At daylight he was his old self, except that he was perhaps a trifle gruff when he spoke and a good deal inclined to silence, and harmony came and abode for a season with the Flying U.

Patsy had for years cooked for Jim Whitmore and his “outfit”; so many years it was that memory of the number was never exact, and even the Old Man would have been compelled to preface the number with a few minutes of meditation and a “Lemme see, now; Patsy’s been cooking for me—­eighty-six was that hard winter, and he come the spring—­no, the fall before that.  I know because he like to froze before we got the mess-house chinked up good—­I’ll be doggoned if Patsy ain’t gitting old!” That was it, perhaps:  Patsy was getting old.  And old age does not often sweeten one’s temper, if you notice.  Those angelic old men and old ladies have nearly all been immortalized in stories and songs, and the unsung remainder have nerves and notions and rheumatism and tongues sharpened by all the disappointments and sorrows of their long lives.

Patsy never had been angelic; he had always been the victim of more or less ill-timed humor on the part of the Happy Family, and the victim of hunger-sharpened tempers as well.  He had always grumbled and rumbled Dutch profanity when they goaded him too hard, and his amiability had ever expressed itself in juicy pies and puddings rather than in words.  On this roundup, however, he was not often amiable and he was nearly always rumbling to himself.  More than that, he was becoming resentful of extra work and bother and he sometimes permitted his resentment to carry him farther than was wise.

To quarrel with Patsy was rapidly becoming the fashion, and to gossip about him and his faults was already a habit; a habit indulged in too freely, perhaps, for the good of the camp.  Isolation from the world brings small things into greater prominence than is normally their due, and large troubles are born of very small irritations.

For two days there was peace of a sort, and then Big Medicine, having eaten no dinner because of a headache, rode into camp about three o’clock and headed straight for the mess-wagon, quite as if he had a right that must not be questioned.  Custom did indeed warrant him in lunching without the ceremony of asking leave of the cook, for Patsy even in his most unpleasant moods had never until lately tried to stop anyone from eating when he was hungry.

On this day, however, Big Medicine unthinkingly cut into a fresh-baked pie set out to cool.  There were other pies, and in cutting one Big Medicine was supported by precedent; but Patsy chose to consider it an affront and snatched the pie from under Big Medicine’s very nose.

“You fellers vot iss always gobbling yet, you iss quit it alreatty!” rumbled Patsy, bearing the pie into the tent with Big Medicine’s knife still lying buried in the lately released juice.  “I vork und vork mine head off keeping you fellers filled oop tree times a day alreatty; I not vork und vork to feed you effery hour, py cosh.  You go mitout till supper iss reaty for you yet.”