CHAPTER XII
STAMFORD GOES FOSSIL-HUNTING
They did not go fossil-hunting on the morrow. Instead, the Professor preferred to spend much of the day with his countrymen at the cook-house, while Isabel hunted Dakota up and took her first lesson in an art of which she had little to learn. Stamford, feeling unaccountably out of things, sulked under the pretext of reading.
He was oppressed with a sense of the futility of his mission, where so many side-issues were so much more vital than the purpose of his visit. Just what that purpose was he had to revive by sundry uninteresting reminders. Of mysteries about the H-Lazy Z there were enough to encourage the hope that some day the big thing he was searching for would stumble into the light—and he must be there to see it. Cockney's innocence was not so assertive now as it once was; perhaps in his foolish idea of proving the Police wrong he would only convict himself.
The Professor was frankly extending his information about ranch-life, and the humorous twists to his queries and replies immediately made him a favourite with the cowboys. They tried to express their approval by teaching him to ride, hunting out Stamford at last to put him through his paces as a sample of one week's lessons. The Professor shook his head.
"The difference between us is in the results of failure. A man of his size scarcely ruffles the grass where he lights. The seismometers at my own Institute would record my unseating as my only epitaph worthy of note."
Dakota and Isabel whirled down the slope, Dakota liberally applying his whip without gaining ground. Right on top of the group about Hobbles and Stamford they drew up, so close that Hobbles herself reared a little. Stamford promptly slid off on his back.
"Hobbles," he chided, "we were showing off. I'm disappointed.... I'm also surprised. I'd clean forgotten a horse rears, though I've seen it in pictures. Dakota, should I wrap myself round the pommel when she does that?"
But Dakota was too busy with troubles of his own. When the two riders pulled up, Isabel was off first. With an angry flush she snatched Dakota's quirt from his unresisting hand.
"If you use your whip once more, Dakota, I'll never ride with you again. I don't want to call you a brute, but I got quite as much speed out of my horse without punishing him."
Dakota was staring down into her indignant eyes, too surprised to speak.
Stamford cocked an eye at him. "When you hang and quarter him, Miss Bulkeley, I'd like you to save those chaps. I think they'd become me."
Isabel's anger had already fled before Dakota's helplessness. She laughed apologetically.
"It's all right, Dakota. I suppose I'm not used to Western ways. But I won't get used to that."
Dakota took off his Stetson. "Not used to them! By Samson, miss, there's nothing in the West can beat you! If you could come along with us on the ranges we'd show you life. We're going to be busy out there for the next couple of months."
"Couldn't I come?" asked Isabel innocently.
Dakota looked at the other cowboys, and they all laughed, without explaining.
"Can I come along in my buckboard?" queried the Professor.
Dakota elaborately explained the work of the ranges—too elaborately, it seemed to Stamford—and the Professor and his sister listened with evident interest, the former asking foolish and wise questions that brought equally varied replies.
"I'm coming out here to the cook-house often," gushed the Professor, as the call came to lunch.
"Shore!" chorused a half-dozen voices.
"And bring your sister," said Dakota.
"We're your debtors for the summer," bowed the Professor, backing away.
"I do love the native," he enthused to Stamford, on the way to the ranch-house.
"The funny part of it is," laughed Stamford, "that Dakota and the H-Lazy Z outfit are the only cowboys about who aren't natives. They're your own countrymen."
"Mr. Stamford," chided Isabel, looking slyly at her brother, "you have a drab soul. Why can't you let Amos enthuse? It's what he grows fat on."
"Is it a prescription you're giving me?" asked Stamford.
The next morning, feeling a little foolish in his new rôle of gallant—as the Professor called it—Stamford stretched his five-feet-odd on the seat of the buckboard beside the towering six-feet-three of his tormentor. Down the river trail, and thence along the edge of the rough beach rock below the corrals, the skeleton buggy bounced eastward to the only ford west of the Double Bar-O. The one consolation to the injured pride of the smaller man was that his companion insisted on letting him drive. Stamford had always considered his accomplishments with the reins as born of necessity rather than of experience, but the Professor frankly refused to expose himself to his own driving.
"I'd even let Isabel do the driving," he confided, "if it weren't that I'd rather die a man's death than live a male baby with a female chaperon."
The ford was used only at long intervals as access to pastures across the river. It was plain enough at its southern entrance to the river flood, but to those who did not know it the course thereafter was a matter of conjecture. Stamford drove into the water with more trepidation than he allowed himself to show, anxiously searching the torrent ahead. Mid-stream the water bubbled through the slats of the buckboard, and the team, terrified by the prospect, pulled up. Stamford urged them on, but Gee-Gee leaped against his mate, forcing him into deep water. The buckboard would have overturned were it not built for almost any situation into which a horse might force it. Stamford stood up to get a shorter hold of the lines, but the Professor swept him back to the seat with one strong arm and took control. Immediately the team seemed to find bottom and courage together.
As they climbed the gently sloping grade on the north side, the Professor lifted his hands and stared at the reins.
"Goodness! How did I get them? Did you—did you give them to me? I hope I didn't use force. Honest, Mr. Stamford, I never did such a thing in my life before. Was I very frightened? Don't tell the women, please. I'm horribly and disgustingly proud." He squared his shoulders. "Say! with practice I believe I could get on to the hang of the thing. Let's get the practice right now when my spirits are high. We'll do that crossing again. It looks shallower up this way."
Before Stamford could voice his protest the team was around and re-entering the water. With much waving of arms and shouting they completed the double passage of the river in safety by a better route.
"There!" The Professor handed the reins back and mopped his forehead with the big handkerchief. "I'm more puffed up than when they Ph.D.'ed me. Will you be good enough to steer for that bulge in the cliff? I like the looks of the flexure there."
All day Stamford yawned and slept and tried to read, and opened his eyes to the blazing sky and heated rocks. The Professor, his round spectacles pressed close to the ground, poked off among the rocks. At lunch-time he reported his delight at the prospects and could scarcely stop to eat, though he managed his share easily enough when he started. In the evening they drove back over the ford, Stamford hot and irritated, the Professor gushing with anticipation.
"You know," he said, "I wonder more neurasthenics don't give this climate a chance at them."
"Good heavens! You don't think I'm a neurasthenic?"
"No offence, I hope. I knew you were here for your health, and I couldn't see—— You'll forgive me, my dear fellow, but I've dabbled a little in medicine too."
Stamford had not prepared for enquiry into his symptoms.
"I'm just generally run down—overworked, I suppose, trying to stiffen the legs of a dying newspaper."
"You were lucky to have such old friends as the Aikens to see you through."
"But they're not old friends—very new, in fact. I happened to meet Mrs. Aikens one day at a railway station; she invited me out."
"Ah, Mr. Stamford! Those railway stations!" The Professor's big finger was wagging in his face. "Must I remind you that Mrs. Aikens is married? Oh, you bachelors!"
Stamford jumped. "Great Scott, man! What in thunder has that to do with it?"
The Professor coughed apologetically.
"I thought—well, anyone can see that Mr. Aikens is none too—too eager, shall we say, for visitors. I'm sure it can't be for fear of his wife. She seems much more—more thoughtful of him than he of her—if one may be permitted to discuss his host and hostess. I'm sure I'd rather pay—or live in a tent, and be independent. Dakota, too—though he's a countryman of mine, doesn't seem overjoyed at our presence. May I ask if you received the same impression?"
Stamford chuckled. "You were lucky. I had to face Dakota alone. I'm sure my hair went a shade lighter from the first impressions I received."
"Ah—I thought so."
The big fellow settled back in deep thought. Stamford tried to reassure him.
"There's no need to mind Dakota. He's only a third partner and doesn't really count when it comes to a show-down."
"But I'm vastly interested in Dakota," murmured the Professor. "He seems to have something on his mind—some worry."
"They all do," Stamford blurted out.
"Ah!"
Stamford glanced from the corner of his eye at the Professor. He wanted to confide in someone. Dare he tell his suspicions to the simple friend beside him, who seemed to be stumbling on things. He decided against it; it would be no relief to himself and only add to the Professor's worry.