Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jacks | Page 5

take us 'most everywhere you go. It--it wouldn't be fair to Cowboy Jack not to take us to see him, would it?"
Mr. Bunker laughed very much at this suggestion, and hurried them all through the rain toward Captain Ben's bungalow.
CHAPTER III
THE SILVER LINING
One might think that the accident at the old house would have been excitement enough for the six little Bunkers for one forenoon. But Russ and Rose, at least, and soon all the other children, were bubbling with the thought of Daddy Bunker's going West again to look into a big ranch property to which one of his customers had recently fallen heir.
To travel, to see new things, to meet wonderfully nice and kind people, seemed to be the fate of the six little Bunkers. Russ and Rose were sure that no family of brothers and sisters ever had so much fun traveling and so many adventures at the places they traveled to as they did. Russ and Rose were old enough to read about the adventures of other children--I mean children outside of nursery books--and so far the older young Bunkers quite preferred their own good times to any they had ever read about.
"Why!" Russ had once cried confidently, "we have even more fun than Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. Of course we do."
"Yes. And they had goats," admitted Rose thoughtfully.
The thought of daddy's going away from them, in any case, would have excited the children. But the opening of their school had been postponed for several weeks already, and Russ and Rose, at least, thought they saw the possibility of their father's taking Mother Bunker and all the children with him to the Southwest.
"Only," Russ said gravely, "I don't much care for the name of that man. He sounds like some kind of a foreign man--and you know how those foreign men were that built the railroad down behind our house in Pineville."
"What makes 'em foreign? Their whiskers?" asked Vi, her curiosity at once aroused. "Do all foreigners have whiskers? What makes whiskers grow, anyway? Daddy doesn't have whiskers. Why do other folks?"
"Mother doesn't have whiskers, either," said Margy gravely.
"Say! Why?" repeated Violet insistently.
"Daddy shaves every morning. That is why he doesn't have whiskers," said Rose, trying to pacify the inquisitive Violet.
"Well, does mother shave, too?" immediately demanded Vi. "I never saw her brush. But I've played with daddy's. I painted the front steps with it."
"And you got punished for it, you know," said Russ, grinning at her. "But we were not talking about whiskers--nor shaving brushes."
"Yes we were," said the determined Vi. "I was asking about them."
"Is that man father is going to see an awful foreigner, Russ?" Rose wanted to know.
"I guess not. Father says he's a nice man. He has met him, he says. But his name--oh, it's awful!"
"What is his name?" asked Vi instantly.
If there was a possible chance of crowding in a question, Vi had it on the tip of her tongue to crowd in. This was an hour after the "thunder stroke" had caused such damage to the old house, and Vi was quite her inquisitive little self again.
"His name----" said Russ.
Then he stopped and began to search his pockets. The others waited, but Violet was not content to wait in silence.
"What's the matter, Russ? Do you itch?"
"No, I don't itch," said the boy, with some irritation.
"Well, you act so," said Vi. "What are you doing then, if you're not itching?"
"She means scratching!" exclaimed Rose, but she stared at Russ, too, in some curiosity.
"Oh! I know!" cried Laddie. "It's a riddle."
"What's a riddle?" asked his twin sister eagerly.
"What Russ is doing," said the little boy. "I know that riddle, but I can't just think how it goes. Let's see: 'I went out to the woodpile and got it; when I got into the house I couldn't find it. What was it?'" and Laddie clapped his hands delightedly to think that he had asked a real riddle.
"Oh, I know! I know!" shouted Margy eagerly.
"You do?" asked Laddie. "What is it, then?"
"My Black Dinah dolly that I lost somewhere and we never could find."
"That isn't the whole of that riddle, Laddie," said Russ. "You ought to say: 'And I had it in my hand all the time.' Then you ask 'What was it?'"
"Well, then," said Laddie, rather disappointed to think he had made a mistake in the riddle after all. "What was it, Russ?"
"It was a splinter," said Russ, now drawing a scrap of paper from one pocket. "And here it is----"
"Not the splinter?" gasped Rose.
"No. It was this piece of paper I was hunting for. I wasn't scratching, either. Here it is. This is that foreign man's name."
"What man's name?" asked Vi, who by this time had forgotten what the main subject of the discussion was.
"Cowboy Jack's name!" cried Rose.
"Has