Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/96

84 "Bumbalow?" repeated the Colonel, turning his horse toward Ramon Cañon. "What is that?"

"I don't know 'zactly," confessed Daphne. "It's something you have to have before you can go out anywhere alone. Maybe daddy will get me one when I grow older. We prob'ly can't 'ford one now. Daddy is poor and he is sick sometimes. We can't 'ford lots of things."

"Maybe he will be able to afford one later," agreed the Colonel, "though I must confess I never heard of one. What did your daddy say about it?"

"'You must not go out of sight of the tent,'" mimicked the child, "'cause you have abs'lutely no bumbalowcality.'"

"Bump of locality!" cried the Colonel with a shout of laughter.

As they neared Ramon Cañon he caught sight of something far ahead through the trees.

"I am going to put you down here," he told Daphne, "and you must stand perfectly still, and in a very few minutes your daddy will come and find you. I will vanish, as a fairy godfather should."

"Have you got any peppermint candy?" demanded the surprising child.

The Colonel, humiliated, confessed that he fell that far short of a perfect fairy godfather. But, parenthetically, from that day he never so failed again, as scores of children now grown up will testify.

He set her carefully down and withdrew. From the safe screen of chaparral he witnessed a frantic meeting. From it he rode away slowly, blowing his nose. That very afternoon he made a call on Stanley.

"I've decided not to contest that homestead in Ramon Cañon," he announced, very abruptly for the Colonel. "Drop the proceedings."

"But, Colonel, that is in the heart of—"

"It's no great use to me. Dammit, the man's sick, I tell you."

A year had passed and Brainerd had made a start. Evidently he possessed a little money, for soon materials and workmen appeared; but evidently that money no more than sufficed for