“Oh, shut up!” Andy's voice was sharp with trouble. “Boys, the Old Man's—well, he's most likely dead by this time. I brought out a telegram—”
“Go on!” Pink's eyes widened incredulously. “Don't you try that kind of a load, Andy Green, or I'll just about—”
“Oh, you fellows make me sick!” Andy took his elbows off the rail and stood straight. “Dammit, the telegram's up at the house—go and read it yourselves, then!”
The three stared after him doubtfully, fear struggling with the caution born of much experience.
“He don't act, to me, like he was putting up a josh,” Weary stated uneasily, after a minute of silence. “Run up to the house and find out, Cadwalloper. The Old Man—oh, good Lord!” The tan on Weary's face took a lighter tinge. “Scoot—it won't take but a minute to find out for sure. Go on, Pink.”
“So help me Josephine, I'll kill that same Andy Green if he's lied about it,” Pink declared, while he climbed the fence.
In three minutes he was back, and before he had said a word, his face confirmed the bad news. Their eyes besought him for details, and he gave them jerkily. “Automobile run over him. He ain't dead, but they think—Chip and the Little Doctor are going to catch the night train. You go haze in the 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.