The Flying U Ranch | Page 5

eight fellers, rigged up like this here tray-spot, ridin' along,
important as hell, drivin' them few cows down a lane, with peach trees

on both sides, by cripes, jingling their big, silver spurs, all wearin'
fancy chaps to ride four or five miles down the road. Honest to
grandma, they call that punchin' cows! Oh, he's a Native Son, all right.
I've saw lots of 'em, only I never saw one so far away from the
Promised Land before. That there looks queer to me. Natiff Sons--the
real ones, like him--are as scarce outside Calyforny as buffalo are right
here in this coulee."
"That's the way they do it, all right," Irish agreed. "And then they'll
have a 'rodeo'--"
"Haw-haw-haw!" Big Medicine interrupted, and took up the tale, which
might have been entitled "Some Cowpunching I Have Seen."
"They have them rodeos on a Sunday, mostly, and they invite
everybody to it, like it was a picnic. And there'll be two or three fellers
to every calf, all lit up, like Mig-u-ell, over there, in chaps and silver
fixin's, fussin' around on horseback in a corral, and every feller trying
to pile his rope on the same calf, by cripes! They stretch 'em out with
two ropes--calves, remember! Little, weenty fellers you could pack
under one arm! Yuh can't blame 'em much. They never have more'n
thirty or forty head to brand at a time, and they never git more'n a taste
uh real work. So they make the most uh what they git, and go in heavy
on fancy outfits. And this here silver-mounted fellow thinks he's a real
cowpuncher, by cripes!"
The Happy Family laughed at the idea; laughed so loud that Miguel left
his lonely splendor and swung over to them, ostensibly to borrow a
match.
"What's the joke?" he inquired languidly, his chin thrust out and his
eyes upon the match blazing at the end of his cigarette.
The Happy Family hesitated and glanced at one another. Then Cal
spoke truthfully.
"You're it," he said bluntly, with a secret desire to test the temper of
this dark-skinned son of the West.

Miguel darted one of his swift glances at Cal, blew out his match and
threw it away.
"Oh, how funny. Ha-ha." His voice was soft and absolutely
expressionless, his face blank of any emotion whatever. He merely
spoke the words as a machine might have done.
If he had been one of them, the Happy Family would have laughed at
the whimsical humor of it. As it was, they repressed the impulse,
though Weary warmed toward him slightly.
"Don't you believe anything this innocent-eyed gazabo tells you, Mr.
Rapponi," he warned amiably. "He's known to be a liar."
"That's funny, too. Ha-ha some more." Miguel permitted a thin ribbon
of smoke to slide from between his lips, and gazed off to the crinkled
line of hills.
"Sure, it is--now you mention it," Weary agreed after a perceptible
pause.
"How fortunate that I brought the humor to your attention," drawled
Miguel, in the same expressionless tone, much as if he were reciting a
text.
"Virtue is its own penalty," paraphrased Pink, not stopping to see
whether the statement applied to the subject.
"Haw-haw-haw!" roared Big Medicine, quite as irrelevantly.
"He-he-he," supplemented the silver-trimmed one.
Big Medicine stopped laughing suddenly, reined his horse close to the
other, and stared at him challengingly, with his pale, protruding eyes,
while the Happy Family glanced meaningly at one another. Big
Medicine was quite as unsafe as he looked, at that moment, and they
wondered if the offender realized his precarious situation.
Miguel smoked with the infinite leisure which is a fine art when it is

not born of genuine abstraction, and none could decide whether he was
aware of the unfriendly proximity of Big Medicine. Weary was just on
the point of saying something to relieve the tension, when Miguel blew
the ash gently from his cigarette and spoke lazily.
"Parrots are so common, out on the Coast, that they use them in cheap
restaurants for stew. I've often heard them gabbling together in the
kettle."
The statement was so ambiguous that the Happy Family glanced at him
doubtfully. Big Medicine's stare became more curious than hostile, and
he permitted his horse to lag a length. It is difficult to fight absolute
passivity. Then Slim, who ever tramped solidly over the flowers of
sarcasm, blurted one of his unexpected retorts.
"I was just wonderin', by golly, where yuh learnt to talk!"
Miguel turned his velvet eyes sleepily toward the speaker. "From the
boarders who ate those parrots, amigo," he smiled serenely.
At this, Slim--once justly accused by Irish of being a "single-shot"
when it came to repartee--turned purple and dumb. The Happy Family,
forswearing loyalty in their enjoyment of his discomfiture, grinned and