For a while she entertained Whitey by talking about New York, which she had visited ten years before, when on her honeymoon.  She was surprised to learn that Whitey had not even heard of any of the people she had met there, he having been born in New York and having lived there the first fourteen years of his life.  Well, well; it was a queer world, anyway.  Perhaps you will get the best idea of how unhappy Whitey was by imagining yourself in the same position.

In his misery Whitey formed vague plans for escape.  Then a new horror awaited him.  He was to sleep in the Steeles’ bedroom, in a cot at the foot of their bed!  In vain he protested that the living-room floor was good enough for him.  Mrs. Steele wouldn’t hear of it.  So he was shown into the bedroom, and when he was undressed and clothed in one of Gil Steele’s long white night-shirts, Mrs. Steele returned and took his clothes away to brush them!

Whitey’s cup of bitterness was full.  This was a fine position for a hero to be in.  He tried the sour-grapes idea:  perhaps Injun hadn’t learned anything that amounted to anything, after all.  But that didn’t work.  There were no two ways about it, he was an abused being.  By golly, this was worse than school!  But after working hard all day in the hot sun, even an abused being will get sleepy.  So at last the curtain of sleep fell on Whitey; of dreamless sleep—­perhaps he was too mad to dream.

CHAPTER XXII

THE NEW ORDER

At midnight Whitey was awakened; awakened and almost strangled at the same time.  A hand was clamped across his mouth, with force enough to push his teeth down his throat.  A lamp burned low in the room.  Whitey saw Mrs. Steele bending over him.  Her face was ashen with fear.  Her eyes, bulging from her head, looked to Whitey to be the size of saucers.  Whitey struggled vainly in her clutch.

“They’re going to kill my husband!” she gasped.  “Go, go to your father’s ranch.  Get the vigilantes.  Bring them here quick, for God’s sake!  They’ll murder him, they’ll murder him!”

She dragged Whitey from the bed and, half pulling him behind her, groped her way to the side door of the ranch house and into the blackness of the night.  Tied to a bush, by a hackamore, was an iron-gray colt, the fastest on the ranch.  After that night’s work he was known to be the fastest in that part of the country.

Mrs. Steele gave the half-awakened Whitey a “foot up” upon the pony, untied the hackamore, and he was gone.  Fortunately for Whitey the horse was turned in the right direction.  That pony had been wanting to run ever since he was born.  This was the first time he ever had had a chance, and he sure took advantage of it.

Back toward the men’s quarters the night was fractured by sounds like those of a healthy young riot.  These meant nothing to Whitey, nor did the pung! pung! of bullets, when he started, or rather when the colt started.  Perhaps the men were shooting wide, or perhaps the pony was going so fast the bullets couldn’t catch him.  Be it said for the threshers they didn’t know they were shooting at a boy.