“Py cosh, you not ged any pie, Weary Davidson.  Py cosh, I learns you not to call names py sober peoples.  You not get no grub whiles you iss too drunk to be decend mit folks.”

“Hey?  Yuh won’t feed a man when he’s hungry?  Yuh darn Dutch—­” Weary went into details in a way that was surprising.

The Happy Family rushed up and pulled him off Patsy before he had done any real harm, and held him till the cook had got into the shelter of his tent and armed himself with a frying pan.  Weary was certainly outdoing himself today.  The Happy Family resolved into a peace committee.

“Aw, dig up some pie for him, Patsy,” pleaded Cal.  “Yuh don’t want to mind anything he says while he’s like this; yuh know Weary’s a good friend to yuh when he’s sober.  Get some strong coffee—­that’ll straighten him out.”

“Py cosh, I not feed no drunk fools.  I not care if it iss Weary.  He hit mine jaw—­”

“Aw, gwan!  I guess yuh never get that way yourself,” put in Happy Jack, ponderously sarcastic.  “I guess yuh never tanked up in roundup, one time, and left me cook chuck fer the hull outfit—­and I guess Weary never rode all night, and had the dickens of a time, tryin’ t’ get yuh a doctor—­yuh old heathen.  Yuh sure are an ungrateful cuss.”

“Give him some good, hot coffee, Patsy, and anything he wants to eat,” commanded Chip, more sharply than was his habit.  “And don’t be all day about it, either.”

That settled it, of course; Chip, being foreman, was to be obeyed—­unless Patsy would rather roll his blankets and hunt a new job.  He took to muttering weird German sentences the while he brought out two pies and poured black coffee into a cup.  The reveler drank the coffee—­three cups of it—­ate a whole blueberry pie, and was consoled.  He even wanted to embrace Patsy again, but was restrained by the others.  After that he went over and laid down in the shade of the bed-wagon, and straightway began to snore with much energy and enthusiasm.

Chip watched him a minute and then went and sat down on the shady side of the bed-tent and began gloomily to roll a cigarette.  The rest of the Happy Family silently followed his example; for a long while no one said a word.

It certainly was a shock to see Weary like that.  Not because it is unusual for a man of the range to get in that condition—­for on the contrary, it is rather commonplace.  And the Happy Family had lived the life too long to judge a man harshly because of an occasional indiscreet departure from the path virtuous; they knew that the man might be a good fellow, after all.  In the West grows Charity sturdily, with branches quite broad enough to cover certain defections on the part of such men as Weary Davidson.