“Wal, it’s so amazin’ strange what cowboys will do.  I jest am about to give up.  Why, you might say my cowboys were all on strike for vacations.  What do you think of that?  We’ve changed the shifts, shortened hours, let one an’ another off duty, hired Greasers, an’, in fact, done everythin’ that could be thought of.  But this vacation idee growed worse.  When Stewart set his foot down, then the boys begin to get sick.  Never in my born days as a cattleman have I heerd of so many diseases.  An’ you ought to see how lame an’ crippled an’ weak many of the boys have got all of a sudden.  The idee of a cowboy comin’ to me with a sore finger an’ askin’ to be let off for a day!  There’s Booly.  Now I’ve knowed a hoss to fall all over him, an’ onct he rolled down a canyon.  Never bothered him at all.  He’s got a blister on his heel, a ridin’ blister, an’ he says it’s goin’ to blood-poisonin’ if he doesn’t rest.  There’s Jim Bell.  He’s developed what he says is spinal mengalootis, or some such like.  There’s Frankie Slade.  He swore he had scarlet fever because his face burnt so red, I guess, an’ when I hollered that scarlet fever was contagious an’ he must be put away somewhere, he up an’ says he guessed it wasn’t that.  But he was sure awful sick an’ needed to loaf around an’ be amused.  Why, even Nels doesn’t want to work these days.  If it wasn’t for Stewart, who’s had Greasers with the cattle, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Why all this sudden illness and idleness?” asked Madeline.

“Wal, you see, the truth is every blamed cowboy on the range except Stewart thinks it’s his bounden duty to entertain the ladies.”

“I think that is just fine!” exclaimed Dorothy Coombs; and she joined in the general laugh.

“Stewart, then, doesn’t care to help entertain us?” inquired Helen, in curious interest.  “Wal, Miss Helen, Stewart is sure different from the other cowboys,” replied Stillwell.  “Yet he used to be like them.  There never was a cowboy fuller of the devil than Gene.  But he’s changed.  He’s foreman here, an’ that must be it.  All the responsibility rests on him.  He sure has no time for amusin’ the ladies.”

“I imagine that is our loss,” said Edith Wayne, in her earnest way.  “I admire him.”

“Stillwell, you need not be so distressed with what is only gallantry in the boys, even if it does make a temporary confusion in the work,” said Madeline.

“Miss Majesty, all I said is not the half, nor the quarter, nor nuthin’ of what’s troublin’ me,” answered he, sadly.

“Very well; unburden yourself.”

“Wal, the cowboys, exceptin’ Gene, have gone plumb batty, jest plain crazy over this heah game of gol-lof.”

A merry peal of mirth greeted Stillwell’s solemn assertion.

“Oh, Stillwell, you are in fun,” replied Madeline.

“I hope to die if I’m not in daid earnest,” declared the cattleman.  “It’s an amazin’ strange fact.  Ask Flo.  She’ll tell you.  She knows cowboys, an’ how if they ever start on somethin’ they ride it as they ride a hoss.”