The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-01-12
s'GIIGER. !"

of the Cottonois, thinking to herself how
beautiful everything was, and how
strange it was that all her friends should
conspire to keep her shut up in that
gloomy ranch house back under the
hill, when such strange and delightful
places were to be found just on the out
side of it.
The sun was high in the cloudless
northern sky; but the soft breeze,
which came laden with the spicy breath
of pines, tightly lifted the golden curls
under the brin of the old sun hat and
tempered its monday heat.
The short season of summer bloom
was at its height, and lilies and wax
flowers were being crowded by golden
rod and the tall spikes of the yucca,
while the sagebrush exhaled, under the
heat of the sun. that pungent odor that
reminds you of old New England gar
dens, shut in BsA picket palings and
filed with beds of sage, thyme, rue, Law
ender and all the aromatic herbs our
grandmothers knew and valued-yet is,
withal, wild, sweet perfume quite dis
tinctly its own.
A little way out on the level which
topped the cut bank at the right lay the
foothills Of the Antelope mountains,
rising and rounding against the dark
blue of the sky, while on the other side
they fell as gradually into the plain be-
low Between ran the road along one
of those lodges which, forming the top
of one and base of another group of
hills, wound its way down into the
canyon below, and was gladly accept
ed as a highway ''ready to hand" by
the jewellers in these mountainous re-
gions; and upon this wild trail the little
maid, having slipped away from her
mamma, who was busy in her own room
writing letters, and the housekeeper,
who was deeply absorbed in the manu-
facture of burberry jelly in the kitchen,
had set out upon her travels.
"Papa Jack! Papa Jack!" she sang at
the top of her clear little voice, as she
wandered on, "Goldy's comm to wide
on big toby along wild you, Papa jack"
The prairie dogs came out and sat on
the roofs of their houses and chartered
back at her; big "rattler" raised him
self into few lazy coils and then sank
back under the protecting shadow of
greasewood; lynx cat, stretched in a
crevice of the ledge above, opened his
half shut eyes and blinked sleepily at
her; and the soft wind, soughing through
the tops of the big pines that stood ev-
erywhere among the hills, caught up
the refrain-"Papa Jack"
And SO the words came just in time
to the ears of jim, who was hazing a
long horned steer back to the bunch
which was being held for the work of
the round up, half q mile away on the
other side of the Cottonois.
Jim was q cowboy of the Crescent out
fit and Goldy's papa's right hand man,
and though he was what Jack Fordham
sometimes called ''sr1lky BRUTE" no
better cowman ever coiled a rope or be-
strobe a broncho. Jim-the name by
| which his STEW and far between" letters
came addressed to the Oreana postoffice
was eCharles Arthur Stakes" but a
cowboy must needs be rechristened into
his rough calling, and since Charley, a
good name, and one well liked among
| the bows, was ruled out Of court by the
fact that it belonged to him of right, he
was called Jim, and the name suited
| the man, and the man answered to the
name and no one demurred thereat.
jim and his horse Ginger were worth
more on the Ground up" than any other
two boys or three ponies on the Cottonois
or the Biiou, and Jim knew it as well as
everybody else on the river. He had
more than once been offered ''big money
to take charge of some rival outfit, but
Fordhem had picked him up years be.
fore away south ON the Canadian when
he was dead broke buclzing against his
luck at faro in julie Towards place
in the Old Adobe Walls, and they had
staid together ever since that old time.
Ginger was the pride of Jim's heart
the very apple Of his eye. No common
broncho, but clean built little mus
tang. with q record as o COW pony
brought from the wild Texas country
where Jim found him. What he wouldn'1
do at Jin's command you might be Ger
tain that no horse could do. Rear til
you'd swear he was bound to fall back
ward and crush his rider; walk at noe
from Jim into saloon and knowingly
wink an eye at the man behind the bar
and as for cows-holding, driving. haz
ing or cutting out--he knew it as vel
as lis rider, and great deal better i
his rider happened to be green hand
And now, as | said, horse and ride
were on top of the cut bank some twent.
feet above the road, along which trottet
little Goldy, lifting her small voice IL
invocation of ''Papa Jack, scouting ant
crashing along in hot pursuit of a biz
Texas steer that had broken away from
beneath the branding iron, wild anf
savage with pain and wilder and NOR
savage for the rough hazing given hin
by Jim and Ginger.
The round up had been working tina
morning half mile away across tn
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