"You needn't mind that," said Russ kindly. "Daddy says everybody calls him Cowboy Jack. Daddy has met him and likes him, and he told me that Cowboy Jack likes children, although he has none of his own."
"Why hasn't he?" demanded Vi. "Don't they have little boys and girls down there on the ranch where he lives?"
"He hasn't got any," said Russ. "So he likes other people's children."
[Illustration: RUSS AND LADDIE GOT OUT THEIR COWBOY AND INDIAN SUITS.
_Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's._ (_Page 54_)]
Russ and Laddie were very busy getting out their cowboy and Indian suits and having Norah mend them. Of course they would want to dress like other people did in the Southwest.
The coal strike in western Pennsylvania really did send the six little Bunkers off to the Southwest almost as soon as they had returned from the seashore and their visit to Captain Ben.
Daddy came home the next noon and said that coal enough to supply the Pineville school might not arrive before November. At least, there would be four full weeks before school could safely open.
"We might as well make a long holiday of it, Charles," said Mother Bunker, quite complacently.
For she, too, liked to travel, and had, by now, got used to journeying about with the children. Russ and Rose were so helpful, too, that a trip to Cavallo did not seem such a huge undertaking after all.
"Shall we take our bathing suits, Mother?" asked Rose.
"No bathing suits this time, for we are not going to the seashore," declared Mother Bunker.
But in repacking what few things had been unpacked there were two things forgotten. The children really did not have time to "count up" and see if they had all their most precious possessions with them.
It was after they were on the train the following morning, and Pineville station, with Norah and Jerry waving good-bye on the platform, was out of sight, that Rose suddenly discovered a lack that made her cry out in earnest.
"Oh, dear me! Your nice new wrist watch?" asked Mother Bunker admonishingly.
"Yes, ma'am," sighed Rose. "I--I haven't got it."
He was fumbling at his scarf and trying to look at it by pulling it out to its full length and squinting down his nose at its pretty pattern.
"And what's the matter with you, Laddie?" asked Daddy Bunker. "What have you lost?"