Even Cal forgot, eventually, that he had asked a question which remained unanswered; what interest he had felt at first was smothered to death beneath that blanket of words, and he eagerly followed the boys out and over to Rusty Brown's place, where Denson, because of an old grudge against Rusty, might be trusted not to follow.
"Mamma!" Weary commented amusedly, when they were crossing the street, "that Denson bunch can sure talk the fastest and longest, and say the least, of any outfit I ever saw."
"Wonder who did buy him out?" Jack Bates queried. "Old ginger-whiskers didn't pass out any facts, yuh notice. He couldn't have,got much; his land's mostly gravel and 'doby patches. He's got a water right on Flying U creek, you know--first right, at that, seems to me--and a dandy fine spring in that coulee. Wonder why our outfit didn't buy him out--seeing he wanted to sell so bad?"
"This wantin' to sell is something I never heard of b'fore," Slim said slowly. "To hear him tell it, that ranch uh hisn was worth a dollar an inch, by golly. I don't b'lieve he's been wantin' to sell out. If he had, Mis' Bixby woulda said something about it.
She don't know about this here sellin' business, or she'd a said--"
"Yeah, you can most generally bank on the Countess telling all she knows," Cal assented with some sarcasm; at which Slim grunted and turned sulky afterward.
Denson and his affairs they speedily forgot for a time, in the diversion which Rusty Brown's familiar place afforded to young men with unjaded nerves and a zest for the primitive pleasures.
Not until mid-afternoon did it occur to them that Flying U coulee was deserted by all save old Patsy, and that there were chores to be done, if all the creatures of the coulee would sleep in comfort that night. Pink, therefore, withdrew his challenge to the bunch, and laid his billiard cue down with a sigh and the remark that all he lacked was time, to have the scalps of every last one of them hanging from his belt. Pink was figurative in his speech, you will understand; and also a bit vainglorious over beating Andy Green and Big Medicine twice in succession.
It occurred to Weary then that a word of cheer to the Old Man and his anxious watchers might not cone amiss. Therefore the Happy Family mounted and rode to the depot to send it, and on the way wrangled over the wording of the message after their usual contentious manner.
"Better tell 'em everything is fine, at this end uh the line,"
Cal suggested, and was hooted at for a poet.
"Just say," Weary began, when he was interrupted by the discordant clamor from a trainload of sheep that had just pulled in and stopped. "'Maa-aa, Ma-a-aaa,' darn yuh," he shouted derisively, at the peering, plaintive faces, glimpsed between the close-set bars. "Mamma, how I do love sheep!" Whereupon he put spurs to his horse and galloped down to the station to rid his ears of the turbulent wave of protest from the cars.
Naturally it required some time to compose the telegram in a style satisfactory to all parties. Outside, cars banged together, an engine snorted stertorously, and suffocating puffs of coal smoke now and then invaded the waiting-room while the Happy Family were sending that message of cheer to Chicago. If you are curious, the final version of their combined sentiments was not at all spectacular. It said merely:
"Everything fine here. Take good care of the Old Man. How's the Kid stacking up?"
It was signed simply "The Bunch."
"Mary's little lambs are here yet, I see," the Native Son remarked carelessly when they went out. "Enough lambs for all the Marys in the country. How would you like to be Mary?"
"Not for me," Irish declared, and turned his face away from the stench of them.
Others there were who rode the length of the train with faces averted and looks of disdain; cowmen, all of them, they shared the range prejudice, and took no pains to hide it.
The wind blew strong from the east, that day; it whistled through the open, double-decked cars packed with gray, woolly bodies, whose voices were ever raised in strident complaint; and the stench of them smote the unaccustomed nostrils of the Happy Family and put them to disgusted flight up the track and across it to where the air was clean again.
"Honest to grandma, I'd make the poorest kind of a sheepherder,"
Big Medicine bawled earnestly, when they were well away from the noise and smell of the detested animals. "If I had to herd sheep, by cripes, do you know what I'd do? I'd haze 'em into a coulee and turn loose with a good rifle and plenty uh shells, and call in the coyotes to git a square meal. That's the way I'd herd sheep. It's the only way you can shut 'em up. They just 'baa-aa, baa-aa, baa-aa' from the time they're dropped till somebody kills 'em off. Honest, they blat in their sleep. I've heard 'em."
"When you and the dogs were shooting off coyotes?" asked Andy Green pointedly, and so precipitated dissension which lasted for ten miles.