was almost a palpable thing. His stocky figure seemed almost to stand in their midst; he looked at them with his whimsical eyes, which had the radiating crows-feet of age, humor and habitual squinting against sun and wind; the bald spot on his head, the wrinkling shirt-collar that seldom knew a tie, the carpet slippers which were his favorite footgear because they were kind to his bunions, his husky voice, good-naturedly complaining, were poignantly real to them at that moment. Then Irish mentally pictured him lying maimed, dying, perhaps, in a far-off hospital among strangers, and swore.
“If he’s got to die, it oughta be here, where folks know him and—where he knows—” Irish was not accustomed to giving voice to his deeper feelings, and he blundered awkwardly over it.
“I never did go much on them darned hospitals, anyway,” Weary observed gloomily. “He oughta be home, where folks can look after him. Mamma! It sure is a fright.”
“I betche Chip and the Little Doctor won’t get there in time,” Happy Jack predicted, with his usual pessimism. “The Old Man’s gittin’ old—”
“He ain’t but fifty-two; yuh call that old, consarn yuh? He’s younger right now than you’ll be when you’re forty.”
“Countess is going along, too, so she can ride herd on the Kid,” Pink informed then. “I heard the Little Doctor tell her to pack up, and ‘never mind if she did have sponge all set!’ Countess seemed to think her bread was a darned sight more important than the Old Man. That’s the way with women. They’ll pass up—”
“Well, by golly, I like to see a woman take some interest in her own affairs,” Slim defended. “What they packin’ up for, and where they goin’?” Slim had just ridden up to the group in time to overhear Pink’s criticism.
They told him the news, and Slim swallowed twice, said “By golly!” quite huskily, and then rode slowly away with his head bowed. He had worked for the Flying U when it was strictly a bachelor outfit, and with the tenacity of slow minds he held J. G. Whitmore, his beloved “Old Man,” as but a degree lower than that mysterious power which made the sun to shine—and, if the truth were known, he had accepted him as being quite as eternal. His loyalty adjusted everything to the interests of the Flying U. That the Old Man could die—the possibility stunned him.
They were a sorry company that gathered that night around the long table with its mottled oil-cloth covering and benches polished to a glass-like smoothness with their own vigorous bodies. They did not talk much about the Old Man; indeed, they came no nearer the subject than to ask Weary if he were going to drive the team in to Dry Lake. They did not talk much about anything, for that matter; even the knives and forks seemed to share the general depression of spirits, and failed to give forth the cheerful clatter which was a daily accompaniment of meals in that room.
Old Patsy, he who had cooked for J. G. Whitmore when the Flying U coulee was a wilderness and the brand yet unrecorded and the irons unmade—Patsy lumbered heavily about the room and could not find his dish-cloth when it was squeezed tight in one great, fat hand, and unthinkingly started to fill their coffee cups from the tea-kettle.
“Py cosh, I vould keel der fool vot made her first von of der automo-beels, yet!” he exclaimed unexpectedly, after a long silence, and cast his pipe vindictively toward his bunk in one corner.
The Happy Family looked around at him, then understandingly at one another.
“Same here, Patsy,” Jack Bates agreed. “What they want of the damned things when the country’s full uh good horses gits me.”
“So some Yahoo with just sense enough to put goggles on to cover up his fool face can run over folks he ain’t good enough to speak to, by cripes!” Big Medicine glared aggressively up and down the table.
Weary got up suddenly and went out, and Slim followed him, though his supper was half-uneaten.
“This goin’ to be hard on the Little Doctor—only brother she’s got,” they heard Happy Jack point out unnecessarily; and Weary, the equable, was guilty of slamming the door so that the whole building shook, by way of demonstrating his dislike of speech upon the subject.
They were a sorry company who waved hands at the Little Doctor and the Kid and the Countess, just when the afterglow of a red sunset was merging into the vague, purple shadows of coming dusk. They stood silent, for the most part, and let them go without the usual facetious advice to “Be good to yourselves,” and the hackneyed admonition to Chip to keep out of jail if he could. There must have been something very wistful in their faces, for the Little Doctor smiled bravely down upon then from the buggy seat, and lifted up the Kid for a four-toothed smile and an ecstatic “Bye!” accompanied by a vigorous flopping of hands, which included then all.
“We’ll telegraph first thing, boys,” the Little Doctor called back, as the rig chucked into the pebbly creek crossing. “We’ll keep you posted, and I’ll write all the particulars as soon as I can. Don’t think the worst—unless you have to. I don’t.” She smiled again, and waved her hand hastily because of the Kid’s contortions; and, though the smile had tears close behind it, though her voice was tremulous in spite of herself, the Happy Family took heart from her courage and waved their hats gravely, and smiled back as best they could.
“There’s a lot uh cake you boys might just as well eat up,” the Countess called belatedly. “It’ll all dry out, if yuh don’t—and there ain’t no use wastin’ it—and there’s two lemon pies in the brown cupboard, and what under the shinin’ sun—” The wheels bumped violently against a rock, and the Happy Family heard no more.
CHAPTER IV
Some Hopes
On the third day after the Happy Family decided that there should be some word from Chicago; and, since that day was Sunday, they rode in a body to Dry Lake after it. They had not discussed the impending tragedy very much, but they were an exceedingly Unhappy Family, nevertheless; and, since Flying U coulee was but a place of gloom, they were not averse to leaving it behind them for a few hours, and riding where every stick and stone did not remind then of the Old Man.
In Dry Lake was a message, brief but heartening:
“J. G. still alive. Some hopes”.
They left the station with lighter spirits after reading that; rode to the hotel, tied their horses to the long hitching pole there and went in. And right there the Happy Family unwittingly became cast for the leading parts in one of those dramas of the West which never is heard of outside the theater in which grim circumstance stages it for a single playing—unless, indeed, the curtain rings down on a tragedy that brings the actors before their district judge for trial. And, as so frequently is the case, the beginning was casual to the point of triviality.
Sary, Ellen, Marg’reet, Sybilly and Jos’phine Denson (spelled in accordance with parental pronunciation) were swinging idly upon the hitching pole, with the self-conscious sang froid of country children come to town. They backed away from the Happy Family’s approach, grinned foolishly in response to their careless greeting, and tittered openly at the resplendence of the Native Son, who was wearing his black Angora chaps with the three white diamonds down each leg, the gay horsehair hatband, crimson neckerchief and Mexican spurs with their immense rowels and ornate conchos of hand-beaten silver. Sary, Ellen, Marg’reet, Jos’phine and Sybilly were also resplendent, in their way. Their carroty hair was tied with ribbons quite aggressively new, their freckles shone with maternal scrubbing, and there was a hint of home-made “crochet-lace” beneath each stiffly starched dress.
“Hello, kids,” Weary greeted them amiably, with a secret smile over the memory of a time when they had purloined the Little Doctor’s pills and had made reluctant acquaintance with a stomach pump. “Where’s the circus going to be at?”
“There ain’t goin’ to be no circus,” Sybilly retorted, because she was the forward one of the family. “We’re going away; on the train. The next one that comes along. We’re going to be on it all night, too; and we’ll have to eat on it, too.”
“Well, by golly, you’ll want something to eat,