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