Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1906-10-31
Borrowing a
Bear
By c. B. LEWIS

Joe Whitman, cowboy, rode up to
the Circle ranch house one day to see
old Colonel Meecham about some lost
cattle, and ten minutes later he had
lost his heart to Miss Rose, the colo
nels daughter, who was then a girl of
nineteen and her fathers housekeeper.
Circle ranch had been great ranch
In its day, but the colonel had met
with all sorts of bad luck and couldn't
pay his debts. He had a few cattle
and one cowboy left, while coiored
w,sman assisted Rose about the house
work.
Rose Meecham had not been educat-
ed in the east. She had been born in
the ranch house and sent to n school
not hundred miles away, and her en-
vironments had been of the plainest.
AS the ador1ng father said of her more
than once after his wife died:
"Rosie is good looking and honest
hearted and will make some man a
good wife. There's nothing of the CO.
quette or filrt about her. She doesn't
know what a Irritation means. She's
just plain girl, with her heart set on
doing all she can for her old daddy"
That was the coloners way of put
ting it, and 1t simply shows how little
the average father knows of the aver
age daughter. Miss Rose was good
looking and honest hearted, but she
would flirt with a cross eyed cowboy.
Any other girl In her situation would
have done the same thing There
wasn't another girl for fifteen miles
around, while there were about fifty
cowboys within that distance, and, be-
sides there was the fort only five miles
away and soldiers passing on the road
every day.
Joe Whitman may have been above
the average cowboy In looks and ed
ucatlon. Miss Rose had decided with
In five minutes that she liked him.
Within another five she was smiling
SO sweetly and talking so nicely that
she had Joe stammering out his words.
That was the beginning of things.
He had driven home a bunch of the
colonePs cattle that he had cut out of
his herd, and though he wanted to
linger at the ranch and talk about the
price of beef on the hoof, the drop In
hides and the dry summer, he wasn't
equal to the occasion and was almost
bucked off his pony in taking his leave.
Joe rallied when he got back to his
cattle and began to lay plans, and from
that day on it was a cold day when he
did not bring in some of the colonePs
stray stock
1t was a puzzle to the old gentleman
why his cattle should wander six or
seven miles after pasture when they
had better at home, but 1t was no mys-
terry to Miss Rose Every time bunch
of the missing cattle came back Joe
had to stop to explain and to call for q
drink of water and to hang around for
q good half hour and that girl, who
didn't know what Irritation meant,
laughed to herself after he had de-
parted.
Jim Taylor, the lone cowboy in the
colonel's employ, was past forty, had
q wife somewhere in the east and was
out of the running, but he was nc
wooden head. When those lost cattle
We're driven up he would go to the
colonel and declare that somebody was
driving them off that he might have
the privilege of driving them back
again, and that If Miss Rose were his
daughter he would put his foot down
Then the colonel would look up In an
innocent way and exclaim:
lord love us, but you don't think
Rosa drives off our cattle and the1