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Updated: May 14, 2025
"What we ought to do," advised Cal, "is to lead him on and let him lie his darndest, and make out we believe him. And then we can give him the laugh good and plenty and maybe cure him." "Cure nothing!" exclaimed Jack Bates, getting up because the sun had discovered him, and going over to the mess-wagon where a bit of shade had been left unoccupied.
If you never slept on the new grass with only a bit of canvas between you and the stars; if you have never rolled out, at daylight, and dressed before your eyes were fair open, and rushed with the bunch over to the mess-wagon for your breakfast; if you have never saddled hurriedly a range-bred and range-broken cayuse with a hump in his back and seven devils in his eye, and gone careening across the dew-wet prairie like a tug-boat in a choppy sea; if you have never well, if you don't know what it's all like, and how it gets into the very bones of you so that the hankering never quite leaves you when you try to give it up, I'm not going to tell you.
By straining his already overstrained credit, and taxing the already overtaxed generosity of his friends, lie got together an expedition consisting of twenty good saddle-horses, a mess-wagon, and a fortnight's stuff for three men himself, his 'pard, Charley, and the cook. Then they set out from Clayton, with the avowed intention of walking down the wonderfully swift wild horse.
Since he was fairly committed into breaking all precedents, uncle Peter plunged recklessly. He ordered the mess-wagon to be restocked and prepared for the trip, and he took the bed-tent and half the crew. The foreman he wisely left behind with the remnant of his outfit.
"Don't hide!" counseled Polly. "Why?" Bud gave her no answer, for he had already disappeared under the cover of the mess-wagon. "I don't like that a little bit. Slim never acted locoed before. I'll have to be mighty careful, I s'pose, for I think a heap of both Slim and Bud." Slim came up to the wagon with his face wreathed in smiles. "If it ain't Miss Polly " he yelled.
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.
"He's often took that way," said Irish soothingly. "You don't want all that pie give me about half of it." Big Medicine, his mouth too full for coherent utterance, waved his hand and his knife toward the shelf at the back of the mess-wagon where three more pies sat steaming in the shade. "Help yourself," he invited juicily when he could speak.
He stole away before he was observed. "It's all up with me," he thought. "Buck has told him. Slim hates me along o' Polly. I'll get away from here' to-night." He met Polly by the mess-wagon. At once she saw that something had happened. Bud was deathly pale. He trembled when she spoke to him. "Why, what on earth is the matter?" she asked. "Nothing.
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.
"He's liable to be most anything, and I'll gamble he can build a good dinner for a hungry man. That's the main point," said Weary. At daybreak Weary woke and heard him humming a little tune while he moved softly about the cook-tent and the mess-wagon, evidently searching mostly for the things which were not there, to judge from stray remarks which interrupted the love song.
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