Sprawled before the bunk house, the Meadowlark riders were taking in the smallest details of the amazing arrival and trying not to appear curious, or even interested. But Jake, permanently crippled in one leg from lying out all one night under his dead horse, got up and limped leisurely down to the stable to help take care of the team. Lark saw him coming and hastened his speech. "Bud, where in the name of Jonah did you pick up them pilgrims? And what's this here joke about a school teacher fer the Meddalark? Where'd you git 'em--and their _trunks_?" The last three words sounded very much like a groan. "Say, I didn't _steal_ 'em," Bud flashed back meaningly. "No--I'll bet you didn't git the chancet. I bet they grabbed you--" Bud whirled on him, straight brows pulled together. If he began to see the foolishness of his impulsive hospitality, he never would admit it. "Look here, Lark, these are nice folks, and they were up against it when the bank was robbed and they couldn't get a two-bit piece of their money out. Strangers, fresh from the East somewhere; came out here with the wild idea they can write and illustrate stories of the West and sell them to magazines. Maybe they can do it, but they sound too darned amateurish to me. And they were _broke_, I tell you! "So she wanted to teach school or something--and you know darned well, Lark, that Skookum ought to be learning to read before he's sent off to school. All the kids would guy the life out of him if he landed without having some kind of a start in schooling at his age. And as for Lightfoot, he won't be the first tenderfoot that had to learn which end of a horse is the front." He stopped and glanced toward the house, where Maw was calling through the dusk that supper was all on the table. "And my thunder, Lark," he added as a clincher, "you never leave the Basin without bringing back something to take care of and feed; even if you have to steal him. You'd have done this yourself." Lark lifted his hat, pawed absently at his hair and set the hat at a different angle as they started back to the house, waving their hands before their faces to keep off the mosquitoes whose droning hum was audible throughout the Basin after sundown when the dew began falling. "Shore you'd 'a' done it, Bud, if the girl had been cross-eyed?" he thrust slyly at Bud's well-known liking for pretty faces. "No, I don't know as I would," Bud admitted with shameless candor. "She isn't any prettier than Bonnie Prosser, though--and she hasn't the brains that Bonnie has, and no sense of humor whatever. I'll bet, if you pinned her right down to it, she'd admit that she thinks cowboys eat grass when they're on the range. You ought to hear the questions she asked about us, coming out.