But it was the other way. When Charley began to rouse from the stupor of bereavement, he began also to leave the ranch, on trips to Mesquite, and beyond to El Centro; whence the news came back to Hank that Van Brunt was drinking hard and playing high. He found by natural instinct the clever, well-bred, profligate young Englishmen over on the Bar Thirteen, pensioned—or exiled—by their own families; and after that, between the trips to town, there was drinking and card playing at the Bar Thirteen. In those days the Three Sorrows was the finest property under private ownership in the Panhandle, with pastures all fenced—a rare thing at that time—watered by three noble creeks whose springs were never dry. It had been well stocked when Katharine bought it. Now Hank looked helplessly on, thinking of the two children, saw the money from sales of beef poured into the bottomless pit of Charley’s dissipations. And he understood that more than one mortgage had been put on the place, and that a choice pasture had been sold outright.
And Hank had another small worry, to which he finally applied his own remedy. The men loved to sit on the long back porch, chairs tilted against the wall, waiting for supper. They were freshly washed as to faces and hands, damply slick as to hair; their innocent enjoyment of company other than their own was so evident that it would have been a hard heart indeed which would have grudged them the society of the children; yet Hank listened and was troubled. Did all cowboys swear so much? Had Snake Thompson’s language always been what it now appeared? This might be Charley Van Brunt’s ranch, Charley Van Brunt’s back porch, and these might be Charley Van Brunt’s children—well, as a matter of fact, the ownership of all the articles mentioned was so placed—yet Hank felt himself obliged to speak out and speak distinctly on the subject.
“Boys,” he put it, “you-all have got to ride herd a little closer on your language. Swearing—leastways more’n reason—around where children air at—”
“Say, Hank,” broke in Shorty O’Meara, “how much is in reason to swear when your stirrup leather busts on you, and your left eyebrow hits the ground?”
“Aw, g’long with you,” Hank admonished, half sheepishly. “You know how much. If you don’t you’ll soon find out.”
Old Snake Thompson’s sense of humor, liberty and justice was outraged. Snake used very little language of any sort; when he talked at all it was apt to be done almost exclusively in more or less conventional and automatic profanity, and he made husky protest:
“But, Pearsall—Goddlemighty—I mean—how’s a man to talk? How’s a feller to express hisself? How’ll we get along without any o’ them words?”
“Well,” said Hank dryly, “I could give you a pretty fair list of substitutes.”
“Substitute cuss words?”
“Yes, jest that. You may never have took notice to the fact that I don’t cuss, nor chew tobacker? Well, I used to do both—fact, I was something of a star performer in them two lines.”