“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 dish-cloth 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.