air that had in it just a faint, brisk hint of the fall frosts to
come. Whitey came out of the ranch house and moved toward the
stable. Sitting Bull trudged after him.
The dog was entirely rested, having slept the better part of two days
and nights. He seemed to know that Whitey was his new owner. Dogs
have an instinct for that sort of thing. And though Bull was civil and
friendly enough with every one else on the ranch, he took to Whitey by
selection.
At six o'clock each night Bull sat near the ranch-house front door as
though waiting for some one. He waited a long time. Bill Jordan, who

prided himself on what he knew about dogs, and men, said that Bull's
former owner probably was a city man, and was in the habit of coming
home at six; that the dog was waiting for him to appear. Be that as it
may, in the days to come Bull gave up this custom. No one knew what
he felt about the loss of his old master. He became a Montana dog. The
city was to know him no more.
Now he waddled along after Whitey, who was making for a straw stack,
near the stable. Among the field mice, gophers, rabbits, and such that
thought this stack was a pretty nice place to hang around, were two
hens that were of the same opinion. At least they made their nests in the
stack and laid their eggs there. And they were the only hens that the Bar
O boasted, for hens were scarce in Montana in those days--as Buck said,
"almost as scarce as hen's teeth, an' every one knows there ain't no such
thing."
It was Whitey's particular business to gather the eggs of those hens,
which they saw fit to lay early in the morning. So Whitey came to the
stack early, to be ahead of any weasels or ferrets, who had an
uncommon fondness for eggs. This morning as he moved around the
stack he didn't find any eggs, but he saw something black and pointed
sticking out of the straw. Whitey took hold of the object and pulled,
and the thing lengthened out in his hands.
And right there a sort of shivery feeling attacked Whitey's spine and
moved up until it reached his hair, which straightway began to stand on
end, for the object was