Just because they were all lying around camp with nothing to do but eat, Patsy was late with his supper that night. It would seem that he dallied purposely and revengefully, and though the Happy Family flung at him taunts and hurry-up orders, it is significant that they shouted from a distance and avoided coming to close quarters.
Just how and when they began their foolish little game of imitation broncho-fighting does not matter. When work did not press and red blood bubbled they frequently indulged in “rough-riding” one another to the tune of much taunting and many a “Bet yuh can’t pitch me off!” Before supper was called they were hard at it and they quite forgot Patsy.
“I’ll give any man a dollar that can ride me straight up, by cripes!” bellowed Big Medicine, going down upon all fours by way of invitation.
“Easy money, and mine from the start!” retorted Irish and immediately straddled Big Medicine’s back. Horses and riders pantingly gave over their own exertions and got out of the way, for Big Medicine played bronk as he did everything else: with all his heart and soul and muscles, and since he was strong as a bull, riding him promised much in the way of excitement.
“Yuh can hold on by my collar, but if yuh choke me down I’ll murder yuh in cold blood,” he warned Irish before he started. “And don’t yuh dig your heels in my ribs neither, or I’m liable to bust every bone yuh got to your name. I’m ticklish, by cripes!”
“I’ll ride yuh with my arms folded if yuh say so,” Irish offered generously. “Move, you snail!” He struck Big Medicine spectacularly with his hat, yelled at the top of his voice and the riding began immediately and tumultuously.
It is very difficult to describe accurately and effectively the evolutions of a horse when he “pitches” his worst and hardest. It is still more difficult to set down in words the gyrations of a man when he is playing that he is a broncho and is trying to dislodge the fellow upon his back. Big Medicine reared and kicked and bellowed and snorted. He came down upon a small “pin-cushion” cactus and was obliged to call a recess while he extracted three cactus spines from his knee with his smallest knife-blade and some profanity.
He rolled down his trousers’ leg, closed his knife and tossed it to Pink for fear he might lose it, examined critically a patch of grass to make sure there were no more cacti hidden there and bawled: “Come on, now, I’ll sure give yuh a run for your money this time, by cripes!” and began all over again.
How human muscles can bear the strain he put upon his own must be always something of a mystery. He described curves in the air which would sound incredible; he “swapped ends” with all the ease of a real fighting broncho and came near sending Irish off more than once. Insensibly he neared the cook-tent, where Patsy so far forgot himself as to stand just without the lifted flap and watch the fun with sour interest.
“Ah-h want yuh!” yelled Big Medicine, quite purple but far from surrender, and gave a leap.
“Go get me!” shouted Irish, whipping down the sides of his mount with his hat.
Big Medicine answered the taunt by a queer, twisted plunge which he had saved for the last. It brought Irish spread-eagling over his head, and it landed him fairly in the middle of Patsy’s great pan of soft bread “sponge”—and landed him upon his head into the bargain. Irish wriggled there a moment and came up absolutely unrecognizable and a good deal dazed. Big Medicine rolled helplessly in the grass, laughing his big, bellowing laugh.
It was straight into that laugh and the great mouth from where it issued, that Patsy, beside himself with rage at the accident, deposited all the soft dough which was not clinging to the head and face of Irish. He was not content with that. While the Happy Family roared appreciation of the spectacle, Patsy returned with a kettle of meat and tried to land that neatly upon the dough.
“Py cosh, if dat iss der vay you wants your grub, py cosh, dat iss der vay you gets it alreatty!” he brought the coffee-boiler and threw that also at the two, and followed it with a big basin of stewed corn.
Irish, all dough as he was, went for him blindly and grappled with him, and it was upon this turbulent scene which Chip looked first when he rode up. The Happy Family crowded around him gasping and tried to explain.
“They were doing some rough-riding—”
“By golly, Patsy no business to set his bread dough on the ground!”
“He’s throwed away all the supper there is, and I betche—”
“Mamma! Yuh sure missed it, Chip. You ought—”
“By cripes, if that Dutch—”
“Break away there, Irish!” shouted Chip, dismounting hurriedly. “Has it got so you must fight an old man like that?”
“Py cosh, I’ll fight mit him alreatty! I’ll fight mit any mans vat shpoils mine bread. Maybe I’m old yet but I ain’t dead yet und I could fight—” The words came disjointedly, mere punctuation points to his wild sparring.
It was plain that Irish, furious though he was, was trying not to hurt Patsy very much; but it took four men to separate them for all that. When they had dragged Irish perforce down to the creek by which they had camped, and had yelled to Big Medicine to come on and feed the fish, quiet should have been restored—but it was not.
Patsy was, in American parlance, running amuck. He was jumbling three languages together into an indistinguishable tumult of sound and he was emptying the cook-tent of everything which his stout, German muscles could fling from it. Not a thing did he leave that was eatable and the dishes within his reach he scattered recklessly to all the winds of heaven. When one venturesome soul after another approached to calm him, he found it expedient to duck and run to cover. Patsy’s aim was terribly exact.
The Happy Family, under cover or at a safe distance from the hurtling pans, cans and stove wood, caressed sundry bumps and waited meekly. Irish and Big Medicine, once more disclosing the features God had given them, returned by a circuitous route and joined their fellows.
“Look at ’em over there—he’s emptying every grain uh rolled oats on the ground!” Happy Jack was a “mush-fiend.” “Somebody better go over and stop ’im—”
“You ain’t tied down,” suggested Cal Emmett rather pointedly, and Happy Jack said no more.
Chip, usually so incisively clear as to his intentions and his duties, waited irresolutely and dodged missiles along with the rest of them. When Patsy subsided for the very good reason that there was nothing else which he could throw out, Chip took the matter up with him and told him quite plainly some of the duties of a cook, a few of his privileges and all of his limitations. The result, however, was not quite what he expected. Patsy would not even listen.
“Py cosh, I not stand for dose poys no more,” he declared, wagging his head with its shiny crown and the fringe of grizzled hair around the back. “I not cook grub for dat Irish und dat Big Medicine und Happy Jack und all dose vat cooms und eats mine pies und shpoils mine pread und makes deirselves fools all der time. If dose fellers shtay on dis camp I quits him alreatty.” To make the bluff convincing he untied his apron, threw it spitefully upon the ground and stamped upon it clumsily, like a maddened elephant.
“Well, quit then!” Chip was fast losing his own temper, what with the heat and his hunger and a general distaste for camp troubles. “This jangling has got to stop right here. We’ve had about enough of it in the last month. If you can’t cook for the outfit peaceably—” He did not finish the sentence, or if he did the distance muffled the words, for he was leading his horse back to the vicinity of the rope corral that he might unsaddle and turn him loose.
He heard several voices muttering angrily, but his wrath was ever of the stiff-necked variety so that he would not look around to see what was