Rest and Be Thankful Read Free Page A

pasture just as the rain broke,” Jim Brent said. “Very nearly didn’t though. There was a car on the road, right where it shouldn’t have been, and a couple of women with feathers in their hats, and a man, all dressed up in a blue uniform, picking flowers. Darnedest thing I ever saw.” He smiled, shaking his head.
    “What were the women like?” Mrs. Gunn asked, her interest aroused by hats with feathers in them.
    “One was kind of middle-aged...white hair, brown eyes, and a quick smile. She was fussing a bit. The other—oh, she was all right, I guess.”
    “Climbed faster over that car than a colt trying to get to his mother,” Ned put in. His handsome dark face had a ready grin.
    “Burst the seam of her skirt, too,” Jim said, “but she had a nice way of not noticing. She had a nice smile too—quiet but steady.”
    “And where did this happen?” Mrs. Gunn wanted to know.
    “Just below Snaggletooth. They couldn’t have picked a better spot to scatter us if they tried. Seemed as if they were having a picnic.”
    “Didn’t they know a storm was coming up?”
    “Look, Ma,” Ned said. “Them Easterners wouldn’t know a thunderhead even if they was swallowed up by it.” Ned, who had spent an October calf-roping in Madison Square Garden two years ago, knew all about New York and its peculiar inhabitants.
    “I told them to drop in, by the way,” Jim said. “Better keep some of that stew.”
    “Them damn Easterners, taking the meat out of a man’s mouth,” Bert grumbled, the furrows on his face deepening. He wasn’t going to let young Ned there get away with all the information on the subject. He had met Easterners too, for he had worked for some summers, before the War, over at a neighbouring ranch that took in dudes. He poured his fourth mug of coffee, and stirred its thick layer of sugar vigorously. His long, pointed face had a comical twist to it.
    Mrs. Gunn removed the stew-dish from his reach and brought over a bowl of peaches. No nasty cans on her table. Things were nicely served. She insisted on that, just as she insisted on everyone’s being washed and brushed up and boots scraped and no language in her kitchen. They were good rules, she had found. A new wrangler might think she was fussy, but he came to enjoy a supper at her table as much as the others. It was a rough life they had, sometimes eating and sleeping in the hills for days on end. It didn’t hurt to give them a little of the woman’s touch when they got back to the ranch. She put a large plate of freshly baked doughnuts at Bert’s elbow to help him forget his disappointment.
    “Well,” she said, “whoever they are, they’re taking their time. Ought to have been here by now. Wonder if that loose plank on the bridge gave them any trouble?”
    “We’ll have to dig them out of a hillside,” young Robb predicted in his quiet, slow way. “That stoneface above the bridge was beginning to crack up again. I noticed it last week.” His face was thoughtful, but the fresh colour in his cheeks, and the fair hair and blue eyes, made him look even younger than he was.
    Ned said, “It’s all that rain we get here.” He came from Arizona, and anything more than a shower once every three months seemed flood proportions to him. His dark eyes had a laugh in them, ready to take on all arguments. But Robb, who came from Montana, wasn’t taking up any challenges tonight. He was thinking about the storm.
    So was Mrs. Gunn. “Hard to hear a smash on a night like this,” she said, and listened half expectantly.
    Bert helped himself to some more peaches. “They’ll be taking pictures,” he said. “Over at Fennimore’s there was a crowd of dudes, and all they did was take them pictures.” He looked at Ned, defying him to contradict. “They come to the corral in the morning, all two hours late, with leather straps around their necks and leather boxes dangling on their chests. They was as near well harnessed as the