Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/202

 Yet die he might very easily have done—for both Apaches and Rough Riders were now gazing at him with horror-stricken eyes—had not Butcher Brennan, driving homeward with three spring lambs, chanced to see and size up the situation. He caught up a bucket of water from Judge Eby's water-trough, and scattering boys right and left as he came, doused the burning captive from head to foot, kicked away the still burning brands, and then focused on his hapless son Piggie that wrath which should have descended diffusedly on the heads of the entire band of Apaches and Rough Riders together.

Even as it was, Lonely lost his eyebrows, his forelock, and the front of his checked calico blouse. For a few days, too, his singed and blistered bandy legs were secretly anointed with soda, sour milk, moist blue clay, melted lard, witch-hazel, and, in fact, every healing and soothing lubricant which artfully and circuitously evolved household advice brought forward from the rest of the still sorrowing gang.

But long after the soreness had passed away, and the sandy eyebrows had cropped out