by B. M. Bower
“I’ll give any man a dollar that can ride me straight up, by cripes!” bellowed Big Medicine, going down upon all fours by way of invitation.
“Easy money, and mine from the start!” retorted Irish and immediately straddled Big Medicine’s back. Horses and riders pantingly gave over their own exertions and got out of the way, for Big Medicine played bronk as he did everything else: with all his heart and soul and muscles, and since he was strong as a bull, riding him promised much in the way of excitement.
“Yuh can hold on by my collar, but if yuh choke me down I’ll murder yuh in cold blood,” he warned Irish before he started. “And don’t yuh dig your heels in my ribs neither, or I’m liable to bust every bone yuh got to your name. I’m ticklish, by cripes!”
“I’ll ride yuh with my arms folded if yuh say so,” Irish offered generously. “Move, you snail!” He struck Big Medicine spectacularly with his hat, yelled at the top of his voice and the riding began immediately and tumultuously.
It is very difficult to describe accurately and effectively the evolutions of a horse when he “pitches” his worst and hardest. It is still more difficult to set down in words the gyrations of a man when he is playing that he is a broncho and is trying to dislodge the fellow upon his back. Big Medicine reared and kicked and bellowed and snorted. He came down upon a small “pin-cushion” cactus and was obliged to call a recess while he extracted three cactus spines from his knee with his smallest knife-blade and some profanity.
He rolled down his trousers’ leg, closed his knife and tossed it to Pink for fear he might lose it, examined critically a patch of grass to make sure there were no more cacti hidden there and bawled: “Come on, now, I’ll sure give yuh a run for your money this time, by cripes!” and began all over again.
How human muscles can bear the strain he put upon his own must be always something of a mystery. He described curves in the air which would sound incredible; he “swapped ends” with all the ease of a real fighting broncho and came near sending Irish off more than once. Insensibly he neared the cook-tent, where Patsy so far forgot himself as to stand just without the lifted flap and watch the fun with sour interest.
“Ah-h want yuh!” yelled Big Medicine, quite purple but far from surrender, and gave a leap.
“Go get me!” shouted Irish, whipping down the sides of his mount with his hat.
Big Medicine answered the taunt by a queer, twisted plunge which he had saved for the last. It brought Irish spread-eagling over his head, and it landed him fairly in the middle of Patsy’s great pan of soft bread “sponge”—and landed him upon his head into the bargain. Irish wriggled there a moment and came up absolutely unrecognizable and a good deal dazed. Big Medicine rolled helplessly in the grass, laughing his big, bellowing laugh.
It was straight into that laugh and the great mouth from where it issued, that Patsy, beside himself with rage at the accident, deposited all the soft dough which was not clinging to the head and face of Irish. He was not content with that. While the Happy Family roared appreciation of the spectacle, Patsy returned with a kettle of meat and tried to land that neatly upon the dough.
“Py cosh, if dat iss der vay you wants your grub, py cosh, dat iss der vay you gets it alreatty!” he brought the coffee-boiler and threw that also at the two, and followed it with a big basin of stewed corn.
Irish, all dough as he was, went for him blindly and grappled with him, and it was upon this turbulent scene which Chip looked first when he rode up. The Happy Family crowded around him gasping and tried to explain.
“They were doing some rough-riding—”
“By golly, Patsy no business to set his bread dough on the ground!”
“He’s throwed away all the supper there is, and I betche—”
“Mamma! Yuh sure missed it, Chip. You ought—”
“By cripes, if that Dutch—”
“Break away there, Irish!” shouted Chip, dismounting hurriedly. “Has it got so you must fight an old man like that?”
“Py cosh, I’ll fight mit him alreatty! I’ll fight mit any mans vat shpoils mine bread. Maybe I’m old yet but I ain’t dead yet und I could fight—” The words came disjointedly, mere punctuation points to his wild sparring.
It was plain that Irish, furious though he was, was trying not to hurt Patsy very much; but it took four men to separate them for all that. When they had dragged Irish perforce down to the creek by which they had camped, and had yelled to Big Medicine to come on and feed the fish, quiet should have been restored—but it was not.
Patsy was, in American parlance, running amuck. He was jumbling three languages together into an indistinguishable tumult of sound and he was emptying the cook-tent of everything which his stout, German muscles could fling from it. Not a thing did he leave that was eatable and the dishes within his reach he scattered recklessly to all the winds of heaven. When one venturesome soul after another approached to calm him, he found it expedient to duck and run to cover. Patsy’s aim was terribly exact.
The Happy Family, under cover or at a safe distance from the hurtling pans, cans and stove wood, caressed sundry bumps and waited meekly. Irish and Big Medicine, once more disclosing the features God had given them, returned by a circuitous route and joined their fellows.
“Look at ’em over there—he’s emptying every grain uh rolled oats on the ground!” Happy Jack was a “mush-fiend.” “Somebody better go over and stop ’im—”
“You ain’t tied down,” suggested Cal Emmett rather pointedly, and Happy Jack said no more.
Chip, usually so incisively clear as to his intentions and his duties, waited irresolutely and dodged missiles along with the rest of them. When Patsy subsided for the very good reason that there was nothing else which he could throw out, Chip took the matter up with him and told him quite plainly some of the duties of a cook, a few of his privileges and all of his limitations. The result, however, was not quite what he expected. Patsy would not even listen.
“Py cosh, I not stand for dose poys no more,” he declared, wagging his head with its shiny crown and the fringe of grizzled hair around the back. “I not cook grub for dat Irish und dat Big Medicine und Happy Jack und all dose vat cooms und eats mine pies und shpoils mine pread und makes deirselves fools all der time. If dose fellers shtay on dis camp I quits him alreatty.” To make the bluff convincing he untied his apron, threw it spitefully upon the ground and stamped upon it clumsily, like a maddened elephant.
“Well, quit then!” Chip was fast losing his own temper, what with the heat and his hunger and a general distaste for camp troubles. “This jangling has got to stop right here. We’ve had about enough of it in the last month. If you can’t cook for the outfit peaceably—” He did not finish the sentence, or if he did the distance muffled the words, for he was leading his horse back to the vicinity of the rope corral that he might unsaddle and turn him loose.
He heard several voices muttering angrily, but his wrath was ever of the stiff-necked variety so that he would not look around to see what was the matter. The tumult grew, however, until when he did turn he saw Patsy stalking off across the prairie with his hat on and his coat folded neatly over his arm, and Irish and Big Medicine fighting wickedly in the open space between the two tents. He finished unsaddling and then went stalking over to quell this latest development.
“They’re trying to find out who was to blame,” Weary informed him when he was quite close. “Bud hasn’t got much tact: he called Irish a dough-head. Irish didn’t think it was true humor, and he hit Bud on the nose. He claims that Bud pitched him into that dishpan uh dough with malice aforethought. Better let ’em argue the point to a finish, now they’re started. It’s black eyes for the peacemaker—you believe me.”
While the dusk folded them close and the nighthawks swooped from afar, the Happy Family gathered round and watched them fight. Chip and Weary thoughtfully went into the bed-tent and got the guns which were stowed away in the beds of the combatants, so that when their anger reached the k
illing point they must let it bubble harmlessly until the fires which fed it went cold. Which was exceeding wise of the two, for Big Medicine and Irish did get to that very point and raged all over the camp because they could not shoot each other.
The hottest battle must perforce end sometime, and so the camp of the Flying U did at last settle into some semblance of calm. Irish rolled his bed, saddled a horse and rode off toward town, quite as if he were going for good and all. Big Medicine went down to the creek for the second time that evening to wash away the marks of strife, and when he returned he went straight to bed without a word to anyone. Patsy was gone, no man knew whither, and the cook-tent was as nearly wrecked as might be.
“Makes me think uh that time we had the ringtailed tiger in camp,” sighed Andy Green, shaking sand out of the teakettle so that it could be refilled.
“By golly, I’d ruther have a whole band uh tagers than this fighting bunch,” Slim affirmed earnestly. Slim was laboring sootily with the stove-pipe which Patsy had struck askew with a stick of wood.
Outside, Happy Jack was protesting in what he believed to be an undertone against being installed in Patsy’s place. “Aw, that’s always the way! Anything comes up, it’s ‘Happy, you git in and rustle some chuck.’ I ain’t no cook—or if I be they might pay me cook’s wages. I betche there ain’t another man in camp would stand for it. Somebody’s got to take that bacon down to the creek and wash it off, if yuh want any meat for supper. There ain’t no time to boil beef. If I’d a been boss uh this outfit, I betche no blame cook on earth would uh made rough-house like Patsy done.” But no one paid the slightest attention to Happy Jack, having plenty to think of and to do before they slept.
Not even the sun, when it shone again, could warm their hearts to a joy in living. Happy Jack cooked the breakfast, but his coffee was weak and his biscuits “soggy,” and Patsy had managed to make the butter absolutely uneatable with sand; also they were late and Chip was surly over the double loss of cook and cowboy. Happy Jack packed food and dishes in much the same spirit which Patsy had shown the night before, climbed sullenly to the high seat, gathered up the reins of the four restive horses, released the brake and let out a yell surcharged with all the bitterness bottled within his soul. He had not done anything to precipitate the trouble. Beyond eating half a pie he had been an innocent spectator, not even taking part in the rough-riding. Yet here he was, condemned to the mess-wagon quite as if he were to blame for Patsy’s leaving. The eyes of Happy Jack gazed gloomily upon the world, and his driving seemed a reckless invitation to disaster. “I betche I’ll make ’em good and sick uh my cooking!” he plotted while he went rattling and bumping over the untrailed prairie.
He succeeded so well that two days later Chip gave a curt order or two and headed his wagons, horses and his lean-stomached bunch of riders for Dry Lake, passing by even the Flying U coulee in his haste. Just outside the town, upon the creek which saves the inhabitants from dying of thirst or delirium tremens, he left the wagons with Happy Jack, Slim and one alien to set up camp and rode dust-dogged to the little, red depot.
The telegram which went speeding to Great Falls and to a friend there was brief, but it was eloquent and not quite flattering to Happy Jack. It read like this:
“JOHN G. SCOTT,
“The Palace, Great Falls.
“For God’s sake send me a cook by return train; must deliver goods or die hard.
“BENNETT, Flying U.”
Whether the cook must die hard, or whether he meant the friend, Chip did not trouble to make plain. Telegrams are bound by such rigid limitations, and he had gone over the ten-word rate as it was. But he told Weary to receive the cook, be he white or black, have him restock the mess-wagon to his liking and then bring the outfit to the ranch, when Chip would again take it in hand. He said that he was going home to get a square meal, and he mentioned Happy Jack along with several profane words. “Johnny Scott will send a cook, and a good one,”; he added hopefully. “Johnny never threw down a friend in his life and he never will. And say, Weary, if he wires, you collect the message and act accordingly. I’m going to have a decent supper, tonight!” He was riding a good horse and there was no reason why he should be late in arriving, especially if he kept the gait at which he left town.
In two hours Weary, Pink and Andy Green were touching hat-brims over a telegram from Johnny Scott—a telegram which was brief as Chip’s, and more illuminating:
CHIP BENNETT,
Dry Lake.
Kidnaped Park hotel chef best cook in town will be on next train.
J.G. SCOTT.
“Sounds good,” mused Andy, reading it for the fourth time. “But there’s thirteen words in that telegram, if yuh notice.”
“I wish yuh wouldn’t try to butt in on Happy Jack’s specialty,” Weary remonstrated, folding the message and slipping it inside the yellow envelope. “If this is the same jasper that cooked there a month ago, we’re going to eat ourselves plumb to death; a better meal I never laid away inside me than the one I got at the Park Hotel when I was up there last time. Come on over to the hotel and eat; their chuck isn’t the best in the world, but it could be a lot worse and still beat Happy Jack to a jelly.”
PART TWO
The whole Happy Family—barring Happy Jack, who was sulking in camp because of certain things which had been said of his cooking and which he had overheard—clanked spurs impatiently upon the platform and waited for the arrival of the train from the West. When at last it snorted into town and nosed its way up to the platform they bunched instinctively and gazed eagerly at the steps which led down from the smoker.
A slim little man in blue serge, a man with the complexion of a strip of rawhide and the mustache of a third-rate orchestra leader, felt his way gingerly down by the light of the brakeman’s lantern, hesitated and then came questioningly toward them, carrying with some difficulty a bulky suitcase.
“It’s him, all right,” muttered Pink while they waited.
The little man stopped apologetically before the group, indistinct in the faint light from the office window. Already the train was sliding away into the dark. “Pardon,” he apologized. “I am looking for the U fich flies.”
“This is it,” Weary assured him gravely. “We’ll take yuh right on out to camp. Pretty dark, isn’t it? Let me take your grip—I know the way better than you do.” Weary was not in the habit of making himself a porter for any man’s accommodation, but the way back to where they had left the horses was dark, and the new cook was very small and slight. They filed silently back to Rusty Brown’s place, invited the cook in for a drink and were refused with soft-voiced regret and the gracious assurance that he would wait outside for them.
Weary it was, and Pink to bear him company, who piloted the stranger out to camp and showed him where he might sleep in Patsy’s bed. Patsy had left town, the Happy Family had been informed, with the declaration often repeated that he was “neffer cooming back alreatty.” He had even left behind him his bed and his clothes rather than meet again any member of the Flying U outfit.
“We’d like breakfast somewhere near sunrise,” Weary told the cook at parting. “Soon as the store opens in the morning, we’ll drive in and you can stock up the wagon; we’re pretty near down to
cases, judging from the meals we have been getting lately. Hope yuh make out all right.”
“I will do very nicely, I thank you,” smiled the new cook in the light of the lantern which stood upon the fireless cook-stove. “I wish you good-night, gentlemen, and sweet dreams of loved ones.”
“Say, he’s a polite son-of-a-gun,” Pink commented when they were riding back to town. “‘The U fich flies’—that’s a good one! What is he, do you thing? French?”
“He’s liable to be most anything, and I’ll gamble he can build a good dinner for a hungry man. That’s the main point,” said Weary.
At daybreak Weary woke and heard him humming a little tune while he moved softly about the cook-tent and the mess-wagon, eviden
tly searching mostly for the things which were not there, to judge from stray remarks which interrupted the love song. “Rolled oat—I do not find him,” he heard once. And again: “Where the clean towels they are, that I do not discover.” Weary smiled sleepily and took another nap.
The cook’s manner of announcing breakfast was such that it awoke even Jack Bates, notoriously a sleepy-head, and Cal Emmett who was almost as bad. Instead of pounding upon a pan and lustily roaring “Grub-pi-i-ile!” in the time-honored manner of roundup cooks, he came softly up to the bed-tent, lifted a flap deprecatingly and announced in a velvet voice:
“Breakfast is served, gentlemen.”
Andy Green, whose experiences had been varied, sat up and blinked at the gently swaying flap where the cook had been standing. “Say, what we got in camp?” he asked curiously. “A butler?”
“By golly, that’s the way a cook oughta be!” vowed Slim, and reached for his hat.
They dressed hastily and trooped down to the creek for their morning ablutions, and hurried back to the breakfast which waited. The new cook was smiling and apologetic and anxious to please. The Happy Family felt almost as if there were a woman in camp and became very polite without in the least realizing that they were not behaving in the usual manner, or dreaming that they were unconsciously trying to live up to their chef.
“The breakfast, it is of a lacking in many things fich I shall endeavor to remedy,” he assured them, pouring coffee as if he were serving royalty. He was dressed immaculately in white cap and apron, and his mustache was waxed to a degree which made it resemble a cat’s whiskers. The Happy Family tasted the coffee and glanced eloquently at one another. It was better than Patsy’s coffee, even; and as for Happy Jack—
There were biscuits, the like of which they never had tasted before. The bacon was crisp and delicately brown and delicious, the potatoes cooked in a new and enticing way. The Happy Family showed its appreciation as seemed to them most convincing: They left not a scrap of anything and they drank two cups of coffee apiece when that was not their habit.