The Happy Family snickered hysterically.
Weary took a long step and confronted Happy Jack. “I’m both him, am I?” he repeated mockingly. “Mamma, but you’re a lucid cuss!” He turned and regarded the stunned Family judicially.
“If there’s any of it left,” he hinted sweetly, “I wouldn’t mind taking a jolt myself; but from the looks, and the actions, yuh must have got away with at least two gallons!”
“Oh, we can give you a jolt, I guess,” Chip retorted dryly. “Just step this way.”
Weary, wondering a bit at the tone of him, followed; at his heels came the perturbed Happy Family. Chip stooped and turned the sleeping one over on his back; the sleeper opened his eyes and blinked questioningly up at the huddle of bent faces.
The astonished, blue eyes of Weary met the quizzical blue eyes of his other self. He leaned against the wagon wheel.
“Oh, mamma!” he said, weakly.
His other self sat up and looked around, felt for his hat, saw that it was gone, and reached mechanically for his cigarette material.
“By the Lord! Are punchers so damn scarce in this neck uh the woods, that yuh’ve got to shanghai a man in order to make a full crew?” he demanded of the Happy Family, in the voice of Weary—minus the drawl. “I’ve got a string uh cayuses in that darn stockyards, back in town—and a damn poor town it is!—and I’ve also got a date with the Circle roundup for tomorrow night. What yuh going to do about it? Speak up, for I’m in a hurry to know.”
The Happy Family looked at one another and said nothing.
“Say,” began Weary, mildly. “Did yuh say your name was Ira Mallory, and do yuh mind how they used to mix us up in school, when we were both kids? ’Cause I’ve got a hunch you’re the same irrepressible that has the honor to be my cousin.”
“I didn’t say it,” retorted his other self, pugnaciously. “But I don’t know as it’s worth while denying it. If you’re Will Davidson, shake. What the devil d’yuh want to look so much like me, for? Ain’t yuh got any manners? Yuh always was imitating your betters.” He grinned and got slowly to his feet. “Boys, I don’t know yuh, but I’ve a hazy recollection that we had one hell of a time shooting up that little townerine, back there. I don’t go on a limb very often, but when I do, folks are apt to find it out right away.”
The Happy Family laughed.
“By golly,” said Slim slowly, “that cousin story’s all right—but I bet yuh you two fellows are twins, at the very least!”
“Guess again, Slim,” cried Weary, already in the clutch of old times. “Run away and play, you kids. Irish and me have got steen things to talk about, and mustn’t be bothered.”
THE SPIRIT OF THE RANGE
Cal Emmett straightened up with his gloved hand pressed tight against the small of his back, sighed “Hully Gee!” at the ache of his muscles and went over to the water bucket and poured a quart or so of cool, spring water down his parched throat. The sun blazed like a furnace with the blower on, though it was well over towards the west; the air was full of smoke, dust and strong animal odors, and the throaty bawling of many cattle close-held. For it was nearing the end of spring round-up, and many calves were learning, with great physical and mental distress, the feel of a hot iron properly applied. Cal shouted to the horse-wrangler that the well had gone dry—meaning the bucket—and went back to work.
“I betche we won’t git through in time for no picnic,” predicted Happy Jack gloomily, getting the proper hold on the hind leg of a three-months-old calf. “They’s three hundred to decorate yet, if they’s one; and it’ll rain—”
“You’re batty,” Cal interrupted. “Uh course we’ll get through—we’ve got to; what d’yuh suppose we’ve been tearing the bone out for the last three weeks for?”
Chip, with a foot braced against the calf’s shoulder, ran a U on its ribs with artistic precision. Chip’s Flying U’s were the pride of the whole outfit; the Happy Family was willing at any time, to bet all you dare that Chip’s brands never varied a quarter-inch in height, width or position. The Old Man and Shorty had been content to use a stamp, as prescribed by law; but Chip Bennett scorned so mechanical a device and went on imperturbably defying the law with his running iron—and the Happy Family gloated over his independence and declared that they would sure deal a bunch of misery to the man that reported him. His Flying U’s were better than a stamp, anyhow, they said, and it was a treat to watch the way he slid them on, just where they’d do the most good.
“I’m going home, after supper,” he said, giving just the proper width to the last curve of the two-hundredth U he had made that afternoon. “I promised Dell I’d try and get home tonight, and drive over to the picnic early tomorrow. She’s head push on the grub-pile, I believe, and wants to make sure there’s enough to go around. There’s about two hundred and fifty calves left. If you can’t finish up tonight, it’ll be your funeral.”
“Well, I betche it’ll rain before we git through—it always does, when you don’t want it to,” gloomed Happy, seizing another calf.
“If it does,” called Weary, who was branding—with a stamp—not far away, “if it does, Happy, we’ll pack the bossies into the cook-tent and make Patsy heat the irons in the stove. Don’t yuh cry, little boy—we’ll sure manage somehow.”
“Aw yes—you wouldn’t see nothing to worry about, not if yuh was being paid for it. They’s a storm coming—any fool can see that; and she’s sure going to come down in large chunks. We ain’t got this amatoor hell for nothing! Yuh won’t want to do no branding in the cook-tent, nor no place else. I betche—”
“Please,” spoke up Pink, coiling afresh the rope thrown off a calf he had just dragged up to Cal and Happy Jack, “won’t somebody lend me a handkerchief? I want to gag Happy; he’s working his hoodoo on us again.”
Happy Jack leered up at him, consciously immune—for there was no time for strife of a physical nature, and Happy knew it. Everyone was working his fastest.
“Hoodoo nothing! I guess maybe yuh can’t see that bank uh thunderheads. I guess your sight’s poor, straining your eyes towards the Fourth uh July ever since Christmas. If yuh think yuh can come Christian Science act on a storm, and bluff it down jest by sayin’ it ain’t there, you’re away off. I ain’t that big a fool; I—” he trailed into profane words, for the calf he was at that minute holding showed a strong inclination to plant a foot in Happy’s stomach.
Cal Emmett glanced over his shoulder, grunted a comprehensive refutation of Happy Jack’s fears and turned his whole attention to work. The branding proceeded steadily, with the hurry of skill that makes each motion count something done; for though not a man of them except Happy Jack would have admitted it, the Happy Family was anxious. With two hundred and fifty calves to be branded in the open before night, on the third day of July; with a blistering sun sapping the strength of them and a storm creeping blackly out of the southwest; with a picnic tugging their desires and twenty-five long prairie miles between them and the place appointed, one can scarce wonder that even Pink and Weary—born optimists, both of them—eyed the west anxiously when they thought no one observed them. Under such circumstances, Happy Jack’s pessimism came near being unbearable; what the Happy Family needed most was encouragement.
The smoke hung thicker in the parched air and stung more sharply their bloodshot, aching eyeballs. The dust settled smotheringly upon them, filled nostrils and lungs and roughened their patience into peevishness. A calf bolted from the herd, and a “hold-up” man pursued it vindictively, swearing by several things that he would break its blamed neck—only his wording was more vehement. A cinder got in Slim’s eye and one would think, from his language, that such a thing was absolutely beyond the limit of man’s endurance, and a blot upon civilization. Even Weary, the sweet-tempered, grew