hat
brought no results, subsided gradually into mutterings, and then into
sullen silence, so that, save for his personal appearance, they reached
camp quite decorously.

Chip met them at the bed wagon, where they slipped dispiritedly off
their horses and began to unsaddle--all save Weary; he stared around
him, got cautiously to the ground and walked, with that painfully
circumspect stride sometimes affected by the intoxicated, over to the
cook-tent.

"Well," snapped Chip to the others, "For once in his life, Happy was
right."

Weary, still planting his feet primly upon the trampled grass, went
smiling up to the stupefied Patsy.

"Lord, how I do love a big, fat, shiny Dutch cook!" he murmured, and
flung his long arms around him in a hug that caused Patsy to grunt.
"How yuh was, already, Dutchy? Got any pie in this man's cow-camp?"

Patsy scowled and drew haughtily away from his embrace; there was one
thing he would not endure, even from Weary: it was having his
nationality too lightly mentioned. To call him Dutchy was a direct
insult, and the Happy Family never did it to his face--unless the
provocation was very great. To call him Dutchy and in the same breath
to ask for pie--that, indeed, went far beyond the limits of decency.

"Py cosh, you not ged any pie, Weary Davidson. Py cosh, I learns you
not to call names py sober peoples. You not get no grub whiles you iss
too drunk to be decend mit folks."

"Hey? Yuh won't feed a man when he's hungry? Yuh darn Dutch--" Weary
went into details in a way that was surprising.

The Happy Family rushed up and pulled him off Patsy before he had done
any real harm, and held him till the cook had got into the shelter of
his tent and armed himself with a frying pan. Weary was certainly
outdoing himself today. The Happy Family resolved into a peace
committee.

"Aw, dig up some pie for him, Patsy," pleaded Cal. "Yuh don't want to
mind anything he says while he's like this; yuh know Weary's a good
friend to yuh when he's sober. Get some strong coffee--that'll
straighten him out."

"Py cosh, I not feed no drunk fools. I not care if it iss Weary. He
hit mine jaw--"

"Aw, gwan! I guess yuh never get that way yourself," put in Happy
Jack, ponderously sarcastic. "I guess yuh never tanked up in roundup,
one time, and left me cook chuck fer the hull outfit--and I guess Weary
never rode all night, and had the dickens of a time, tryin' t' get yuh
a doctor--yuh old he