CHAPTER III. Bad News
Andy Green, that honest-eyed young man whom everyone loved, but
whom not a man believed save when he was indulging his love for
more or less fantastic flights of the imagination, pulled up on
the brow of Flying U coulee and stared somberly at the picture
spread below him. On the porch of the White House the hammock
swung gently under the weight of the Little Doctor, who pushed
her shipper-toe mechanically against a post support at regular
intervals while she read.
On the steps the Kid was crawling laboriously upward, only to
descend again quite as laboriously when he attained the top. One
of the boys was just emerging from the blacksmith shop; from the
build of him Andy knew it must be either Weary or Irish, though
it would take a much closer observation, and some familiarity
with the two to identify the man more exactly. In the corral were
a swirl of horses and an overhanging cloud of dust, with two or
three figures discernible in the midst, and away in the little
pasture two other figures were galloping after a fleeing dozen of
horses. While he looked, old Patsy came out of the messhouse, and
went, with flapping flour-sack apron, to the woodpile.
Peaceful it was, and home-like and contentedly prosperous; a
little world tucked away in its hills, with its own little
triumphs and defeats, its own heartaches and rejoicings; a lucky
little world, because its triumphs had been satisfying, its
defeats small, its heartaches brief, and its rejoicings untainted
with harassment or guilt.
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