"Aw, you needn't be scared, Doctor Dell," he told her
shrewdly. "I ain't going to find them brakes any more. I'll
stick with the bunch, cross my heart. and I'll come back
tonight if you're scared 'theut me. Honest to gran'ma, I've
got to go and help the bunch lick the stuffen' outa them
nesters, Doctor Dell."
The Little Doctor looked at him strangely, hugged him tight--
and let him go. Chip would be with them, and he would bring
the Kid home safely, and--the limitations of dooryard play no
longer sufficed; her fledgling had found what his wings were
for, and the nest was too little, now.
"We'll take care of him," Andy promised her understandingly.
"If Chip don't come up, this afternoon, I'll bring him home
myself. Don't you worry a minute about him."
"I'd tell a man she needn't!" added the Kid patronizingly.
"I suppose he's a lot safer with you boys than he is here at
the ranch--unless one of us stood over him all the time, or
we tied him up," she told Andy gamely. "I feel like a hen
trying to raise a duck! Go on, Buck--but give mother a kiss
first."
The Kid kissed her violently and with a haste that betrayed
where his thoughts were, in spite of the fact that never
before had his mother called him Buck.
To her it was a supreme surrender of his babyhood--to him it
was merely his due.
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