A brown horse overtook them; a brown horse,
with Happy Jack clinging to the saddle-horn, his body swaying far
over to one side. Even as he went hurtling past them his hold
grew slack and he slumped, head foremost, to the ground. The
brown horse gave a startled leap away from him and went on with
empty stirrups flapping.
They sprang down and lifted him to a less awkward position, and
Big Medicine pillowed the sweat-dampened, carroty head in the
hollow of his arm. Those who had been in the lead looked back
startled when the brown horse tore past them with that empty
saddle; saw what had happened, wheeled and galloped back. They
dismounted and stood silently grouped about poor, ungainly Happy
Jack, lying there limp and motionless in Big Medicine's arms. Not
one of them remembered then that there was a man with a rifle not
more than two hundred yards away; or, if they did, they quite
forgot that the rifle might be dangerous to themselves. They were
thinking of Happy Jack.
Happy Jack, butt of all their jokes and jibes; Happy the croaker,
the lugubrious forecaster of trouble; Happy Jack, the ugliest,
the stupidest, the softest-hearted man of them all. He had
"betched" there would be someone killed, over these Dot sheep; he
had predicted trouble of every conceivable kind; and they had
laughed at him, swore at him, lied to him, "joshed" him
unmercifully, and kept him in a state of chronic indignation,
never dreaming that the memory of it would choke them and strike
them dumb with that horrible, dull weight in their chests with
which men suffer when a woman would find the relief of weeping.
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