Thus was born the psychological moment when the treachery of the Happy Family would cut deepest.
They came, bunched and talking low-voiced together with hatbrims hiding shamed eyes, a type-true group of workers bearing a grievance. Not a man was absent—the Happy Family saw to that! Even Patsy, big and sloppy and bearing with him stale kitchen odors, limped stolidly in the rear beside Slim, who looked guilty as though he had been strangling somebody's favorite cat.
The Old Man, bent head-foremost over his growing paunch that he might caress his outraged bunion, glared at them with belligerent curiosity from under his graying eyebrows. The group came on and stopped short at the steps—and I don't suppose the Happy Family will ever look such sneaks again whatever crime they may commit. The Old Man straightened with a grunt of pain because of his lame back, and waited. Which made it all the harder for the Happy Family, especially for Andy Green who had been chosen spokesman—for his sins perhaps.
“We'd like our time,” blurted Andy after an unpleasant silence, and fixed his eyes frigidly upon the lowest rung of the Old Man's chair.
“Oh, you would, hunh? The whole bunch of yuh?” The Old Man eyed them incredulously.
“Yes, the whole bunch of us. We're going to quit.”
The Old Man's jaw dropped a little, but his eyes didn't waver from their Hangdog faces. “Well, I never coaxed a man to stay yet,” he stated grimly, “and I'm gittin' too old in the business to start coaxin' now. Dell!” He turned stiffly in his chair so that he faced the open door. “Bring me my time and check books outa the desk!”
A gray hardness came slowly to the Old Man's face while he waited, his seamed hands gripping the padded arms of his chair. A tightness pulled at his lips behind the grizzled whiskers. It never occurred to him now that the Happy Family might be perpetrating one of their jokes. He had looked at their faces, you see. They meant to quit him—quit him cold just as spring work was beginning. They were ashamed of themselves, of course; they had a right to be ashamed, he thought bitterly. It hurt—hurt so that he would have died before he would ask for excuse, reason, grievance, explanation—for whatever motive impelled them. So he waited, and he gripped the arms of his chair, and he clamped his mouth shut and did not speak a word.
The Happy Family had expected him to swear at them stormily; to accuse them of vile things; to call them such names as his memory could seize upon or his ingenuity invent. They had been careful to prepare a list of plausible reasons for leaving then. They had first invented a gold rumor that they hoped would sound convincing, but Andy had insisted upon telling him straightforwardly that they did not favor fence-building and ditch-digging and such back-breaking toil; that they were range men and they demanded range work or none; that if they must dig ditches and build fences and perform like menial tasks, they preferred doing it for themselves. “That,” said Andy, “makes us out such dirty, low-down sons-of-guns we'd have to climb a tree to look a snake in the eye, but it's got the grain of truth that'll make it go down. We DON'T love this farming graft, and the Old Man knows it. He's heard us kicking often enough. That's where it'll git him. He'll believe this last stretch of fence is what made us throw him down, and he'll be so mad he'll cuss us out till the neighbors'll think the smoke's a prairie fire. We'll get our time, all right' and the things he'll say will likely make us so hot we can all talk convincing when we hit town. Keep a stiff upper lip, boys. We got to do it, and he'll make us mad, so it won't be as hard as you imagine.”
The theory was good, and revealed a knowledge of human nature that made one cease to wonder why Andy was a prince of convincing liars. The theory was good—nothing in the world was the matter with it, except that in this particular instance it did not work. The Old Man did not ask for their reasons, excuses or explanations. Neither did he say anything or do anything to make them mad. He just sat there, with his face gray and hard, and said nothing at all.