Not often does it fall to the lot of a cowboy to have served to him stuffed olives and lobster salad with mayonnaise dressing, French fried potatoes and cream puffs from the mess-tent of a roundup outfit.  During the next week it fell to the lot of the Happy Family, however.  When the salads and the cream puffs disappeared suddenly and the smile of Jakie became pensive and contrite, the Happy Family, acting individually but unanimously, made inquiries.

“It is that I no more possess the fresh vegetables, nor the eggs, gentlemen,” purred Jakie.  “Many things of a deliciousness must I now abstain because of the absence of two, three small eggs!  But see, one brief arrival in the small town would quickly remedy, yes?  It is that we return with haste that I may buy more of the several articles for fich I require?” He spread his small hands appealingly.

“By golly, Patsy never had no eggs—­” began Slim traitorously.

“Aw, gwan!  Patsy never fed yuh like Jakie does, neither!” Happy Jack was heart and soul the slave of the chef.  “If Chip don’t care, I’ll ride over to Nelson’s and git some eggs.  Jakie said he’d make some more uh that pudding if he had some.  It ain’t but six or seven miles.”

“Should you but obtain the juvenile hen, yes, I should be delighted to serve the chicken salad for luncheon.  It is the great misfortune that the fresh vegetable are not obtain, but I will do the best and substitute with a cleverness fich will conceal the defect—­yes?” Jakie’s caps and aprons had lost their first immaculate freshness, but his manner was as royally perfect as ever and his smile as wistfully friendly.

“Well, I’ll ask Chip about it,” Happy Jack yielded.

Eggs and young chickens were of a truth strange to a roundup in full blast, but so was a chef like Jakie, and so were the salads, stuffed olives and cream puffs; and the white caps and the waxed mustache and the beautiful flow of words and the smile.  The Happy Family was in no condition, mentally or digestively, to judge impartially.  A month ago they would have whooped derision at the suggestion of riding anywhere after fresh eggs and “juvenile hens,” but now it seemed to them very natural and very necessary.  So much for the demoralization of expert cookery and white caps and a smile.

Chip also seemed to have fallen under the spell.  It may have been that the heavenly peace which wrapped the Flying U was, in his mind, too precious to be lightly disturbed.  At any rate he told Happy Jack briefly to “Go ahead, if you want to,” and so left unobstructed the path to the chicken salad and cream puffs.  Happy Jack wiped his hands upon an empty flour sack, rolled down his shirtsleeves and hurried off to saddle a horse.