The Flying U Ranch | Page 7

a convenient rock in a sunny spot, was
painstakingly combing out the tangled hair of his chaps, which he had

washed quite as carefully not long before, as the cake of soap beside
him testified.
"Combing--combing--his chaps, by cripes!" Big Medicine gasped, and
waggled his finger at the spectacle. "Haw-haw-haw! C-
combin'--his--chaps!"
Miguel glanced up at them as impersonally as if they were two cackling
hens, rather than derisive humans, then bent his head over a stubborn
knot and whistled La Paloma softly while he coaxed out the tangle.
Pink's eyes widened as he looked, but he did not say anything. He
backed up the path and went thoughtfully to the corrals, leaving Big
Medicine to follow or not, as he chose.
"Combin'--his chaps, by cripes!" came rumbling behind him. Pink
turned.
"Say! Don't make so much noise about it," he advised guardedly. "I've
got an idea."
"Yuh want to hog-tie it, then," Big Medicine retorted, resentful because
Pink seemed not to grasp the full humor of the thing. "Idees sure seems
to be skurce in this outfit--or that there lily-uh-the-valley couldn't set
and comb no chaps in broad daylight, by cripes; not and get off with it."
"He's an ornament to the Flying U," Pink stated dreamily. "Us
boneheads don't appreciate him, is all that ails us. What we ought to do
is--help him be as pretty as he wants to be, and--"
"Looky here, Little One." Big Medicine hurried his steps until he was
close alongside. "I wouldn't give a punched nickel for a four-horse load
uh them idees, and that's the truth." He passed Pink and went on ahead,
disgust in every line of his square- shouldered figure. "Combin' his
chaps, by cripes!" he snorted again, and straightway told the tale
profanely to his fellows, who laughed until they were weak and
watery-eyed as they listened.

Afterward, because Pink implored them and made a mystery of it, they
invited Miguel to take a hand in a long-winded game--rather, a series of
games--of seven-up, while his chaps hung to dry upon a willow by the
creek bank--or so he believed.
The chaps, however, were up in the white-house kitchen, where were
also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the
Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling
laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little
Doctor and those of the Countess besides.
"It's a shame, and I just hope Miguel thrashes you both for it," the Little
Doctor told them more than once; but she laughed, nevertheless, and
showed Pink how to give the twist which made of each lock a
corkscrew ringlet. The Countess stopped, with her dishcloth dangling
from one red, bony hand, while she looked. "You boys couldn't sleep
nights if you didn't pester the life outa somebody," she scolded. "Seems
to me I'd friz them diamonds, if I was goin' to be mean enough to do
anything."
"You would, eh?" Pink glanced up at her and dimpled. "I'll find you a
rich husband to pay for that." He straightway proceeded to friz the
diamonds of white.
"Why don't you have a strip of ringlets down each leg, with tight little
curls between?" suggested the Little Doctor, not to be outdone by any
other woman.
"Correct you are," praised Irish.
"And, remember, you're not heating branding-irons, mister man," she
added. "You'll burn all the hair off, if you let the tongs get red-hot. Just
so they'll sizzle; I've told you five times already." She picked up the
Kid, kissed many times the finger he held up for sympathy--the finger
with which he had touched the tongs as Pink was putting them back
into the grate of the kitchen stove, and spoke again to ease her
conscience. "I think it's awfully mean of you to do it. Miguel ought to
thrash you both."

"We're dead willing to let him try, Mrs. Chip. We know it's mean.
We're real ashamed of ourselves." Irish tested his tongs as he had been
told to do. "But we'd rather be ashamed than good, any old time."
The Little Doctor giggled behind the Kid's tousled curls, and reached
out a slim hand once more to give Pink's tongs the expert twist he was
trying awkwardly to learn. "I'm sorry for Miguel; he's got lovely eyes,
anyway."
"Yes, ain't he?" Pink looked up briefly from his task. "How's your leg,
Irish? Mine's done."
"Seems to me I'd make a deep border of them corkscrew curls all
around the bottoms, if I was doin' it," said the Countess peevishly, from
the kitchen sink. "If I was that dago I'd murder the hull outfit; I never
did see a body so hectored in my life-- and him not ever ketchin' on. He
must be