| Summary: | "WHY HANK QUIT." "Hank and I together again and shacking along toward the old ranch at Twin Buttes. That was too much joy for one dose. I reckoned to wake up and find it a joke. All Montana couldn't contain me about that time. I'd just been sheddin' sunshine broadcast all along that trail. And Hank didn't fly any down- hearted symptoms, either. We were sure a corking team, us two. 'How'd I come to quit up there?' says Hank, kind of reflective- like, in answer to my question. 'Well, Reddy, that's a different chapter.' But two hours later, when I had boiled some three rounds of coffee and fried some sage-hen, Hank was happy, blowing smoke rings at the moon, so he loosened up and spun a little history. 'Let's see, Reddy, it's been two long years since first I hit leather up there on the O. U. I've learned to like the place, too. Went hard to leave. But, shucks, things ain't like they were when Wilson ran the roost. You know he sold out last spring. A brand new guy, in patent leathers and swaller tails, bought in. H. William Smith was his handle. Come from New York. Never had seen west of Chicago before. But what H. William didn't know about ranching it wouldn't pay a cow puncher to ask. That's according to H. To a cow puncher, his action seemed contrary to the rules of order. Why, the first time that man saw us a-branding calves he went plumb wild. Pulled a thirty-two pop he carried and started to plant us. He never did take much interest in ranchin'; didn't seem educated up to it somehow. But of all the men I ever met to snoop about and get his long nose where it wasn't wanted, he was the king pin. Why, one day he pokes into the pen with my new white- faces and came so near quitting these flats it was no joke. And another time something wakes me up in the early morn, and here comes H. on ten-second time from the hoss corrals, a holler- ing bloody murder, and the meanest hoss in all Montana a squeal- ing, buck jumping and ripping chunks out of him from the rear. H. sure tackled the wrong horse that deal. Gee! Reddy, what H. did or didn't do will make another volume some time. You'd think, Reddy, that with the handsomest ranch in all Beaver Creek Country, any right-minded man would forget his light and frivolous dispositions. Not so with H. William. That man did more darn fool tricks than I ever can tell. The last craze, Reddy, was a chicken craze. That's straight, Red. A real live chicken craze, and him a ranch owner in Montana! Now, what I know about chickens ain't much, but I do have a deep love for the birdies. So did H. William, but H. likes his a-squawkin' in the yard. I takes mine on the breakfast table. Chickens are a small thing to make a man jump his job, yet that's what H.'s chicks did for me. Your Uncle Hank goes to town one day, with Sandy
|
|---|