Jinyiyu Food Network

"Say, you've sure cooked your goose with old Hagar, Grant! She's right on the warpath, and then some. She'd like to burn yuh alive--she said so. She's headed for camp, and all the rest of the bunch at her heels. She won't come here any more till you're kicked off the ranch, as near as I could make out her jabbering. And she won't do your washing any more, mum--she said so. You're kay bueno yourself, because you take Good Indian's part. We're all kay bueno--all but me. She wanted me to quit the bunch and go live in her wikiup. I'm the only decent one in the outfit." He gave his mother an affectionate little hug as he went past, and began an investigative tour of the stone jars on the cool rock floor within. "What was it all about, Grant? What did yuh do to her, anyway?"

"Oh, it wasn't anything. Hand me up a cup of that buttermilk, will you? They've got a dog up there in camp that I'm going to kill some of these days--if they don't beat me to it. He was up at the store, and when I went out to get my horse, he tried to take a leg off me. I kicked him in the nose and he came at me again, so when I mounted I just dropped my loop over Mr. Dog. Sleeping Turtle was there, and he said the dog belonged to Viney, So I just led him gently to camp."

He grinned a little at the memory of his gentleness. "I told Viney I thought he'd make a fine stew, and, they'd better use him up right away before he spoiled. That's all there was to it. Well, Keno did sink his head and pitch around camp a little, but not to amount to anything. He just stuck his nose into old Hagar's wikiup--and one sniff seemed to be about all he wanted. He didn't hurt anything."

He took a meditative bite of cake, finished the buttermilk in three rapturous swallows, and bethought him of the feminine mystery.

"If you please, Mother Hart, who was that Christmas angel I squashed?"

"Vad? Was Vad in on it, mum? I never saw her." Wally straightened up with a fresh chunk of cake in his hand. "Was she scared?"

"Yes," his mother admitted reluctantly, "I guess she was, all right. First the squaws--and, poor girl, I made her shake hands all round--and then Grant here, acting like a wild hyena--"

"Say, PLEASE don't tell me who she is, or where she belongs, or anything like that," Grant interposed, with some sarcasm. "I smashed her flat between me and the wall, and I scared the daylights out of her; and I'm told I should have appeared at my best. But who she is, or where she belongs--"