Ted landed in our midst with all the attendant violence of a meteor. He didn’t arrive, he landed, bag and baggage, and until his departure weeks later our tranquil existence was sufficiently hectic to suit even Bill.

After numerous letters from his doting aunt, we reluctantly consented to look after Ted while she was in Europe recuperating from a nervous break-down. At the end of the first week, we understood why Aunt Elizabeth found recuperation necessary, and I suggested to Owen, it might be well to engage our passage on a later steamer, for I had a premonition that my own nerves might require a rest after two months of Ted’s strenuous companionship.

He wasn’t bad; there was not a bad thing about him. He was just overflowing with youth and energy, which had been pent up for years, between boarding school in the winter and Newport in the summer.

Motherless, fatherless, rich, neglected or over-indulged by a none too wise aunt, Ted was an appealing young person, a character easily to be made or marred by circumstances.

He looked like a member of the celestial choir—blue-eyed, fair-haired and mild—but he produced the effect of a Kansas cyclone.

There was nothing he did not see, there was nothing he did not hear and there was nothing he did not do. Even on eighty thousand acres of land his activities were somewhat limited.

He was wildly enthusiastic about the West, fascinated by the men, and was Bill’s shadow, so we promptly turned him over to those “rough persons” Aunt Elizabeth had especially hoped that he might avoid, to get it all out of his system.

“Let him stay at the bunk-house,” Owen advised after Ted had besought me to allow him to stay with the men. “It will do him more good than anything else in the world, if he has the right stuff in him.”

Ted stood on the porch, uneasily shifting from one foot to the other, when I came out of the office.

“All right, Ted, Mr. Brook and I are perfectly willing for you to stay with the men, if you really want to.”

He hopped up and down and almost embraced me in his joy.

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Brook. You see,” he explained, carefully, “I’ve seen people like you and Mr. Brook all my life, but I never had the chance to be with real cow-punchers before.” Evidently, from Ted’s point of view, Owen and I were very commonplace individuals compared to these heroes of the prairie, and I laughed to myself as he bounded down the steps to break the joyful news to Bill that he was to share his bed and board.

The next day we had to go to town to meet some prospective wool buyers, and, after having his breakfast interrupted five different times by Ted’s dashing in to see if we were ready, Owen was moved to inquire finally, “What on earth is on the boy’s mind now?”

“His outfit,” I answered. “He’s been planning it for days; wishes to select it himself and we are not to see it until we get home.”

That was a wise stipulation of Ted’s, for if we had seen it, we should never have been able to get home.

He put it on as soon as we reached the ranch, and when he finally emerged, the flaming sunset paled with chagrin at its futile effort of years.

The “outfit” consisted of tan corduroy trousers, chaps of long silky angora wool, which had been dyed a brilliant orange, a shirt of vivid green, a bright red silk handkerchief for his neck, an enormous Stetson hat, high-heeled tan boots, silver studded belt and huge spurs.

We gasped when we saw him, but he was so intent on showing himself to Bill, as to be utterly unconscious of the effect he produced.

We followed him into the yard where the boys were waiting the call to supper. Bill looked up from the quirt he was braiding and blinked.

“Gosh! I thought the sun had set an hour ago,” he remarked.

“No,” Ted laughingly responded, giving him a push, “but he’s going to ‘set’ now,” and he threw himself down by Bill’s side. “I knew you fellows would guy me, but all the same I think this outfit’s great,” and he surveyed himself with infinite pride and satisfaction.

“It’s all right,” said Bill, taking in all the details of the resplendent costume, and looking up at Owen and me with twinkling eyes, “I like somethin’ a little gay myself; but round here where everything’s green, we won’t be able to tell you from a bunch of soap-weed,” and Ted good naturedly joined in the laugh at his own expense.

“Wouldn’t his Aunt Elizabeth die of heart-failure if she could see him now?” I asked Owen as we went into the house.

“She certainly would,” he answered, “but we’ll trust to luck and let Nature take its course.”

Everything, including Nature, took its course rapidly with Ted, and for the next few weeks wise prairie dogs, rabbits and rattle-snakes stayed in their holes. By the end of his stay that energetic young person had enough rattle-snake skins to provide belts and hat-bands for all of New York, and scores of live prairie-dogs he had trapped to be shipped to his aunt’s place in Newport.

I tried to picture the joy of Aunt Elizabeth and her neighbors when they found informal prairie-dog towns in the midst of their formal gardens. If life is measured by experiences, a few additional years were in store for Newport.

Bill taught Ted to shoot and he spent hours and a fortune shooting at old tin cans on a post before Bill finally consented to say:

“I’ve saw fellers do worse,” the sweetest praise that ever fell on mortal ears, judging by Ted’s expression.

And, then, Owen went to New Mexico to buy some sheep and Bohm came to sleep on a claim.

This claim was one over which Owen and Bohm had been having a controversy for months. It had been included in the sale of the ranch, and after one of our most important sheep camps had been built upon it, Owen discovered that Bohm could not give a deed to it, as he had not made final proof on the land.

Bohm never ceased to regret having sold the ranch, and had never forgiven Owen for buying it and making him live up to his contract, so was only too glad of the opportunity to cause him all the trouble possible. Time after time he promised to come out and “prove up”, but he never came, so although I was most anxious to have him come, I was far from pleased to have him about when Owen was away.

Ted, however, was overjoyed; he seemed to feel that Providence had arranged Bohm’s visit to the ranch for his especial entertainment, and from the moment the old chap arrived Ted dogged his footsteps.

At first, old Bohm seemed quite flattered and laughed and joked with him, praised his shooting, told him stories of the Indian days, promised to show him the underground passage to an abandoned stage station, but later he became annoyed, for no clinging burr ever clung more closely than Ted. He scarcely allowed Bohm to get out of his sight for one moment.

How much the boy had heard of old Bohm’s history I did not know, but I concluded a few rumors had reached those ever-attentive ears, for one day he came in fairly beaming.

“Gosh! Pudge and Soapy haven’t got anything on me, they’ve only seen Buffalo Bill in a show, and I’m right in the same house with a man that’s a holy terror!”

“What do you mean, Ted?” I asked, anxious to find out how much he had heard.

“Oh, you know well enough, Mrs. Brook,” he laughed, going to the door as he saw old Bohm on his way to the barn. “You can’t fool me. Gee! I wouldn’t have missed him for the world. The fellows’ll just be sick when I tell them.”

“The fellows” were evidently “Pudge” and “Soapy”, his two chums at St. Paul’s, “Pudge” because of “his shape,” as Ted explained, and “Soapy”, whose parental millions came from the manufacturing of soap.

The game between the boy and Bohm was amusing. Clever as the old chap was, he couldn’t evade Ted’s watchful eye. If Bohm thought him miles away, he suddenly appeared with such an unconscious air of innocence he disarmed all suspicion, but he made Bohm uneasy.

“Quit campin’ on the old man’s trail, Kid,” said Bill one evening at the corral after Ted had driven Bohm to the bunk-house to escape his questions. “You’re gettin’ on his nerves; let him go and sleep on his claim and get through with it. You and me’s got to hunt horses tomorrow, anyways.”

Ted cheerfully acquiesced, and old Bohm loaded his wagon alone and drove toward his claim in peace.

The next morning very early, I heard Bill calling Ted. No Ted appeared, and I went out to see where he was.

“Where do you reckon that crazy kid’s went now?” demanded Bill, impatient to start.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Bill, hunting prairie-dogs, probably. Don’t wait for him, if you’re ready to go.”

“Huntin’ prairie-dogs,” echoed Bill. “I’ll bet a hat he’s huntin’ old Bohm somewheres.” He frowned as he cinched up his saddle. “I reckon I’d better ride over that way and see what he’s up to.”

“I wish you would,” I said, vaguely uneasy. “I don’t want him to bother Bohm too much.”

“Me neither,” said Bill, getting on his horse, “there’s his pony’s tracks now,” he looked at the ground. “I’ll find him and take him along with me. Don’t you worry, he’s all right, but he sure is a corker—that kid,” and Bill galloped off.

I felt confident that he would overtake the lad, so I dismissed them all from my mind and settled down to an uninterrupted morning, and a delayed postal report.

I was busy all day and was just starting out for a little walk before supper when Bill and Ted rode up.

Bill and Ted, hatless, clothes torn and covered with dirt and blood, their faces scratched and bruised, and Ted regarding me triumphantly from one half-closed eye, the other being swollen shut.

“What on earth hap—” I tried to ask, my breath fairly taken away. Bill got off his horse and came up to the gate.

“We’re all right, Mrs. Brook. I’m sorry you seen us ’fore we got fixed up a little; we just got mixed up some with Bohm—that’s all—’taint nothin’ serious. We look a whole lot worse than we feel, don’t we Ted?”

“You bet we do,” mumbled Ted from a cut and bleeding mouth, “but you ought to see Bohm, he’s a sight!”

Ted got off his horse with difficulty. “Gosh, it was great,” he said, leaning up against the fence for support.

“Come in and sit down, both of you, Charley will take your horses,” and I led the way into the house followed a little unsteadily by Bill and Ted, who collapsed on the first chairs they could reach.

I gave them some wine, washed off their blood-stained faces, and made protesting Ted go into my room and lie down. He was very pale, and I saw that he was faint.

I came back into the kitchen.

“Now, Bill, tell me about it. What happened and where is Bohm?”

“On his way back to Denver in the baggage car,” announced Bill, draining the last drop from the glass he still held in his hand.

I started, “Oh, Bill, you didn’t kill him?”

“No, but I wisht I had,” he said calmly. “He’d oughter be dead, the old skunk, trying to poison all them sheep.”

“Poison the sheep; what sheep?”

“Your sheep,” Bill’s brows contracted as he looked at me. “Your sheep,” he repeated, his voice rising as I scarcely seemed able to grasp his meaning. “All the sheep at Hay Gulch Camp, that’s what he came out here for, and he’d a done it, too, if it hadn’t been for that kid in there.” Bill jerked his head in the direction of my room.

“Ted?” I asked, my emotion stifling my voice.

“Ted,” Bill affirmed, “he caught him at it red-handed, and probably saved two thousand sheep from bein’ dead this minute.”

“How on earth did he find out?”

Bill straightened up in his chair.

“Them eyes of his’n don’t miss much, I’m here to tell you, and his everlastin’ snoopin’ around done some good after all.” Bill’s eyes glowed with pride. “Yesterday, before Bohm left, Ted come across him mixin’ a lot of stuff with some grain, and, of course, had to know all about it. The old man finally told him he was fixin’ to poison the prairie-dogs on his claim, bit he was so peevish about it, Ted said he didn’t believe him, and mistrusted somethin’ was wrong.

“The kid didn’t say nothin’ to me about it; had some fool notion about playin’ detective, I reckon, at any rate he got up along about four o’clock and rode out to Bohm’s claim to do a little reconorterin’.”

Bill reluctantly put the glass down and tipped back in his chair. “He hid his horse in the gulch and crope up in the grass like an Injin. The herder wasn’t nowhere in sight and the sheep was still in the corral, but old Bohm was there all right, fixin’ little piles of that poisoned wheat just where the sheep would come acrost it the first thing.”

“Oh, Bill, that’s the worst thing I ever heard!” I was sick at the mere thought.

Bill was too engrossed to pay attention to the interruption.

“Ted said he was comin’ back to tell me, but he got so excited when he seen what Bohm was up to, he never thought of nothin’ but stoppin’ him. The old man was stoopin’ over with his back to Ted, and the kid gave a yell for the herder and ran for Bohm and before he could straighten up Ted was on top of him.”

Bill scarcely paused for breath—“the old man reached for his gun, but Ted was too quick for him and knocked it out of his hand, and when I came up, there they was rollin’ all over the prairie, first one on top and then the other.”

Bill looked toward the door of my room, reflectively—“I kinder felt there was somethin’ wrong when I left here, and believe me, I didn’t spare my cayuse none gettin’ there neither, and I didn’t get there none too soon.”

I was incapable of speech. I just stared at Bill.

“There ain’t no doubt about Bohm’s bein’ ready to kill him; he was on top then and reachin’ for his throat. I didn’t stop to ask no questions. I jest grabbed him, and pulled him off of Ted. He was white as chalk and ready to eat us both alive, but I hung on to him while Ted got up cryin’, ‘Look what he’s done, Bill, look what he’s done,’ and pointed at somethin’ on the ground.”

Bill’s eyes were like two live coals. “Bohm was cussin’ like a steam engine ’bout the kid’s jumpin’ him when he was puttin’ out poison for the prairie-dogs. I just took one look around and seen all them piles of poison wheat there by the corral when there wasn’t a prairie-dog within two miles. I—well, I aint goin’ to tell you what I said, Mrs. Brook, ’taint fit for you to hear.”