Of course, he wouldn't want Happy to die; but he didn't
believe, after all, that Happy was going to do anything like
that. Old Patsy knew a lot about sickness and wounds. (Who can
cook for a cattle outfit, for twenty years and more, and not know
a good deal of hurts?) Old Patsy had looked Happy over carefully,
and had given a grin and a snort.
"Py cosh, dot vos lucky for you, alreatty," he had pronounced.
"So you don't git plood-poisonings, mit fever, you be all right
pretty soon. You go to shleep, yet. If fix you oop till der
dochtor he cooms. I seen fellers shot plumb through der middle
off dem, und git yell. You ain't shot so bad. You go to shleep."
So, his immediate fears relieved, Slim's slow mind had swung back
to the Dots, and to Oleson, whom Weary was even now assisting to
keep his promise (Slim grinned widely to himself when he thought
of the abject fear which Oleson had displayed because of the
murder he thought he had done, while Happy Jack obediently
"played dead"). And of Dunk, whom Slim had hated most abominably
of old; Dunk, a criminal found out; Dunk, a prisoner right there
on the very ranch he had thought to despoil; Dunk, at that very
moment locked in the blacksmith shop. Perhape it was not
curiosity alone which sent him down there; perhaps it was partly
a desire to look upon Dunk humbled--he who had trodden so
arrogantly upon the necks of those below him; so arrogantly that
even Slim, the slow-witted one, had many a time trembled with
anger at his tone.
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