The Flying Us Last Stand | Page 4

his herds and
raised bigger cattle. Therefore, if his cattle grew fewer in number, they
improved in quality and prices went higher, so that the result was much
the same.
It began to look, then, as though J. G. Whitmore was cunningly besting
the situation, and was going to hold out indefinitely against the
encroachments of civilization upon the old order of things on the range.
And it had begun to look as though he was going to best Time at his
own game, and refuse also to grow old; as though he would go on
being the same pudgy, grizzled, humorously querulous Old Man
beloved of his men, the Happy Family of the Flying U.
Sometimes, however, Time will fill a four-flush with the joker, and
then laugh while he rakes in the chips. J. G. Whitmore had been going
his way and refusing to grow old for a long time--and then an accident,
which is Time's joker, turned the game against him. He stood for just a
second too long on a crowded crossing in Chicago, hesitating between
going forward or back. And that second gave Time a chance to play an
accident. A big seven-passenger touring car mowed him down and left

him in a heap for the ambulance from the nearest hospital to gather on
its stretcher.
The Old Man did not die; he had lived long on the open range and he
was pretty tough and hard to kill. He went back to his beloved Flying U,
with a crutch to help him shuffle from bed to easy chair and back again.
The Little Doctor, who was his youngest sister, nursed him tirelessly;
but it was long before there came a day when the Old Man gave his
crutch to the Kid to use for a stick-horse, and walked through the living
room and out upon the porch with the help of a cane and the solicitous
arm of the Little Doctor, and with the Kid galloping gleefully before
him on the crutch.
Later he discarded the help of somebody's arm, and hobbled down to
the corral with the cane, and with the Kid still galloping before him on
"Uncle Gee Gee's" crutch. He stood for some time leaning against the
corral watching some of the boys halter-breaking a horse that was later
to be sold--when he was "broke gentle"--and then he hobbled back
again, thankful for the soft comfort of his big chair.
That was well enough, as far as it went. The Flying U took it for
granted that the Old Man was slowly returning to the old order of life,
when rheumatism was his only foe and he could run things with his old
energy and easy good management. But there never came a day when
the Old Man gave his cane to the kid to play with. There never came a
day when he was not thankful for the soft comfort of his chair. There
never came a day when he was the same Old Man who joshed the boys
and scolded them and threatened them. The day was always coming--
of course!--when his back would quit aching if he walked to the stable
and back without a long rest between, but it never actually arrived.
So, imperceptibly but surely, the Old Man began to grow old. The thin
spot on top of his head grew shiny, so that the Kid noticed it and made
blunt comments upon the subject. His rheumatism was not his worst
foe, now. He had to pet his digestive apparatus and cut out strong
coffee with three heaping teaspoons of sugar in each cup, because the
Little Doctor told him his liver was torpid. He had to stop giving the

Kid jolty rides on his knees,--but that was because the Kid was getting
too big for baby play, the Old Man declared. The Kid was big enough
to ride real horses, now, and he ought to be ashamed to ride
knee-horses any more.
To two things the Old Man clung almost fiercely; the old regime of
ranging his cattle at large and starting out the wagons in the spring just
the same as if twenty-five men instead of twelve went with them; and
the retention of the Happy Family on his payroll, just as if they were
actually needed. If one of the boys left to try other things and other
fields, the Old Man considered him gone on a vacation and expected
him back when spring roundup approached.
True, he was seldom disappointed in that. For the Happy Family looked
upon the Flying U as home, and six months was about the limit for
straying afar. Cowpunchers to the bone though they were, they bent
backs over irrigating ditches and sweated in the hay fields just for