hadn't gone down a bit,
except to go down stream, and it was doing that like the dickens. It
certainly was a very bad-tempered-looking creek, but Cal Smith wasn't
afraid of it.

He had brought along all his sons, and a couple of ranch hands, and
instructed them to stand by with ropes, while he took Whitey about a
quarter of a mile up the creek, and the two of them plunged in. Cal
Smith was not going to let any kid try to swim a horse across that creek
by himself.

It was quite a sight to see all those Smith boys standing in a line on
the bank. With the biggest one, Abe, at one end, and the smallest one,
Cal, at the other, and the rest of them standing according to their
sizes, they looked like a flight of steps. And little Cal was too small
to be of any use, but he didn't know that, and some one had given him
the end of a lariat to hold, and he clutched it, and looked as anxious
and important as any one.

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 won