Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/95

Rh curiosity rode down the slope to see what was the matter. The great restless beasts gave way excitedly as he rode through them. Thus for the first time he met Daphne.

He saw a very small frightened little morsel in a Scotch plaid dress standing in the middle of the closing circle. She was bareheaded and very white, and she clasped a fat puppy—own kin to the furry ball on which the Colonel's hand instinctively tightened at the recollection. But she faced her great enemies erect and still defiant.

The Colonel knew cattle; and he realized that he had arrived on the instant. His powerful horse leaped under the spur. In true vaquero style, he leaned from his saddle and swept up the little maid just as the foremost cows broke into the tentative high flung trot that would precede a rush. He turned on them savagely in the relief of tension, and drove them back with shouts. They obeyed the single horseman.

After a moment the Colonel's common sense returned, and he reined down his animal. The little maid was very much rumpled, her dignity had been terribly upset, she was very frightened; but she had neither cried out nor dropped the puppy. The Colonel straightened her out and set her in front of him. His horse, a proud, docile and well trained beast, stepped softly.

"Well!" said the Colonel, "that was a close call! Who are you, and how in the world do you happen to be here?"

The child looked up at him gravely for a moment before replying.

"My name is Daphne Brainerd," she recited, with the precise directness of childhood, "’n I am six years old. I have no bumbalow. Who are you?"

"I?—I—Oh, I'm a fairy godfather, Puss," rejoined the Colonel. "But where do you live and how do you happen to be away out here all alone?"

The child looked up at him again with new interest. The idea of a fairy godfather evidently fitted accurately with rescue.

"I live with my daddy in a tent," she informed him, "and I got lost. My daddy will be very cross, 'cause he told me not to go out alone 'cause I haven't any bumbalow."