Read Online Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes - Free Book Online

sharp as their noses.
    Chuck, remembering Cheesit Bridger’s predictions, sustained himself with an anecdote about the Texas Invasion. (That had been repulsed eventually leaving Wyoming triumphant.)
    Ned thought that Ma Gunn would be needing extra help. He knew a nice girl in Phoenix who would like to summer in Wyoming.
    Robb, suddenly brightening, said there was a nice girl in Butte too.
    Ma Gunn said she would also get her niece, Norah, from Three Springs. Norah thought a lot of writers. And her nephew, Joe, from Laramie was a handy man to have around with a paint-brush, hammer, lawn-mower, or axe. And if the ladies seemed in a bit of a hurry, well, that was the way Easterners were. And why not? The house was there, and the summer was before them. She was to keep her kitchen as her own place, and the boys would always find a cup of coffee and a slice of pie to help out Chuck’s cooking. By September the Easterners would all be back in their rightful place. The summer wasn’t so long.
    Bert remembered there was always next summer, and the summer after that, and after that. Besides, it worried him, when he was over to Sweetwater, to hear Mrs. Dan Givings and Milt Jerks saying this was all a trend: wouldn’t be long before Upshot County was as full of dude ranches and tourists as its neighbours were.
    “Well, you get used to anything,” Ma Gunn said. “And we may as well look on the bright side: we’ll get one good laugh a day.” There would be plenty to talk about in the long winter evenings when she was visiting her son and daughter-in-law over at Three Springs.
    Jim Brent said very little after announcing his decision. He only interrupted his routine for one day in which he hired a Piper Cub from the Sweetwater airfield to fly to Warrior, the county town, to see his lawyer.
    Mrs. Peel talked at great length. Mrs. Gunn listened as she counted sheets and towels and cups and silverware, and observed that it was just like reading a dictionary, which was always something she had meant to do. One of her cousins, over at Greybull, had spent many a pleasant winter with a dictionary by a man called Sam Johnson, and had reached the letter T before he was knocked down by a bus travelling to Yellowstone. “Never knew what hit him,” Mrs. Gunn ended, in a shocked voice. “They were wearing these shorts and brazeers, too.”
    Mrs. Peel puzzled over this for a little, so that her flow of eloquence ceased, much to Mrs. Gunn’s disappointment. But as Mrs. Peel was preparing to visit Jackson, with more poison-ivy lotion and apple-pie and a good book, she suddenly turned at the door and said, delightedly, “Tourists!” Mrs. Gunn nodded, and went on counting blankets. For someone as educated as Mrs. Peel must be she had a very peculiar way of pronouncing words. “Toorists,” Mrs. Gunn repeated to herself, and had her good laugh for that day.
    Mrs. Peel was able to talk at great length to Jackson too, for the Wranglers’ Roost had miraculously emptied as she was seen timidly approaching the corral. It was fortunate that Jackson never did say very much, for she had so much to reassure him about. He was much better today in every way. He was dressed in his neat blue chauffeur’s uniform, and his black hair was expertly combed into place. He was pleased by the haircut which Chuck had given him, and he was delighted by the tattered copies of Western stories, with plenty of pictures, which Ned had heaped on his cot. Yes, he was definitely much better today; yesterday there had been a gleam of mutiny in his eyes. Perhaps the thought of spending the summer at Rest and be Thankful was beginning to seem less strange. To make quite sure, Mrs. Peel talked about his eventual trip to Atlantic City as a definite promise, and offered three weeks instead of two. As for California—well, that would be a pleasant exploration for the winter months when Rest and be Thankful would be closed. (Mrs. Peel believed in the pioneer spirit up to a