and less as the days passed.

Then came a time when Chip strongly resented being looked upon as an
invalid, and Johnny was sent home, greatly to his sorrow.

Chip hobbled about the house on crutches, and chafed and fretted, and
managed to be very miserable indeed because he could not get out and
ride and clear his brain and heart of some of their hurt--for it had
come to just that; he had been compelled to own that there was a hurt
which would not heal in a hurry.

It was a very bitter young man who, lounging in the big chair by the
window one day, suddenly snorted contempt at a Western story he had
been reading and cast the magazine--one of the Six Leading--clean into
the parlor where it sprawled its artistic leaves in the middle of the
floor. The Little Doctor was somewhere--he never seemed to know just
where, nowadays--and the house was lonesome as an isolated peak in the
Bad Lands.

"I wish I had the making of the laws. I'd put a bounty on all the darn
fools that think they can write cowboy stories just because they rode
past a roundup once, on a fast train," he growled, reaching for his
tobacco sack. "Huh! I'd like to meet up with the yahoo that wrote
that rank yarn! I'd ask him where he got his lack of information.
Huh! A cow-puncher togged up like he was going after the snakiest
bronk in the country, when he was only going to drive to town in a
buckboard! 'His pistol belt and dirk and leathern chaps'--oh, Lord;
oh, Lord! And spurs! I wonder if he thinks it takes spurs to ride
a buckboard? Do they think, back East, that spurs grow on a man's
heels out here and won't come off? Do they think we SLEEP in 'em,