They were a sorry company that gathered that night around the long table with its mottled oil-cloth covering and benches polished to a glass-like smoothness with their own vigorous bodies. They did not talk much about the Old Man; indeed, they came no nearer the subject than to ask Weary if he were going to drive the team in to Dry Lake. They did not talk much about anything, for that matter; even the knives and forks seemed to share the general depression of spirits, and failed to give forth the cheerful clatter which was a daily accompaniment of meals in that room. Old Patsy, he who had cooked for J. G. Whitmore when the Flying U coulee was a wilderness and the brand yet unrecorded and the irons unmade--Patsy lumbered heavily about the room and could not find his dish-cloth when it was squeezed tight in one great, fat hand, and unthinkingly started to fill their coffee cups from the tea-kettle. “Py cosh, I vould keel der fool vot made her first von of der automo-beels, yet!” he exclaimed unexpectedly, after a long silence, and cast his pipe vindictively toward his bunk in one corner. The Happy Family looked around at him, then understandingly at one another. “Same here, Patsy,” Jack Bates agreed. “What they want of the damned things when the country's full uh good horses gits me.” “So some Yahoo with just sense enough to put goggles on to cover up his fool face can run over folks he ain't good enough to speak to, by cripes!” Big Medicine glared aggressively up and down the table. Weary got up suddenly and went out, and Slim followed him, though his supper was half-uneaten. “This goin' to be hard on the Little Doctor--only brother she's got,” they heard Happy Jack point out unnecessarily; and Weary, the equable, was guilty of slamming the door so that the whole building shook, by way of demonstrating his dislike of speech upon the subject. They were a sorry company who waved hands at the Little Doctor and the Kid and the Countess, just when the afterglow of a red sunset was merging into the vague, purple shadows of coming dusk. They stood silent, for the most part, and let them go without the usual facetious advice to “Be good to yourselves,” and the hackneyed admonition to Chip to keep out of jail if he could. There must have been something very wistful in their faces, for the Little Doctor smiled bravely down upon then from the buggy seat, and lifted up the Kid for a four-toothed smile and an ecstatic “Bye!” accompanied by a vigorous flopping of hands, which included then all.