“Here, Mrs. Brook, have some more beef. I’ve been talkin’ along here and clean forgot you folks must be hungry.” I assured him I couldn’t eat another bite. It was the most truthful statement of my life.
That night I lay awake for hours, thinking over the day’s experiences, and incidentally trying to find a spot on the mattress where a lump did not threaten to press a rib out of place. At last I fell asleep, to be suddenly awakened by the slam of a gate under our window, followed by an exclamation which floated up out of the grey dawn: “By hell, but this is a fine day.” Then came the squeak of the pump handle, as old Bohm performed his morning ablutions, more slams of the gate, and more salutations of the same order in varying phraseology, but always beginning with “By hell.”
Shades of my ministerial ancestors! Was this the language of the new country in which we had come to live? Surely the great adventure promised startling sensations at the outset, to say nothing of a certain sliding scale of standards.
Owen stirred and asked sleepily what on earth I was doing up at that hour of the day.
“Changing my viewpoint,” I replied, looking out toward old Bohm’s shadowy figure on its way toward the corral. “That has to be done early.”
II—A SURPRISE PARTY
We were living in the land of the unexpected. Six weeks on the ranch demonstrated that. The possibilities for surprise were inexhaustible, and the probabilities innumerable and certain, if Owen happened to be away.
On one of these occasions the cook eloped with the best rider on the place, more thrilling and upsetting to my peace of mind than the cloud-burst and flood that followed soon after. Twenty-two husky and hungry men wanted three square meals a day, and one inexperienced bride stood between them and starvation. The situation was mutually serious.
In my need came help. Tex, our coachman on that first drive, saved the day. Shortly after the elopement he came in for supplies for the cow-camp. I was almost hidden by pans of potatoes, and was paring away endlessly. He was very quiet when I explained, but after supper he gathered up the dishes to wash them for me, looking very serious. When he had finished, he suddenly turned to me:
“Say, Mrs. Brook, I’ve just been studyin’. Jack Brent kin cook for the boys out at camp all right, and if you kin stand it, I kin come in and cook for you. It sure got my goat to see you rastlin’ with them potatoes and wearin’ yourself out cookin’ for these here men.”