this outfit I reckon he'd go
out an' get him," he'd say scornful. "Riders! you call yourselves
riders? You're loafers an' eaters, that's what you are! I'm a cook, but
if nobody else has the nerve to go an' git him, I'll go myself."

Jim started to go at last, but he wouldn't let him. "You got the grit,
Jim, but you ain't got the night sense yet. You stay where you are or
you'd be on our hands too." Well, he steamed up an' down makin' new hot
coffee an' drinkin' it by the bowl. All of a sudden he give a scream:
"Oh, oh! there he goes over the cliff! Get me a pony--get me a pony,
while I wrap up some coffee an' pick out some blankets!" Well, the cook
was so blame wild by this time 'at they was glad to get shut of him; so
they rigged him out an' he rode a bee line right to me, an' what led
him you can figger out for yourselves. He was a queer cook, but after
that night he was different: he acted as though he had adopted me; he
petted me an' spoiled me an' you can talk all you want to about the
flesh-pots of Egypt--why, that cook could fix beans eleven different
ways, an' each one better'n the other.

But while I was lyin' there waitin' for my leg to knit up, I kept
thinkin' o' the little lass back at the Diamond Dot, an' when I got
about again, I knew I was signed for a trip No'th.

The cook was mighty good to me while I was backin' it; he used to
deal out fussy little fixin's 'at kept the appetite an' the fever both
down, an' when they wasn't no one around he used to pat out my pillers
an' oncet he smoothed back my hair. He cut out his cussin' too, an' he
used to line up the kid for it.

"You're from the South, ain't ya, Happy?" sez he to me one day.

"Not so you could notice," sez I. "I reckon this is the southest I ever
got before."

"Hu," sez the cook, "Texas ain't south. Texas is just the rubbish heap
o' this whole country. Where did you hook up to that word 'reckon'?"

"I dunno," sez I, thinkin' back. "A feller just catches words like the
mumps, I suppose; but my pap, he used to use it right often."

"Where did your folks come from?" sez the cook.

"Oh, they come from Kentucky, an' before that from Virginia an' No'th
Carolina, an' before that they came from Scotch Irish an' English, an'
go clear back to Adam an' you'll find us Hawkinses was a ramblin' crew,
I reckon; but what on earth you drivin' at, Monody, an' where on earth
did your line hail from?"

He sat there a moment with lights an' shades dartin'