The Happy Family written by Bertha Muzzy Bower

B >> Bertha Muzzy Bower >> The Happy Family

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack objected, "He rode out here all right last
night--unless somebody took him up in front on the saddle, which I
hain't heard about nobody doing. A cook's supposed to do his own
driving. I betche--"

Weary went close and pointed a finger impressively. "Happy, you
_drive_," he said, and Happy Jack turned without a word and climbed
glumly up to the seat of the mess-wagon.

"Well, are yuh coming or ain't yuh?" he inquired of the cook in a tone
surcharged with disgust.

"If you will so kindly permit, it give me great pleasure to ride with
you and to make better friendship. It now occurs to me that I have not
yet introduce. Gentlemen, Jacques I have the honor to be name. I am
delighted to meet you and I hope for pleasant association." The bow he
gave the group was of the old school.

Big Medicine grinned suddenly and came forward. "Honest to grandma,
I'm happy to know yuh!" he bellowed, and caught the cook's hand in a
grip that sent him squirming upon his toes. "These here are my
friends: Happy Jack up there on the wagon, and Slim and Weary and Pink
and Cal and Jack Bates and Andy Green--and there's more scattered
around here, that don't reely count except when it comes to eating. We
like you, by cripes, and we like your cookin' fine! Now, you amble
along to town and load up with the best there is--huh?" It occurred to
him that his final remarks might be construed as giving orders, and he
glanced at Weary and winked to show that he meant nothing serious. "So
long, Jakie," he added over his shoulder and went to where his horse
waited.

Jacques--ever afterward he was known as "Jakie" to the Flying
U--clambered up the front wheel and perched ingratiatingly beside
Happy Jack, and they started off behind the riders for the short mile
to Dry Lake. Immediately he proceeded to win Happy from his glum
aloofness.

"I would say, Mr. Happy, that I should like exceeding well to be
friends together," he began purringly. "So superior a gentleman must
win the admiration of the onlooker and so I could presume to question
for advisement. I am experience much dexterity for cooking, yes, but I
am yet so ignorant concerning the duties pertaining to camp. If the
driving of these several horses transpire to pertain, I will so gladly
receive the necessary instruction and endeavor to fulfil the
accomplishment. Yes?"

Happy Jack, more in stupefaction at the cook's vocabulary than
anything else, turned his head and took a good look at him. And the
trustful smile of Jakie went straight to the big, soft heart of him
and won him completely. "Aw, gwan," he adjured gruffly to hide his
surrender. "I don't mind driving for yuh. It ain't that I was kicking
about."

"I thank you for the so gracious assurement. If I transgress not too
greatly, I should like for inquire what is the chuck for which I am
told to fill the wagon. I do not," he added humbly, "understand yet
all the language of your so glorious country, for fich I have so
diligently study the books. Words I have not yet assimilated
completely, and the word chuck have yet escape my knowledge."

"Chuck," grinned Happy Jack, "is grub."

"Chuck, it is grub," repeated Jakie thoughtfully. "And grub, that
is--Yes?"

Happy Jack struggled mentally with the problem. "Well, grub is grub;
all the stuff yuh eat is grub. Meat and flour and coffee and--"

"Ah, the light it dawns!" exclaimed Jakie joyously. "Grub it is the
supply of provision fich I must obtain for camping, yes? I thank you
so graciously for the information; because," he added a bit wistfully,
"that little word chuck she annoy me exceeding and make me for not
sleep that I must grasp the meaning fich elude. I am now happy that I
do not make the extensive blunder for one small word fich I apprehend
must be a food fich I must buy and perhaps not to understand the
preparation of it. Yes? It is the excellent jest at the expense of
me."

"There ain't much chuck in camp," Happy observed helpfully, "so yuh
might as well start in and get anything yuh want to cook. The outfit
is good about one thing They don't never kick on the stuff yuh eat.
The cook always loads up to suit himself, and nobody don't ask
questions or make a holler--so long as there's plenty and it's good."

Jakie listened attentively, twisting his mustache ends absently. "It
is simply that I purchase the supplies fich I shall choose for my
judgment," he observed, to make quite sure that he understood. "I am
to have _carte blanche_, yes?"

"Sure, if yuh want it," said Happy Jack. "Only they might not keep it
here. Yuh can't get _everything_ in a little place like this." It is
only fair to Happy Jack to state that he would have understood the
term if he had seen it in print. It was the pronunciation which made
the words strange to him.

Jakie looked puzzled, but being the soul of politeness he made no
comment--perhaps because Happy Jack was at that moment bringing his
four horses to a reluctant stand at the wide side-door of the store.

"The horses, they are of the vivacious temperament, yes?" Jakie had
scrambled from the seat to within the door and was standing there
smiling appreciatively at the team.

"Aw, they're all right. You go on in--I guess Weary's there. If he
ain't, you go ahead and get what yuh want. I'll be back after awhile."
Thirst was calling Happy Jack; he heeded the summons and disappeared,
leaving the new cook to his own devices.

So, it would seem, did every other member of the Flying U. Weary had
been told that Miss Satterly was in town, and he forgot all about
Jakie in his haste to find her. No one else seemed to feel any
responsibility in the matter, and the store clerks did not care what
the Flying U outfit had to eat. For that reason the chuck-wagon
contained in an hour many articles which were strange to it, and
lacked a few things which might justly be called necessities.

"Say, you fellows are sure going to live swell," one of the clerks
remarked, when Happy Jack finally returned. "Where did yuh pick his
nibs? Ain't he a little bit new and shiny?"

"Aw, he's all right," Happy Jack defended jealously. "He's a real
_chaff_, and he can build the swellest meals yuh ever eat. Patsy can't
cook within a mile uh him. And _clean_--I betche _he_ don't keep his
bread-dough setting around on the ground for folks to tromp on." Which
proves how completely Jakie had subjugated Happy Jack.

That night--nobody but the horse-wrangler and Happy Jack had shown up
at dinner-time--the boys of the Flying U dined luxuriously at their
new-made camp upon the creek-bank at the home ranch, and ate things
which they could not name but which pleased wonderfully their palates.
There was a salad to tempt an epicure, and there was a pudding the
like of which they had never tasted. It had a French name which left
them no wiser than before asking for it, and it looked, as Pink
remarked, like a snowbank with the sun shining on it, and it tasted
like going to heaven.

"It makes me plumb sore when I think of all the years I've stood for
Patsy's slops," sighed Cal Emmett, rolling over upon his back because
he was too full for any other position--putting it plainly.

"By golly, I never knowed there was such cookin' in the world," echoed
Slim. "Why, even Mis' Bixby can't cook that good."

"The Countess had ought to come down and take a few lessons," declared
Jack Bates emphatically. "I'm going to take up some uh that pudding
and ask her what she thinks of it."

"Yuh can't," mourned Happy Jack. "There ain't any left--and I never
got more'n a taste. Next time, I'm going to tell Jakie to make it in a
wash tub, and make it full; with some uh you gobblers in camp--"

He looked up and discovered the Little Doctor approaching with Chip.
She was smiling a friendly welcome, and she was curious about the new
cook. By the time she had greeted them all and had asked all the
questions she could think of and had gone over to meet Jakie and to
taste, at the urgent behest of the Happy Family, a tiny morsel of
salad which had been overlooked, it would seem that the triumph of the
new cook was complete and that no one could possibly give a thought to
old Patsy.

The Little Doctor, however, seemed to regret his loss--and that in the
face of the delectable salad and the smile of Jakie. "I do think it's
a shame that Patsy left the way he did," she remarked to the Happy
Family in general, being especially careful not to look toward Big
Medicine. "The poor old fellow _walked_ every step of the way to the
ranch, and Claude"--that was Chip's real name--"says it was
twenty-five or six miles. He was so lame and he looked so old and
so--well, friendless, that I could have _cried_ when he came limping
up to the house! He had walked all night, and he got here just at
breakfast time and was too tired to eat.

"I dosed him and doctored his poor feet and made him go to bed, and he
slept all that day. He wanted to start that night for Dry Lake, but of
course we wouldn't let him do that. He was wild to leave, however, so
J.G. had to drive him in the next day. He went off without a word to
any of us, and he looked so utterly dejected and so--so _old_. Claude
says he acted perfectly awful in camp, but I'm sure he was sorry for
it afterwards. J.G. hasn't got over it yet; I believe he has taken it
to heart as much as Patsy seemed to do. He's had Patsy with him for so
long, you see--he was like one of the family." She stopped and
regarded the Happy Family a bit anxiously. "This new cook is a very
nice little man," she added after a minute, "but after all, he isn't
Patsy."

The Happy Family did not answer, and they refrained from looking at
one another or at the Little Doctor.

At last Big Medicine brought his big voice into the awkward silence.
"Honest to grandma, Mrs. Chip," he said earnestly, "I'd give a lot
right now to have old Patsy back--er--just to have _around_, if it
made him feel bad to leave. I reckon maybe that was my fault: I hadn't
oughta pitched quite so hard, and I had oughta looked where I was
throwin' m' rider. I reelize that no cook likes to have a fellow
standin' on his head in a big pan uh bread-sponge, on general
principles if not on account uh the bread. Uh course, we've all knowed
old Patsy to take just about as great liberties himself with his
sponge--but we've got to recollect that it was _his_ dough, by cripes,
and that pipe ashes ain't the same as a fellow takin' a shampoo in the
pan. No, I reelize that I done wrong, and I'm willin' to apologize for
it right here and now. At the same time," he ended dryly, "I will own
that I'm dead stuck on little Jakie, and I'd ruther ride for the
Flying U and eat Jakie's grub than any other fate I can think of right
now. Whilst I'm sorry for what I done, yuh couldn't pry me loose from
Jakie with a stick uh dynamite--and that's a fact, Mrs. Chip."

The Little Doctor laughed, pushed back her hair in the way she had,
glanced again at the unresponsive faces of the original members of the
Happy Family and gave up as gracefully as possible.

"Oh, of course Patsy's an old crank, and Jakie's a waxed angel," she
surrendered with a little grimace. "You think so now, but that's
because you are being led astray by your appetites, like all men. You
just wait: You'll be _homesick_ for a sight of that fat, bald-headed,
cranky old Patsy bouncing along on the mess-wagon and swearing in
Dutch at his horses, before you're through. If you're not so
completely gone over to Jakie that you will eat nothing but what he
has cooked, come on up to the house. The Countess is making a
twogallon freezer of ice-cream for you, and she has a big pan of angel
cake to go with it! You don't deserve it--but come along anyway."
Which was another endearing way of the Little Doctor's--the way of
sweetening all her lectures with something very nice at the end.

The Happy Family felt very much ashamed and very sorry that they could
not feel kindly toward Patsy, even to please the Little Doctor. They
sincerely wanted to please her and to have her unqualified approval;
but wanting Patsy back, or feeling even the slightest regret that he
was gone, seemed to them a great deal too much to ask of them. Since
this is a story of cooks and of eating, one may with propriety add,
however, that the invitation to ice cream and angel cake, coming
though it did immediately after that wonderful supper of Jakie's, was
accepted with alacrity and their usual thoroughness of accomplishment;
not for the world would they have offended the Little Doctor by
declining so gracious an invitation--the graciousness being manifested
in her smile and her voice rather than in the words she spoke--leaving
out the enchantment which hovers over the very name of angel cake and
ice cream. The Happy Family went to bed that night as complacently
uncomfortable as children after a Christmas dinner.

Not often does it fall to the lot of a cowboy to have served to him
stuffed olives and lobster salad with mayonnaise dressing, French
fried potatoes and cream puffs from the mess-tent of a roundup outfit.
During the next week it fell to the lot of the Happy Family, however.
When the salads and the cream puffs disappeared suddenly and the smile
of Jakie became pensive and contrite, the Happy Family, acting
individually but unanimously, made inquiries.

"It is that I no more possess the fresh vegetables, nor the eggs,
gentlemen," purred Jakie. "Many things of a deliciousness must I now
abstain because of the absence of two, three small eggs! But see, one
brief arrival in the small town would quickly remedy, yes? It is that
we return with haste that I may buy more of the several articles for
fich I require?" He spread his small hands appealingly.

"By golly, _Patsy_ never had no eggs--" began Slim traitorously.

"Aw, gwan! Patsy never fed yuh like Jakie does, neither!" Happy Jack
was heart and soul the slave of the chef. "If Chip don't care, I'll
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 you attend to the boiling of meat and the unpacking and
arrangement of those necessary furnishings for fich you possess the
great understanding. And I shall prepare the so delicious dessert of
the floating island, what you call in America. Yes? Our friends will
have the so delightful astonishment when they arrive. They shall
exclaim and partake joyously, is it not? And for your reward, Mr.
Happy, I shall be so pleased to set aside a very extensive portion of
the delicious floating island, so that you can eat no more except you
endanger your handsome person from the bursting. Yes?" And oh, the
smile of him!

A man of sterner stuff than Happy Jack would have fallen before such
guile and would have labored willingly--nay, gladly in the service of
so delightful a diplomat as Jakie. Except for that willing service,
Jakie would have been quite overwhelmed by the many and peculiar
duties of a roundup cook. He would have been perfectly helpess before
the morning and noon packing of dishes and food, and the skilful haste
necessary to unpack and prepare a meal for fifteen ravenous appetites
within the time limit would have been utterly impossible. Jakie was a
chef, trained to his profession in well-appointed kitchens and with
assistance always at hand; which is a trade apart from cooking for a
roundup crew.

Happy Jack, in the fulness of time, returned with the eggs. That is,
he returned with six eggs and a quart or two of a yellowish mixture
thickly powdered with shell. He took the pail to Jakie and he saw the
seraphic smile fade from his face and an unpleasant glitter creep into
his eyes.

"It is the omelet fich you furnish, yes? The six eggs, they will not
make the pudding. The omelet--I do not perceive yet the desirableness
of the omelet. And the juvenile hen--yes?"

"Aw, they wouldn't sell no chickens." Happy Jack's face had gone long
and scarlet before the patent displeasure of the other. "And my horse
was scared uh the bucket and pitched with me."

Jackie looked again into the pail, felt gingerly the yellow mess and
discovered one more egg which retained some semblance of its original
form. "The misfortune distresses me," he murmured. "It is that you
return hastily, Mr. Happy, and procure other eggs fich you will place
unbroken in my waiting hands, yes?"

Happy Jack mopped his forehead and glanced at the sun, burning hotly
down upon the prairie. They had made a short move that day and it was
still early. But the way to Nelson's and back had been hot and
tumultuous and he was tired. For the first time since his abject
surrender to the waxed smile, Happy Jack chafed a bit under the yoke
of voluntary servitude. "Aw, can't yuh cook something that don't take
so many eggs?" he asked in something like his old, argumentative tone.

The unpleasant glitter in the eyes of Jakie grew more pronounced; grew
even snaky, in the opinion of Happy Jack. "It is that I am no more
permitted the privilege of preparing the food for fich I have the
judgment, yes?" His voice purred too much to be convincing. "It is
that I am no more the chef to be obeyed by my servant?"

"Aw, gwan! I ain't anybody's servant that I ever heard of!" Happy Jack
felt himself bewilderedly slipping from his loyalty. What had come
over Jakie, to act like this? He walked away to where there was some
shade and sat down sullenly. Jakie's servant, was he? Well! "The
darned little greasy-faced runt," he mumbled rebelliously, and
immediately felt the better for it.

Two cigarettes brought coolness and calm. Happy Jack wanted very much
to lie there and take a nap, but his conscience stirred uneasily. The
boys were making a long circle that day and would come in with the
appetites--and the tempers--of wolves. It occurred to Happy Jack that
their appetites were much keener than they had ever been before, and
he sat there a little longer while he thought about it; for Happy
Jack's mind was slow and tenacious, and he hated to leave a new idea
until he had squeezed it dry of all mystery. He watched Jakie moving
in desultory fashion about the tent--but most of the time Jakie stayed
inside.

"I betche the boys ain't gitting enough old stand-by-yuh chuck," he
decided at length. "Floatin' island and stuffed olives--for them that
likes stuffed olives--and salad and all that junk _tastes_ good--but I
betche the boys need a good feed uh beans!" Which certainly was
brilliant of Happy Jack, even if it did take him a full hour to arrive
at that conclusion. He got up immediately and started for the
cook-tent.

"Say, Jakie," he began before he was inside, "ain't there time enough
to boil a pot uh beans if I make yuh a good fire? I betche the boys
would like a good feed--"

"A-a-hh!" Happy Jack insisted afterward that it sounded like the
snarling of a wolf over a bone. "Is it that you come here to give the
orders? Is it that you _insult_?" Followed a torrent of molten French,
as it were. Followed also Jakie, with the eyes of a snake and the
toothy grin of a wild animal and with a knife which Happy Jack had
never seen before; a knife which caught the sunlight and glittered
horridly.

Happy Jack backed out as if he had inadvertently stirred a nest of
hornets. Jakie almost caught him before he took to his heels. Happy
never waited to discover what the new cook was saying, or whether he
was following or remaining at the tent. He headed straight for the
protection of the horse-wrangler, who watched his cavvy not far away,
and his face was the color of stale putty.

The horse-wrangler saw him coming and came loping up to meet him.
"What's eating yuh, Happy?" he inquired inelegantly.

"Jakie--he's gone nutty! He come at me with a knife, and he'd uh
killed me if I'd stayed!" Happy Jack pantingly recovered himself. "I
didn't have no time ta git my gun," he added in a more natural tone,
"or I'd uh settled him pretty blame quick. So I come out to borrow
yourn. I betche _I'll_ have the next move."

The horse-wrangler grinned heartlessly. "I reckon he's about half
shot," he said, sliding over in the saddle and getting out the
inevitable tobacco sack and papers. "Old Pete Williams rode past while
you were gone, loaded to the guards and with a bottle uh whisky in
each saddle-pocket and two in his coat. He gave me a drink, and then
he went on and stopped at camp. He was hung up there for quite a
spell, I noticed. I didn't _see_ him pass any uh the vile liquor to
little Jakie, but--" he twirled a blackened match stub in his fingers
and then tossed it from him.

"Aw, gwan! Jakie wouldn't touch nothing when he was in town," Happy
Jack objected. "I betche he's gone crazy, or else--"

"Well," interrupted the horse-wrangler, "I've told yuh what I know and
all I know. Take it or leave it." He rode back to turn the lead-horse
from climbing a ridge where he did not want the herd to follow. He did
not lend Happy Jack his gun, and for that reason--perhaps--Jakie
remained alive and unpunctured until the first of the riders came
loping in to camp.

The first riders happened to be Pink and Big Medicine. They were met
by a tearful, contrite Jakie--a Jakie who seemed much inclined to
weeping upon their shirt-fronts and to confessing all his sins,
particularly the sin of trying to carve Happy Jack. That perturbed
gentleman made his irate appearance as soon as he found that
reinforcements had arrived.

Big Medicine disengaged himself from the clinging arms of the chef,
sniffed suspiciously and wiped away the tears from his vest. "Well,
say," he bellowed in his usual manner of trying to make all Chouteau
County hear what he had to say, "I ain't t' blame if he got away on
yuh. Yuh hadn't ought to uh done it--or else yuh oughta made a clean
job of it sos't we could hang yuh proper. Supper ready?"

"It is that the supply of eggs is inadequate," wept Jakie, steadying
himself against the tent-pole while he wiped his eyes upon his apron.
"Because of it I could not prepare the floating island--and without
the dessert I have not the heart to prepare the dinner, yes? It is
that I am breaking of the heart that I assail the good friend of me.
Oh, Mr. Happy, it is that I crave pardon!"

Happy Jack came near taking to his heels again when he saw Jakie start
for him; he did back up hastily, and his evident reluctance to embrace
and forgive started afresh the tears of remorse. Jakie wailed volubly
and, catching Pink unaware, he wept upon his bosom.

Others came riding in, saw the huddle before the mess-tent and came up
to investigate. With every fresh arrival Jakie began anew his
confession that he had attempted to murder his good friend, Mr. Happy,
and with every confession he wept more copiously than before.

The Happy Family tacitly owned itself helpless. A warlike cook they
could deal with. A lazy cook they could kick into industry. A weeping,
wailing, conscience-stricken cook, a cook who steadfastly refused to
be comforted, was an absolutely new experience. They told him to buck
up, found that he only broke out anew, threatened, cajoled and argued.
Jakie clung to whoever happened to be within reach and mixed the
English language unmercifully.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15