[Flying U Ranch by B. M. Bower]@TWC D-Link book
Flying U Ranch

CHAPTER XIV
2/8

They dismounted and stood silently grouped about poor, ungainly Happy Jack, lying there limp and motionless in Big Medicine's arms.

Not one of them remembered then that there was a man with a rifle not more than two hundred yards away; or, if they did, they quite forgot that the rifle might be dangerous to themselves.

They were thinking of Happy Jack.
Happy Jack, butt of all their jokes and jibes; Happy the croaker, the lugubrious forecaster of trouble; Happy Jack, the ugliest, the stupidest, the softest-hearted man of them all.

He had "betched" there would be someone killed, over these Dot sheep; he had predicted trouble of every conceivable kind; and they had laughed at him, swore at him, lied to him, "joshed" him unmercifully, and kept him in a state of chronic indignation, never dreaming that the memory of it would choke them and strike them dumb with that horrible, dull weight in their chests with which men suffer when a woman would find the relief of weeping.
"Where's he hurt ?" asked Weary, in the repressed tone which only tragedy can bring into a man's voice, and knelt beside Big Medicine.
"I dunno--through the lungs, I guess; my sleeve's gitting soppy right under his shoulder." Big Medicine did not bellow; his voice was as quiet as Weary's.
Weary looked up briefly at the circle of staring faces.

"Pink, you pile onto Glory and go wire for a doctor.


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