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Weary it was, and Pink to bear him company, who piloted the stranger out to camp and showed him where he might sleep in Patsy’s bed. Patsy had left town, the Happy Family had been informed, with the declaration often repeated that he was “neffer cooming back alreatty.” He had even left behind him his bed and his clothes rather than meet again any member of the Flying U outfit.

“We’d like breakfast somewhere near sunrise,” Weary told the cook at parting. “Soon as the store opens in the morning, we’ll drive in and you can stock up the wagon; we’re pretty near down to cases, judging from the meals we have been getting lately. Hope yuh make out all right.”

“I will do very nicely, I thank you,” smiled the new cook in the light of the lantern which stood upon the fireless cook-stove. “I wish you good-night, gentlemen, and sweet dreams of loved ones.”

“Say, he’s a polite son-of-a-gun,” Pink commented when they were riding back to town. “‘The U fich flies’–that’s a good one! What is he, do you thing? French?”

“He’s liable to be most anything, and I’ll gamble he can build a good dinner for a hungry man. That’s the main point,” said Weary.

At daybreak Weary woke and heard him humming a little tune while he moved softly about the cook-tent and the mess-wagon, evidently searching mostly for the things which were not there, to judge from stray remarks which interrupted the love song. “Rolled oat–I do not find him,” he heard once. And again: “Where the clean towels they are, that I do not discover.” Weary smiled sleepily and took another nap.

The cook’s manner of announcing breakfast was such that it awoke even Jack Bates, notoriously a sleepy-head, and Cal Emmett who was almost as bad. Instead of pounding upon a pan and lustily roaring “Grub-pi-i-ile!” in the time-honored manner of roundup cooks, he came softly up to the bed-tent, lifted a flap deprecatingly and announced in a velvet voice:

“Breakfast is served, gentlemen.”

Andy Green, whose experiences had been varied, sat up and blinked at the gently swaying flap where the cook had been standing. “Say, what we got in camp?” he asked curiously. “A butler?”

“By golly, that’s the way a cook oughta be!” vowed Slim, and reached for his hat.

They dressed hastily and trooped down to the creek for their morning ablutions, and hurried back to the breakfast which waited. The new cook was smiling and apologetic and anxious to please. The Happy Family felt almost as if there were a woman in camp and became very polite without in the least realizing that they were not behaving in the usual manner, or dreaming that they were unconsciously trying to live up to their chef.

“The breakfast, it is of a lacking in many things fich I shall endeavor to remedy,” he assured them, pouring coffee as if he were serving royalty. He was dressed immaculately in white cap and apron, and his mustache was waxed to a degree which made it resemble a cat’s whiskers. The Happy Family tasted the coffee and glanced eloquently at one another. It was better than Patsy’s coffee, even; and as for Happy Jack–

There were biscuits, the like of which they never had tasted before. The bacon was crisp and delicately brown and delicious, the potatoes cooked in a new and enticing way. The Happy Family showed its appreciation as seemed to them most convincing: They left not a scrap of anything and they drank two cups of coffee apiece when that was not their habit.

Later, they hitched the four horses to the mess-wagon, learned that the new cook, though he deeply regretted his inefficiency, did not drive anything. “The small burro,” he explained, “I ride him, yes, and also the automobile drive I when the way is smooth. But the horses I make not acquainted with him. I could ride upon the elevated seat, yes, but to drive the quartet I would not presume.”