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“Py cosh, if dat iss der vay you wants your grub, py cosh, dat iss der vay you gets it alreatty!” he brought the coffee-boiler and threw that also at the two, and followed it with a big basin of stewed corn.

Irish, all dough as he was, went for him blindly and grappled with him, and it was upon this turbulent scene which Chip looked first when he rode up. The Happy Family crowded around him gasping and tried to explain.

“They were doing some rough-riding–“

“By golly, Patsy no business to set his bread dough on the ground!”

“He’s throwed away all the supper there is, and I betche–“

“Mamma! Yuh sure missed it, Chip. You ought–“

“By cripes, if that Dutch–“

“Break away there, Irish!” shouted Chip, dismounting hurriedly. “Has it got so you must fight an old man like that?”

“Py cosh, I’ll fight mit him alreatty! I’ll fight mit any mans vat shpoils mine bread. Maybe I’m old yet but I ain’t dead yet und I could fight–” The words came disjointedly, mere punctuation points to his wild sparring.

It was plain that Irish, furious though he was, was trying not to hurt Patsy very much; but it took four men to separate them for all that. When they had dragged Irish perforce down to the creek by which they had camped, and had yelled to Big Medicine to come on and feed the fish, quiet should have been restored–but it was not.

Patsy was, in American parlance, running amuck. He was jumbling three languages together into an indistinguishable tumult of sound and he was emptying the cook-tent of everything which his stout, German muscles could fling from it. Not a thing did he leave that was eatable and the dishes within his reach he scattered recklessly to all the winds of heaven. When one venturesome soul after another approached to calm him, he found it expedient to duck and run to cover. Patsy’s aim was terribly exact.

The Happy Family, under cover or at a safe distance from the hurtling pans, cans and stove wood, caressed sundry bumps and waited meekly. Irish and Big Medicine, once more disclosing the features God had given them, returned by a circuitous route and joined their fellows.

“Look at ’em over there–he’s emptying every grain uh rolled oats on the ground!” Happy Jack was a “mush-fiend.” “Somebody better go over and stop ‘im–“

“You ain’t tied down,” suggested Cal Emmett rather pointedly, and Happy Jack said no more.

Chip, usually so incisively clear as to his intentions and his duties, waited irresolutely and dodged missiles along with the rest of them. When Patsy subsided for the very good reason that there was nothing else which he could throw out, Chip took the matter up with him and told him quite plainly some of the duties of a cook, a few of his privileges and all of his limitations. The result, however, was not quite what he expected. Patsy would not even listen.

“Py cosh, I not stand for dose poys no more,” he declared, wagging his head with its shiny crown and the fringe of grizzled hair around the back. “I not cook grub for dat Irish und dat Big Medicine und Happy Jack und all dose vat cooms und eats mine pies und shpoils mine pread und makes deirselves fools all der time. If dose fellers shtay on dis camp I quits him alreatty.” To make the bluff convincing he untied his apron, threw it spitefully upon the ground and stamped upon it clumsily, like a maddened elephant.

“Well, quit then!” Chip was fast losing his own temper, what with the heat and his hunger and a general distaste for camp troubles. “This jangling has got to stop right here. We’ve had about enough of it in the last month. If you can’t cook for the outfit peaceably–” He did not finish the sentence, or if he did the distance muffled the words, for he was leading his horse back to the vicinity of the rope corral that he might unsaddle and turn him loose.