He moved to the door, laid a fine, well-kept hand upon the knob, and looked at her with a faint smile that had behind it a good deal that puzzled the Little Doctor.  “Don’t worry one minute,” he said, dropping his punctilious politeness of the minute before, and becoming again the intensely human Luck Lindsay.  “I ‘heap sabe.’  I’ve certainly corrupted the morals and ambitions of some of the boys—­looking at it the way you do—­but I promise to check the devastation right where it’s at, and save your only son.”  He turned then and went out.

The Little Doctor paid him the tribute of hurrying to the window where she could watch him go down the path.  In his walk, in the set of his head, there was still something that puzzled her.  She hoped that he was not offended, and she thankfully remembered a good deal that she had left unsaid.  She saw him turn and beckon, and then wait until the Kid had joined him from the kitchen.  She saw the greeting he gave the Kid, and the adoration on the Kid’s face when he looked up at Luck.  The two went away together, and the Little Doctor watched them dubiously.  What if the Kid should run away?  He had done it once, and it was well within the probabilities that he might do it again, if this present obsession of his were not handled just right.  The Kid, she had long ago discovered, could not be driven,—­and there were times when he could not be coaxed.

Luck had been just three days at the Flying U. In those three days he had fitted himself into the place so well that even old Patsy, the cook, called him “Look” as easily as though he had been doing it for years; and Patsy, you must know, was fast acquiring the querulousness of an old age that does not sweeten with the passing years.  Patsy had discovered that Luck liked his eggs fried on both sides, and thereafter he painstakingly turned three eggs bottomside up in the frying pan every morning; three and no more, though Cal Emmett remarked pointedly that he had always liked his eggs fried and flopped.

Three days, and the Old Man frequently left his big, soft-cushioned chair, and went slowly down to the bunk-house whence came much laughter, and listened to the stories that Luck told so well,—­with one arm around the unashamed Kid, very likely, while he talked.

True, they had ranches of their own, those boys of the Flying U. But if you wanted to find them in a hurry, it were wise to ride first into Flying U coulee.  That was headquarters, and that was home and always would be; even Andy Green, who was happily married, brought his wife and stayed there days at a time, with small excuse for the coming.