All went well with Cal Smith and Whitey until they got to about the middle of the creek, and then, zowie! the full force of the current hit them, and they went down the stream as though they were a couple of feathers.  But the little range ponies were just as game as Cal Smith, and they kept fighting that stream as though they were humans, and kept edging over and edging over until they finally got a footing and scrambled out on the other bank, a full quarter of a mile below the ford.  So Zumbro Creek had beat them a whole half-mile down stream, on that trip across.

“So long, son,” said Cal Smith.  “You’ve only got about twelve miles to go to reach the T Up and Down, and you’d better stay there a couple of days before you start back, to give this creek a chance to learn how to behave itself.”

Then Cal Smith rode back a half-mile up the stream to make the return trip, and Whitey watched, and the flight of steps of Smith boys watched.  And when Cal landed safely, and Whitey waved at them all from a distance, as he rode away, he felt, as I think you will feel, that it was no wonder Western men had the reputation of being big-hearted, when a man like Cal Smith would take all that trouble for a boy he never had seen before.

The T Up and Down was a rather small ranch, boasting not over a thousand head of cattle, but its manager, Dan Brayton, proved to be a very large man.  That is, he was large around, for he was not tall.  He must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds, and when Whitey first saw him, he at once wondered how he ever got on a horse, and then Whitey reflected that it sure would take a mighty strong horse to buck with Dan on it.

When Whitey arrived, Dan was in what he called his office, a small room all fitted up with saddles and bridles, and boots and spurs, and belts and guns, and—­oh, yes; there was a little desk almost hidden in the litter, and Dan Brayton was seated at it, his face all wrinkled in the effort to solve some figures written on a piece of paper.

Dan received Whitey cordially, but seemed surprised to hear that he was the bearer of an important letter from Bill Jordan.  He held the letter in his hand and looked at it critically, as people do who are not in the habit of receiving many letters, and he asked: 

“How is Silent?”

“Silent?” inquired the puzzled Whitey.

“Sure, Silent,” replied Dan.  “That’s what we allus called Bill Jordan back in Wyomin’.”

“Why, he talks all the time,” said Whitey.

“That’s th’ reason we called him Silent,” Dan answered, chuckling.

Whitey did not know that Bill Jordan hated this nickname, and had done his best to leave it behind when he moved from Wyoming, and that when he came to Montana he only got rid of it by licking several cowpunchers who tried to tack it onto him there.  But he answered that Bill was very well.  When Dan had looked the letter up and down, and behind and before, and over and back, he finally opened it and read it.