The Flying U Ranch - B. M. Bower (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📗
- Author: B. M. Bower
- Performer: -
Book online «The Flying U Ranch - B. M. Bower (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📗». Author B. M. Bower
‘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
Comments (0)