The Flying U Ranch, B. M. Bower [diy ebook reader .txt] 📗

team, Happy. And give

‘em a feed of oats, Chip said.”

 

Irish and Big Medicine, seeing the, three standing soberly

together there, and sensing something unusual, came up and heard

the news in stunned silence. Andy, forgetting his pique at their

first disbelief, came forlornly back and stood with them.

 

The Old Man—the thing could not be true! To every man of them

his presence, conjured by the impending tragedy, 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. Mam-ma! 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 dishcloth 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, then!” Slim was

feeling abstractedly in his pocket for a coin, for these were the

nieces of the Countess, and therefore claimed more than a cursory

interest from Slim. “You take this up to the store and see if yuh

can’t swop it for something good to eat.” Because Sary was the

smallest of the lot he pressed the dollar into her shrinking,

amazed palm.

 

“Paw’s got more money’n that,” Sybilly announced proudly. “Paw’s

got a million dollars. A man bought our ranch and gave him a lot

of money. We’re rich now. Maybe paw’ll buy us a phony-graft. He

said maybe he would. And maw’s goin’ to have a blue silk dress

with green onto it. And—”

 

“Better haze along and buy that grub stake,” Slim interrupted the

family gift for profuse speech. He had caught the boys grinning,

and fancied that they were tracing a likeness between the

garrulity of Sybilly and the fluency of her aunt, the Countess.

“You don’t want that train to go off and leave yuh, by golly.”

 

“Wonder who bought Denson out?” Cal Emmett asked of no one in

particular, as the children went strutting off to the store to

spend the dollar which little Sary clutched so tightly it seemed

as if the goddess of liberty must surely have been imprinted upon

her palm.

 

When they went inside and found Denson himself pompously “setting

‘em up to the house,” Cal repeated the question in a slightly

different form to the man himself.

 

Denson, while he was ready to impress the beholders with his

unaccustomed affluence, became noticeably embarrassed at the

inquiry, and edged off into vague generalities.

 

“I jest nacherlly had to sell when I got m’ price,” he told the

Happy Family in a tone that savored strongly of apology. “I like

the country, and I like m’ neighbors fine. Never’d ask for better

than the Flyin’ U has been t’ me. I ain’t got no kick comin’

there. Sorry to hear the Old Man’s hurt back East. Mary was real

put out at not bein’ able to see Louise ‘fore she went away”—

Louise being the Countess’ and Mary Denson’s sister—“but soon as

I sold I got oneasy like. The feller wanted p’session right away,

too, so I told Mary we might as well start b’fore we git outa the

notion. I wouldn’t uh cared about sellin’, maybe, but the kids

needs to be in school. They’re growin’ up in ign’rance out here,

and Mary’s folks wants us to come back ‘n’ settle close handy

by—they been at us t’ sell out and move fer the last five years,

now, and I told Mary—”

 

Even Cal forgot, eventually, that he had asked a