“Aw yes—­you wouldn’t see nothing to worry about, not if yuh was being paid for it.  They’s a storm coming—­any fool can see that; and she’s sure going to come down in large chunks.  We ain’t got this amatoor hell for nothing!  Yuh won’t want to do no branding in the cook-tent, nor no place else.  I betche—­”

“Please,” spoke up Pink, coiling afresh the rope thrown off a calf he had just dragged up to Cal and Happy Jack, “won’t somebody lend me a handkerchief?  I want to gag Happy; he’s working his hoodoo on us again.”

Happy Jack leered up at him, consciously immune—­for there was no time for strife of a physical nature, and Happy knew it.  Everyone was working his fastest.

“Hoodoo nothing!  I guess maybe yuh can’t see that bank uh thunderheads.  I guess your sight’s poor, straining your eyes towards the Fourth uh July ever since Christmas.  If yuh think yuh can come Christian Science act on a storm, and bluff it down jest by sayin’ it ain’t there, you’re away off.  I ain’t that big a fool; I—­” he trailed into profane words, for the calf he was at that minute holding showed a strong inclination to plant a foot in Happy’s stomach.

Cal Emmett glanced over his shoulder, grunted a comprehensive refutation of Happy Jack’s fears and turned his whole attention to work.  The branding proceeded steadily, with the hurry of skill that makes each motion count something done; for though not a man of them except Happy Jack would have admitted it, the Happy Family was anxious.  With two hundred and fifty calves to be branded in the open before night, on the third day of July; with a blistering sun sapping the strength of them and a storm creeping blackly out of the southwest; with a picnic tugging their desires and twenty-five long prairie miles between them and the place appointed, one can scarce wonder that even Pink and Weary—­born optimists, both of them—­eyed the west anxiously when they thought no one observed them.  Under such circumstances, Happy Jack’s pessimism came near being unbearable; what the Happy Family needed most was encouragement.

The smoke hung thicker in the parched air and stung more sharply their bloodshot, aching eyeballs.  The dust settled smotheringly upon them, filled nostrils and lungs and roughened their patience into peevishness.  A calf bolted from the herd, and a “hold-up” man pursued it vindictively, swearing by several things that he would break its blamed neck—­only his wording was more vehement.  A cinder got in Slim’s eye and one would think, from his language, that such a thing was absolutely beyond the limit of man’s endurance, and a blot upon civilization.  Even Weary, the sweet-tempered, grew irritable and heaped maledictions on the head of the horse-wrangler because he was slow about bringing a fresh supply of water.  Taken altogether, the Happy Family was not in its sunniest mood.

When Patsy shouted that supper was ready, they left their work reluctantly and tarried just long enough to swallow what food was nearest.  For the branding was not yet finished, and the storm threatened more malignantly.