rhaps: Patsy was getting old. And old age does
not often sweeten one's temper, if you notice. Those angelic old men
and old ladies have nearly all been immortalized in stories and songs,
and the unsung remainder have nerves and notions and rheumatism and
tongues sharpened by all the disappointments and sorrows of their long
lives.

Patsy never had been angelic; he had always been the victim of more or
less ill-timed humor on the part of the Happy Family, and the victim
of hunger-sharpened tempers as well. He had always grumbled and
rumbled Dutch profanity when they goaded him too hard, and his
amiability had ever expressed itself in juicy pies and puddings rather
than in words. On this roundup, however, he was not often amiable and
he was nearly always rumbling to himself. More than that, he was
becoming resentful of extra work and bother and he sometimes permitted
his resentment to carry him farther than was wise.

To quarrel with Patsy was rapidly becoming the fashion, and to gossip
about him and his faults was already a habit; a habit indulged in too
freely, perhaps, for the good of the camp. Isolation from the world
brings small things into greater prominence than is normally their
due, and large troubles are born of very small irritations.

For two days there was peace of a sort, and then Big Medicine, having
eaten no dinner because of a headache, rode into camp about three
o'clock and headed straight for the mess-wagon, quite as if he had a
right that must not be questioned. Custom did indeed warrant him in
lunching without the ceremony of asking leave of the cook, for Patsy
even in his most unpleasant moods had never until lately tried to stop
anyone from eating when he was hungry.

On this day, however, Big Medicine unthinkingly cut into a fresh-baked
pie set out to cool. There were other pies, and in cutting one Big
Medicine was supported by precedent; but Patsy chose to consider it an
affront and snatched the pie from under Big Medicine's very nose.

"You fellers vot iss always gobbling yet, you iss quit it alreatty!"
rumbled Patsy, bearing the pie into the tent with Big Medicine's knife
still lying buried in the lately released juice. "I vork und vork mine
head off keeping you fellers filled oop tree times a day alreatty; I
not vork und vork to feed you effery hour, py cosh. You go mitout till
supper iss reaty for you yet."

Big Medicine, his frog-like eyes standing out from his sun-reddened
face, star