Irish and Big Medicine, seeing the three standing soberly together there, and sensing something unusual, came up and heard the news in stunned silence. Andy, forgetting his pique at their first disbelief, came forlornly back and stood with them. The Old Man--the thing could not be true! To every man of them his presence, conjured by the impending tragedy, was almost a palpable thing. His stocky figure seemed almost to stand in their midst; he looked at them with his whimsical eyes, which had the radiating crows-feet of age, humor and habitual squinting against sun and wind; the bald spot on his head, the wrinkling shirt-collar that seldom knew a tie, the carpet slippers which were his favorite footgear because they were kind to his bunions, his husky voice, good-naturedly complaining, were poignantly real to them at that moment. Then Irish mentally pictured him lying maimed, dying, perhaps, in a far-off hospital among strangers, and swore. “If he's got to die, it oughta be here, where folks know him and--where he knows--” Irish was not accustomed to giving voice to his deeper feelings, and he blundered awkwardly over it. “I never did go much on them darned hospitals, anyway,” Weary observed gloomily. “He oughta be home, where folks can look after him. Mam-ma! It sure is a fright.” “I betche Chip and the Little Doctor won't get there in time,” Happy Jack predicted, with his usual pessimism. “The Old Man's gittin' old--” “He ain't but fifty-two; yuh call that old, consarn yuh? He's younger right now than you'll be when you're forty.” “Countess is going along, too, so she can ride herd on the Kid,” Pink informed then. “I heard the Little Doctor tell her to pack up, and 'never mind if she did have sponge all set!' Countess seemed to think her bread was a darned sight more important than the Old Man. That's the way with women. They'll pass up--” “Well, by golly, I like to see a woman take some interest in her own affairs,” Slim defended. “What they packin' up for, and where they goin'?” Slim had just ridden up to the group in time to overhear Pink's criticism. They told him the news, and Slim swallowed twice, said “By golly!” quite huskily, and then rode slowly away with his head bowed. He had worked for the Flying U when it was strictly a bachelor outfit, and with the tenacity of slow minds he held J. G. Whitmore, his beloved “Old Man,” as but a degree lower than that mysterious power which made the sun to shine--and, if the truth were known, he had accepted him as being quite as eternal. His loyalty adjusted everything to the interests of the Flying U. That the Old Man could die--the possibility stunned him.