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“There ain’t much chuck in camp,” Happy observed helpfully, “so yuh might as well start in and get anything yuh want to cook. The outfit is good about one thing They don’t never kick on the stuff yuh eat. The cook always loads up to suit himself, and nobody don’t ask questions or make a holler–so long as there’s plenty and it’s good.”

Jakie listened attentively, twisting his mustache ends absently. “It is simply that I purchase the supplies fich I shall choose for my judgment,” he observed, to make quite sure that he understood. “I am to have carte blanche, yes?”

“Sure, if yuh want it,” said Happy Jack. “Only they might not keep it here. Yuh can’t get everything in a little place like this.” It is only fair to Happy Jack to state that he would have understood the term if he had seen it in print. It was the pronunciation which made the words strange to him.

Jakie looked puzzled, but being the soul of politeness he made no comment–perhaps because Happy Jack was at that moment bringing his four horses to a reluctant stand at the wide side-door of the store.

“The horses, they are of the vivacious temperament, yes?” Jakie had scrambled from the seat to within the door and was standing there smiling appreciatively at the team.

“Aw, they’re all right. You go on in–I guess Weary’s there. If he ain’t, you go ahead and get what yuh want. I’ll be back after awhile.” Thirst was calling Happy Jack; he heeded the summons and disappeared, leaving the new cook to his own devices.

So, it would seem, did every other member of the Flying U. Weary had been told that Miss Satterly was in town, and he forgot all about Jakie in his haste to find her. No one else seemed to feel any responsibility in the matter, and the store clerks did not care what the Flying U outfit had to eat. For that reason the chuck-wagon contained in an hour many articles which were strange to it, and lacked a few things which might justly be called necessities.

“Say, you fellows are sure going to live swell,” one of the clerks remarked, when Happy Jack finally returned. “Where did yuh pick his nibs? Ain’t he a little bit new and shiny?”

“Aw, he’s all right,” Happy Jack defended jealously. “He’s a real chaff, and he can build the swellest meals yuh ever eat. Patsy can’t cook within a mile uh him. And clean–I betche he don’t keep his bread-dough setting around on the ground for folks to tromp on.” Which proves how completely Jakie had subjugated Happy Jack.

That night–nobody but the horse-wrangler and Happy Jack had shown up at dinner-time–the boys of the Flying U dined luxuriously at their new-made camp upon the creek-bank at the home ranch, and ate things which they could not name but which pleased wonderfully their palates. There was a salad to tempt an epicure, and there was a pudding the like of which they had never tasted. It had a French name which left them no wiser than before asking for it, and it looked, as Pink remarked, like a snowbank with the sun shining on it, and it tasted like going to heaven.

“It makes me plumb sore when I think of all the years I’ve stood for Patsy’s slops,” sighed Cal Emmett, rolling over upon his back because he was too full for any other position–putting it plainly.

“By golly, I never knowed there was such cookin’ in the world,” echoed Slim. “Why, even Mis’ Bixby can’t cook that good.”

“The Countess had ought to come down and take a few lessons,” declared Jack Bates emphatically. “I’m going to take up some uh that pudding and ask her what she thinks of it.”

“Yuh can’t,” mourned Happy Jack. “There ain’t any left–and I never got more’n a taste. Next time, I’m going to tell Jakie to make it in a wash tub, and make it full; with some uh you gobblers in camp–“