Weary, to look at him, was no longer in the mood to preach patience and a turning of the other cheek. He also made that change of heart manifest in his speech when Pink, his eyes almost black, rode up close and gritted at him:
“Well, what's the orders now? Want me to go back and get the wire nippers so we can let them poor little sheep down into the meadow? Maybe we better ask the herders down to have some of Patsy's grub, too; I don't believe they had time to cook much breakfast. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to haze our own stuff clear off the range. I'm afraid Dunk's sheep are going to fare kinda slim, if we go on letting our cattle eat all the good grass!” Pink did not often indulge in such lengthy sarcasm, especially toward his beloved Weary; but his exasperation toward Weary's mild tactics had been growing apace.
Weary's reply, I fear, will have to be omitted. It was terribly unrefined.
“I want you boys to spread out, around the whole bunch,” was his first printable utterance, “and haze these sheep just as far south as they can get without taking to the river. Don't get all het up chasing 'em yourself—make the men (Weary did not call them men; he called them something very naughty) that's paid for it do the driving.”
“And, if they don't go,” drawled the smooth voice of the Native Son, “what shall we do, amigo? Slap them on the wrist?”
Weary twisted in the saddle and sent him a baleful glance, which was not at all like Weary the sunny-hearted.
“If you can't figure that out for yourself,” he snapped, “you had better go back and wipe the dishes for Patsy; and, when that's done, you can pull the weeds out of his radishes. Maybe he'll give you a nickel to buy candy with, if you do it good.” Before he faced to the front again his harsh glance swept the faces of his companions.
They were grinning, every man of them, and he knew why. To see him lose his temper was something of an event with the Happy Family, who used sometimes to fix the date of an incident by saying, “It was right after that time Weary got mad, a year ago last fall,” or something of the sort. He grinned himself, shamefacedly, and told them that they were a bunch of no-account cusses, anyway, and he'd just about as soon herd sheep himself as to have to run with such an outfit; which swept his anger from him and left him his usual self, with but the addition of a purpose from which nothing could stay him. He was going to settle the sheep question, and he was going to settle it that day.
Only one injunction did he lay upon the Happy Family. “You fellows don't want to get excited and go to shooting,” he warned, while they were still out of hearing of the herders. “We don't want Dunk to get anything like that on us; savvy?”
They “savvied,” and they told him so, each after his own individual manner.