“Sure. Lonnie, you go and tell her. Jist tell her⸺”
“A-a-a-aw,” snorted Lonnie. “Me? Aw, I’d make a mess of it, Hozie.”
“Thasall right, Lonnie; it’s a mess already. Go ahead.”
Lonnie went, but Lonnie didn’t want to; and he didn’t mind telling the world that his vocation was punching cows and not being a messenger of bad news.
“Thasall right, Lonnie,” assured Hozie. “I won’t forget it.”
“’F yuh think I will, yo’re crazy,” said Lonnie.
Joe and Uncle Hozie rode back to Pinnacle City together. A crowd gathered around the doctor’s house, waiting for a report on Jim’s condition. But before such a report was forthcoming, Lonnie Myers drove in with Peggy and Laura in a buggy from the HJ ranch.
And when the report did come, it shocked every one. Jim Wheeler had died from concussion of the brain. The crowd moved silently away. Jim Wheeler was one of the old-timers, and his death, as Nebrasky Jones said, was “a ter’ble jolt to mankind of Tumblin’ River.”
Uncle Hozie took Peggy and Laura out to the Flying H, and Lonnie Myers proceeded to drink more whisky than was good for him, in order to forget.
“I was in there when the doctor told ’em,” said Lonnie. “Leave-that-bottle-where-it-is! I’m the only person that knows when I’ve got enough. Jist like a marble statue, that girl was. Didn’t say nothin’, didn’t do nothin’. Say! Why don’tcha git some liquor that’s got stren’th?”