Peak and Prairie | Page 6

ought to be ashamed of myself! Come, David, come right along to bed. You're going to sleep on the mat at the back door."
David, who was nothing if not amenable, cheerfully acceded to this arrangement. Even before his new mistress had finished tying him to the railing, he had curled himself up on the mat and was fast asleep. When she patted him on the head, however, by way of good-night, his tail gave a responsive wag, and little Mrs. Nancy left him with the friendliest feelings.
The next morning the dog was gone. Yes, incredible as it seems, that graceless dog was gone--gone without a word of farewell.
Mrs. Nancy was standing gazing in dejected mood at the fragment of string he had left behind him, when the milkman, one of her special cronies, arrived. The good-natured Sam was full of sympathy.
"I reckon he came in with some ranchman yesterday, and got lost in the town. Like as not he's gone home. Good Lord! I'd just like to see that 'ere ranchman when his dog gits back with a locket round his neck!"
"I washed him too, Sam," Mrs. Nancy lamented, as she accompanied her visitor to the gate. She was too conscientious to detain the man from the performance of his duty.
"You washed him!" he cried, as he got into his cart. "Jerusalem! I guess that's the first time a ranch dog ever got a taste of a bath."
And the cart rattled off, leaving David's little friend standing at the gate. It was just after sunrise, and she looked down the street to the mountains, which were bathed in a flood of translucent crimson reflected from the east.
"I wonder if the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem look very different from that!" she mused, as she gazed into the deepening color. When she turned back to the house, she had almost forgotten the ungrateful runaway in thoughts of her boy and his heavenly abiding place.
The next afternoon Mrs. Tarbell was sitting on her front porch endeavoring to readjust the bows upon the old straw bonnet. She had taken them off, and sponged both ribbon and straw, and she was now trying her best to make the bows hold up their heads with the spirit and grace which distinguish a milliner's trimming. She looked up from time to time to enjoy the reflection of the trees in the lake surrounding the house. For her grass was being flooded to-day, and that was always a pretty sight. "It looks almost as pretty as Watkins' pond out on the Goodham turnpike," she reflected, as the water glistened in a broad expanse. She owned a good piece of land, a hundred feet front. Willie had meant to have a vegetable garden when he had got strong enough to work in it.
A horseman had turned into the street, and came cantering toward the house. But horsemen were part of the landscape in Colorado, and she scarcely noticed his approach till a joyful bark caused her to look up, just in time to see David take a flying leap over the gate and come dashing up to her.
"Why, David!" she cried; and then she stopped, abashed, for the horseman was already tying his pony to the post.
"Mrs. Tarbell?" he questioned, as he opened the gate; and without waiting for an answer, he went on: "I've come to thank you for getting my dog away from those scoundrels at the City Hall. They had the decency to tell me where to look for you."
"Oh, pray don't mention it!" said little Mrs. Nancy, with old-fashioned courtesy.
"Not mention it!" cried her visitor. "It was the kindest thing I ever heard of. I don't see what made you do it."
"Oh, I couldn't help it. David looked so miserable being dragged along at the end of a pole."
"The cowards!" he cried. "Don't get a chair, ma'am. I like the steps better. Did you call him David?" he asked, with a twinkle of amusement in his kind gray eyes, as he seated himself on the low step, with his long legs trailing off over the walk.
"Well, yes. I didn't know what else to call him, and as he'd been delivered out of the hands of the Philistines----"
"That's a good one!" cried the ranchman. "Come here, David. You've got a name now as well as a locket. Do you hear that?"
David had established himself between his master and his rescuer, and looked from one to the other with evident satisfaction. They were soon engaged in an amicable conversation, quite unconscious of the picture they were forming. The tall ranchman, clad in full cowboy paraphernalia, his extended legs encased in leathern "shaps" decorated with long fringes, his belt of rattlesnake-skin, his loose shirt showing a triangle of bronzed throat, in his hand the broad sombrero clasped