ride over to Nelson's and git some eggs. Jakie said he'd make some
more uh that pudding if he had some. It ain't but six or seven miles."

"Should you but obtain the juvenile hen, yes, I should be delighted to
serve the chicken salad for luncheon. It is the great misfortune that
the fresh vegetable are not obtain, but I will do the best and
substitute with a cleverness fich will conceal the defect--yes?"
Jakie's caps and aprons had lost their first immaculate freshness, but
his manner was as royally perfect as ever and his smile as wistfully
friendly.

"Well, I'll ask Chip about it," Happy Jack yielded.

Eggs and young chickens were of a truth strange to a roundup in full
blast, but so was a chef like Jakie, and so were the salads, stuffed
olives and cream puffs; and the white caps and the waxed mustache and
the beautiful flow of words and the smile. The Happy Family was in no
condition, mentally or digestively, to judge impartially. A month ago
they would have whooped derision at the suggestion of riding anywhere
after fresh eggs and "juvenile hens," but now it seemed to them very
natural and very necessary. So much for the demoralization of expert
cookery and white caps and a smile.

Chip also seemed to have fallen under the spell. It may have been that
the heavenly peace which wrapped the Flying U was, in his mind, too
precious to be lightly disturbed. At any rate he told Happy Jack
briefly to "Go ahead, if you want to," and so left unobstructed the
path to the chicken salad and cream puffs. Happy Jack wiped his hands
upon an empty flour sack, rolled down his shirtsleeves and hurried off
to saddle a horse.

Happy Jack did not realize that he was doing two thirds of the work
about the cook-tent, but that was a fact. Because Jakie could not
drive the mess-wagon team, Happy Jack had been appointed his
assistant. As assistant he drove the wagon from one camping place to
another, "rustled" the wood, peeled the potatoes, tended fires and
washed dishes, and did the thousand things which do not require expert
hands, and which, in time of stress, usually falls to the
horse-wrangler. Jakie was ever smiling and always promising, in his
purring voice, to cook something new and delicious, and left with the
leisure which Happy's industry gave him, he usually kept his promise.

"Now, Mr. Happy," he would smile, "I am agreeable to place the
confidence in your so gracious person that you prepare the potatoes,
yes? And that yo