“Mrs. Hawkworth, if you’ve got a rough knife, I wish you’d give it to Sleepy,” said Hashknife. “The one he’s got is too slick.”
“I look,” said Lucy seriously, and Ike went into a paroxysm of mirth.
He had seen Sleepy trying to rescue the egg, which managed to elude him. Wanna entered into the spirit of the thing and presented Sleepy with a pancake-turner.
Sleepy thanked her, upset his coffee with a careless elbow, and withdrew from the room, thankful to escape. Big Medicine looked reprovingly at Wanna, but did not know exactly what it was about, while Lucy still searched for a rough-bladed knife.
After breakfast Big Medicine drew Hashknife aside. They walked down by the corral and stopped in the shade of the stable.
“I heard last night that there was a package valued at five hundred dollars and consigned to you on that stage the other night,” said Hashknife. “It was among the stolen stuff, according to the manager of the stage office at Pinnacle.”
If Hashknife expected Big Medicine to show surprise, he was disappointed. The big man seemed not at all interested in the news.
“I was just wondering,” he said slowly, “why you suggested that my wife act as nurse for Doctor Henry.”
“Well, I dunno,” said Hashknife. “Mebbe it was ’cause she was the only woman I knew in this country, and because she knows how to take care of folks.”