Los Angeles herald., 1892-01-31
GINGER"


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, lightly lifted the golden curls
under the brim 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 by picket palings and
filled with beds of sage, thyme, rue, Law
ender and all the aromatic herbs our
grandmothers knew and valued-yet is,
withal, a 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 dwellers 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 Jacki 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 chattered
back at her; big "rattler" raised him
self into few lazy coils and then sank
back under the protecting shadow of a
greasewood; lynx cat, stretched in
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 Jackp
And so the words came just in time
to the ears of Jim, who was hazing a
Tong horned steer back to the bunch
which was being held for the work of
the round up, half a mile away on the
other side of the Cottonois.
Jim was a cowboy of the Crescent out
fit and Goldys papa's right hand man.
and though he was what Jack Fordham
sometimes called ''sulky brute" no
better cowman ever coiled rope or be-
strode a broncho. Jim-the name by
which his ''few and far between" letters
came addressed to the Oreana postoffice
was "Charles 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 boys, 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 ''round up" than any other
two boys or three ponies on the Cottonois
or the Bijou, and Jim knew it as we'll as
everybody else on the river. He had
more than once been offered "big money
to take charge of some rival outfit, but
.Fordham had picked him up years be-
fore away south on the Canadian when
he was dead broke bucking against his
luck at faro in julie Howards place
in the Old Adobe Walls, and they had
staid together ever since that old time.
Ginger was the pride of Ji1n's heart,
the very apple of his eye. No common
broncho, but clean built little mus
tang, with record as a COW pony
brought from the wild Texas country
where Jim found him. What he wouldn't
do at Jim's command you might be GER
tain that no horse could do. Rear till
you'd swear he was bound to fall back
ward and crush his rider; walk at nod
from Jim into saloon and knowingly
WALtA <hA CJ . nt ttlO LAttu DOuluQ LILO
and as for cows-holding, driving, haz-
ing or cutting out-he knew it as well
as his rider, and great deal better il
his rider happened to be green hand.
And now, as said, horse and rider
were on top of the cut bank some twenty
feet above the road, along which trotted
little Goldy, lifting her small voice in
invocation of s'Papa Jack, scouting and
crashing along in hot pursuit of big
Texas steer that had broken away from
beneath the branding iron, wild and
savage with pain and wilder and more
savage for the rough hazing given him
by Jim and Ginger
The round up had been working that
morning half mile away across the
Cottonois; had just made camp, and at
that fateful moment Papa Jack" was
saying, as he pulled the saddle from off
his tired horse:
ssTl throw. this onto Tobe and lope
over to the ranch for dinner It's only a
couple Of miles; I'll be back before you
are fairly at work."
And SO, with his coat thrown over his
arm and his right leg curled around the
pommel Of the saddle, to rest the tired