“For the love o’ common sense, Friar!” broke in Horace. “You don’t seem to have the smallest degree o’ judgment. You know mighty well ’at I’m bothered to death to know what to do with my money. You get her if you can, send her to any sort of a sanitarium you want to, and I’ll foot the bills. Don’t you ever sit around and whine about money in my presence again. It worries and disgusts and irritates me—and I came out here for rest. You talk about faith and takin’ no heed for the morrow, and such things; but you act as though you were riskin’ a man’s soul when you gave him a chance to be of some little use in the world.”
The Friar was purty well overcome at this; but figure on it the best we were able, we couldn’t see just how to get a man’s wife away from him without provin’ that he had abused her. It was a complication, any way we looked at it; so we all went to bed in the hope that one of us would have a lucky dream.
We didn’t have any more idees next mornin’ than we’d had the night before; so after breakfast, the Friar took a walk and the rest of us sat around in bunches talkin’ it over. About ten o’clock a feller named Joyce who lived about fifteen miles east of Olaf came by on his way for a doctor, his boy havin’ been kicked above the knee and his leg broke. The Friar could patch up a human as good as any doctor; so we went after him, knowin’ that this would be the best way to take his mind off his own troubles, and the’ was a look o’ relief in the Friar’s face when he rode away with Joyce.
I never knew any feller yet who didn’t spend a lot o’ time wishin’ he had a chance to loaf all the laziness out of his system; but the fact of the matter is, that work gives us more satisfaction than anything else. A wild animal’s life is one long stretch after enough to eat; but he’s full o’ health an’ joy an’ beauty. On the other hand, put one in a cage and feed it regular and it turns sick immediate. What we need is plenty o’ the kind o’ work we are fitted for—this is the answer to all our discontented feelin’; and what the Friar was best fitted for, was to help others.
[CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR—A CROSS FOR EVERY MAN]
Thinkin’, just plain thinkin’, is about the hardest work the’ is; and for the next several days, we lay around doin’ mighty little else. The trouble was, ’at we couldn’t devise a way to put Ty Jones out o’ business. He wasn’t an outlaw; fact was, he stood high with the big cattle men; and we got light headed tryin’ to scare up a plan which would remove Ty in a decent manner, and leave the Friar free to take the woman without causin’ him any conscience-pains. We were the mournfulest lookin’ bunch o’ healthy men ever I saw; and finally I decided to loaf with Kit and the kid, they not bein’ expected to do any thinkin’ and therefore havin’ smooth an’ pleasant faces.
Sometimes I wonder if women don’t get along just as well without thinkin’ as men do with it. I hadn’t talked seven minutes with Kit before she suggested just what I would have thought up if I’d been able. She didn’t even know she had suggested it; so I didn’t call her attention to it for fear it might up-heave her vanity and give Olaf bother. I had a plan now and it was of such a nature that I was glad the Friar wasn’t there to mess into it.
I found Promotheus an’ Tank lyin’ on the grass along the crick. They were back to back, and their faces were so lined with genuwine thought, that they looked like a pair of overgrown nutmegs. I sat down beside ’em lookin’ worried.
Presently Tank sez: “What ya thinkin’ about?”
I shook my head, and in about half an hour The asked the same question. I waited a minute, hove out a sigh, and sez: “Gee, I wish I was you.”