The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Happy Family, by Bertha Muzzy Bower

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Title: The Happy Family

Author: Bertha Muzzy Bower

Release Date: October 7, 2004 [EBook #13670]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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[Illustration: "A man's plumb crazy to go round blatting all he
knows"]



                    The Happy Family

                          BY

                      B.M. BOWER

                    (B.M. SINCLAIR)


                       AUTHOR OF

   "Chip of the Flying U," "The Range Dwellers," "Her Prairie
   Knight," "The Lure of the Dim Trails," "The Lonesome Trail,"
   "The Long Shadow," Etc.



                G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

                  PUBLISHERS NEW YORK




      _1907, 1909, 1910, by_ STREET & SMITH.
       _1910, by_ G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.




                  _The Happy Family_.




                     To B.W.V.


   _"... met the Ananias of the cow camp. I have knocked about cow
   camps, mining camps, railroad and telegraph camps, and kicked
   up alkali dust for many a weary mile on the desert. Yet
   wherever I went I never failed to meet him. He is part and
   parcel of every outfit.... He is indispensable, irresistible,
   and incorrigible; and while in but few cases can he be held a
   thing of beauty, he is certainly a joy forever--at least to
   those who have known his type with some degree of
   understanding...."_

                                              From a letter.




                       CONTENTS.

     ANANIAS GREEN                            7
     BLINK                                   35
     MISS MARTIN'S MISSION                   61
     HAPPY JACK, WILD MAN                    90
     A TAMER OF WILD ONES                   118
     ANDY, THE LIAR                         178
     "WOLF! WOLF!"                          210
     FOOL'S GOLD                            241
     LORDS OF THE POTS AND PANS             269

       *       *       *       *       *




                THE HAPPY FAMILY



       *       *       *       *       *




ANANIAS GREEN


Pink, because he knew well the country and because Irish, who also
knew it well, refused pointblank to go into it again even as a rep,
rode alone except for his horses down into the range of the Rocking R.
General roundup was about to start, down that way, and there was stock
bought by the Flying U which ranged north of the Bear Paws.

It so happened that the owner of the Rocking R was entertaining a
party of friends at the ranch; it also happened that the friends were
quite new to the West and its ways, and they were intensely interested
in all pertaining thereto. Pink gathered that much from the crew,
besides observing much for himself. Hence what follows after.

Sherwood Branciforte was down in the blacksmith shop at the Rocking R,
watching one Andy Green hammer a spur-shank straight. Andy was what he
himself called a tamer of wild ones, and he was hard upon his riding
gear. Sherwood had that morning watched with much admiration the
bending of that same spur-shank, and his respect for Andy was
beautiful to behold.

"Lord, but this is a big, wild country," he was saying
enthusiastically, "and the people in it are big and--"

"Wild," supplied Andy. "Yes, you've just about got us sized up
correct." He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and
thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it
is sometimes a bit wearisome.

"Oh, but I didn't mean that," the young man protested. "What I meant
was breezy and picturesque. Things can happen, out here. Life and men
don't run in grooves."

"No, nor horses," assented Andy. "Leastways, not in oiled ones." He
was remembering how that spur-shank had become bent.

"You did some magnificent riding, this morning. By Jove! I've never
seen anything like it. Strange that one can come out here into a part
of the country absolutely new and raw, and see things--"

"Oh, it ain't so raw as you might think," Andy defended jealously,
"nor yet new."

"Of course it is new! A commonwealth in the making. You can't," he
asserted triumphantly, "point to anything man-made that existed a
hundred years ago; scarcely fifty, either. Your civilization is yet in
the cradle--a lusty infant, and a--er--vociferous one, but still an
infant in swaddling clothes." Sherwood Branciforte had given lectures
before the Y.M.C.A. of his home town, and young ladies had spoken of
him as "gifted," and he had come to hear of it, and to believe.

Andy Green squinted at the shank before he made reply. Andy, also, was
"gifted," in his modest Western way.

"A country that can now and then show the papers for a civilization
old as the Phenixes of Egypt," he said, in a drawling tone that was
absolutely convincing, "ain't what I'd call raw." He decided that a
little more hammering right next the rowel was necessary, and bent
over the anvil solicitously. Even the self-complacency of Sherwood
Branciforte could not fail to note his utter indifference to the
presence and opinions of his companion. Branciforte was accustomed to
disputation at times--even to enmity; but not to indifference. He
blinked. "My dear fellow, do you realize what it is that statement
might seem to imply?" he queried haughtily.

Andy, being a cowpuncher of the brand known as a "real," objected
strongly both to the term and the tone. He stood up and stared down at
the other disapprovingly. "I don't as a general thing find myself
guilty of talking in my sleep," he retorted, "and I'm prepared to let
anything I say stand till the next throw. We may be some vociferous,
out here twixt the Mississippi and the Rockies, but we ain't no
infant-in-the-cradle, Mister. We had civilization here when the
Pilgrim Fathers' rock wasn't nothing but a pebble to let fly at the
birds!"

"Indeed!" fleered Sherwood Branciforte, in a voice which gave much
intangible insult to one's intelligence.

Andy clicked his teeth together, which was a symptom it were well for
the other to recognize but did not. Then Andy smiled, which was
another symptom. He fingered the spur absently, laid it down and
reached, with the gesture that betrays the act as having become second
nature, for his papers and tobacco sack.

"Uh course, you mean all right, and you ain't none to blame for what
you don't know, but you're talking wild and scattering. When you stand
up and tell me I can't point to nothing man-made that's fifty years
old, or a hundred, you make me feel sorry for yuh. I can take you to
something--or I've seen something--that's older than swearing; and I
reckon that art goes back to when men wore their hair long and a
sheep-pelt was called ample for dress occasions."

"Are you crazy, man?" Sherwood Branciforte exclaimed incredulously.

"Not what you can notice. You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I
was riding by my high lonesome away down next the river, when my horse
went lame on me from slipping on a shale bank, and I was set afoot. Uh
course, you being plumb ignorant of our picturesque life, you don't
half know all that might signify to _imply_." This last in open
imitation of Branciforte. "It implies that I was in one hell of a fix,
to put it elegant. I was sixty miles from anywhere, and them sixty
half the time standing on end and lapping over on themselves. That
there is down where old mama Nature gave full swing to a morbid
hankering after doing things unconventional. Result is, that it's
about as ungodly a mixture of nightmare scenery as this old world can
show up; and I've ambled around considerable and am in a position to
pass judgment.

"So there I was, and I wasn't in no mood to view the beauties uh
nature to speak of; for instance, I didn't admire the clouds sailing
around promiscous in the sky, nor anything like that. I was high and
dry and the walking was about as poor as I ever seen; and my boots was
high-heel and rubbed blisters before I'd covered a mile of that
acrobatic territory. I wanted water, and I wanted it bad. Before I got
it I wanted it a heap worse." He stopped, cupped his slim fingers
around a match-blaze, and Branciforte sat closer. He did not know what
was coming, but the manner of the indifferent narrator was compelling.
He almost forgot the point at issue in the adventure.

"Along about dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced
cliff that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable
institution, and made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a
way that wasn't any bluff. At sun-up I rose and mooched on." His
cigarette needed another match and he searched his pockets for one.

"What about the--whatever it was you started to tell me?" urged
Branciforte, grown impatient.

Andy looked him over calmly. "You've lived in ignorance for about
thirty years or so--giving a rough guess at your age; I reckon you can
stand another five minutes. As I was saying, I wandered around like a
dogy when it's first turned loose on the range and is trying to find
the old, familiar barn-yard and the skim-milk bucket. And like the
dogy, I didn't run across anything that looked natural or inviting.
All that day I perambulated over them hills, and I will say I wasn't
enjoying the stroll none. You're right when you say things can happen,
out here. There's some things it's just as well they don't happen too
frequent, and getting lost and afoot in the Bad-lands is one.

"That afternoon I dragged myself up to the edge of a deep coulee and
looked over to see if there was any way of getting down. There was a
bright green streak down there that couldn't mean nothing but water,
at that time of year; this was last fall. And over beyond, I could see
the river that I'd went and lost. I looked and looked, but the walls
looked straight as a Boston's man's pedigree. And then the sun come
out from behind a cloud and lit up a spot that made me forget for a
minute that I was thirsty as a dog and near starved besides.

"I was looking down on the ruins--and yet it was near perfect--of an
old castle. Every stone stood out that clear and distinct I could have
counted 'em. There was a tower at one end, partly fell to pieces but
yet enough left to easy tell what it was. I could see it had kinda
loop-holes in it. There was an open place where I took it the main
entrance had used to be; what I'd call the official entrance. But
there was other entrances besides, and some of 'em was made by time
and hard weather. There was what looked like awhat-you-may-call-'em--
a ditch thing, yuh mind, running around my side of it, and a bridge
business. Uh course, it was all needing repairs bad, and part of it
yuh needed to use your imagination on. I laid there for quite a spell
looking it over and wondering how the dickens it come to be way down
there. It didn't look to me like it ought to be there at all, but in a
school geography or a history where the chapter is on historic and
prehistoric hangouts uh the heathen."

"The deuce! A castle in the Bad-lands!" ejaculated Branciforte.

"That's what it was, all right. I found a trail it would make a
mountain sheep seasick to follow, and I got down into the coulee. It
was lonesome as sin, and spooky; but there was a spring close by, and
a creek running from it; and what is a treat in that part uh the
country, it was good drinking and didn't have neither alkali nor
sulphur nor mineral in it. It was just straight water, and you can
gamble I filled up on it a-plenty. Then I shot a rabbit or two that
was hanging out around the ruins, and camped there till next day, when
I found a pass out, and got my bearings by the river and come on into
camp. So when you throw slurs on our plumb newness and shininess, I've
got the cards to call yuh. That castle wasn't built last summer,
Mister. And whoever did build it was some civilized. So there yuh
are."

Andy took a last, lingering pull at the cigarette stub, flung it into
the backened forge, and picked up the spur. He settled his hat on his
head at its accustomed don't-give-a-darn tilt, and started for the
door and the sunlight.

"Oh, but say! didn't you find out anything about it afterwards? There
must have been something--"

"If it's relics uh the dim and musty past yuh mean, there was; relics
to burn. I kicked up specimens of ancient dishes, and truck like that,
while I was prowling around for fire-wood. And inside the castle, in
what I reckon was used for the main hall, I run acrost a skeleton.
That is, part of one. I don't believe it was all there, though."

"But, man alive, why haven't you made use of a discovery like that?"
Branciforte followed him out, lighting his pipe with fingers that
trembled. "Don't you realize what a thing like that means?"

Andy turned and smiled lazily down at him. "At the time I was there, I
was all took up with the idea uh getting home. I couldn't eat
skeletons, Mister, nor yet the remains uh prehistoric dishes. And I
didn't run acrost no money, nor no plan marked up with crosses where
you're supposed to do your excavating for treasure. It wasn't nothing,
that I could see, for a man to starve to death while he examined it
thorough. And so far as I know there ain't any record of it. I never
heard no one mention building it, anyhow." He stooped and adjusted the
spur to his heel to see if it were quite right, and went off to the
stable humming under his breath.

Branciforte stood at the door of the blacksmith shop and gazed after
him, puffing meditatively at his pipe. "Lord! the ignorance of these
Western folk! To run upon a find like that, and to think it less
important than getting home in time for supper. To let a discovery
like that lie forgotten, a mere incident in a day's travel! That
fellow thinks more, right now, about his horse going lame and himself
raising blisters on his heels, than of--Jove, what ignorance! He--he
couldn't _eat_ the skeleton or the dishes! Jerusalem!" Branciforte
knocked his pipe gently against the door-casing, put in into his coat
pocket and hurried to the house to hunt up the others and tell them
what he had heard.

That night the roundup pulled in to the home ranch.

The visitors, headed by their host, swooped down upon the roundup
wagons just when the boys were gathered together for a cigarette or
two apiece and a little talk before rolling in. There was no
night-guarding to do, and trouble winged afar. Sherwood Branciforte
hunted out Andy Green where he lay at ease with head and shoulders
propped against a wheel of the bed-wagon and gossipped with Pink and a
few others.

"Look here, Green," he said in a voice to arrest the attention of the
whole camp, "I wish you'd tell the others that tale you told me this
afternoon--about that ruined castle down in the hills. Mason, here, is
a newspaper man; he scents a story for his paper. And the rest refuse
to believe a word I say."

"I'd hate to have a rep like that, Mr. Branciforte," Andy said
commiseratingly, and turned his big, honest gray eyes to where stood
the women--two breezy young persons with sleeves rolled to tanned
elbows and cowboy hats of the musical comedy brand. Also they had gay
silk handkerchiefs knotted picturesquely around their throats. There
was another, a giggly, gurgly lady with gray hair fluffed up into a
pompadour. You know the sort. She was the kind who refuses to grow
old, and so merely grows imbecile.

"Do tell us, Mr. Green," this young old lady urged, displaying much
gold by her smile. "It sounds so romantic."

"It's funny you never mentioned it to any of us," put in the "old man"
suspiciously.

Andy pulled himself up into a more decorous position, and turned his
eyes towards his boss. "I never knew yuh took any interest in
relic-hunting," he explained mildly.

"Sherwood says you found a _skeleton!_" said the young old lady,
shuddering pleasurably.

"Yes, I did find one--or part of one," Andy admitted reluctantly.

"What were the relics of pottery like?" demanded one of the
cowboy-hatted girls, as if she meant to test him. "I do some
collecting of that sort of thing."

Andy threw away his cigarette, and with it all compunction. "Well, I
wasn't so much interested in the dishes as in getting something to
eat," he apologized. "I saw several different kinds. One was a big,
awkward looking thing and was pretty heavy, and had straight sides.
Then I come across one or two more that was ornamented some. One had
what looked like a fish on it, and the other I couldn't make out very
well. They didn't look to be worth much, none of 'em."

"Green," said his employer steadily, "_was_ there such a place?"

Andy returned his look honestly. "There was, and there is yet, I
guess," he asserted. "I'll tell you how you can find it and what it's
like--if yuh doubt my words." He glanced around and found every man,
including the cook, listening intently. He picked a blade of new grass
and began splitting it into tiny threads. The host found boxes for the
women to sit upon, and the men sat down upon the grass.

"Before I come here to work, I was riding for the Circle C. One day I
was riding away down in the Bad-lands alone and my horse slipped in
some shale rock and went lame; strained his shoulder so I couldn't
ride him. That put me afoot, and climbing up and down them hills I
lost my bearings and didn't know where I was at for a day or two. I
wandered around aimless, and got into a strip uh country that was new
to me and plumb lonesome and wild.

"That second day is when I happened across this ruin. I was looking
down into a deep, shut-in coulee, hunting water, when the sun come out
and shone straight on to this place. It was right down under me; a
stone ruin, with a tower on one end and kinda tumbled down so it
wasn't so awful high--the tower wasn't. There was a--a--"

"Moat," Branciforte suggested.

"That's the word--a moat around it, and a bridge that was just about
gone to pieces. It had loopholes, like the pictures of castles, and
a--"

"Battlement?" ventured one of the musical-comedy cowgirls.

Andy had not meant to say battlement; of a truth, his conception of
battlements was extremely hazy, but he caught up the word and warmed
to the subject. "Battlement? well I should guess yes! There was about
as elegant a battlement as I'd want to see anywhere. It was sure a
peach. It was--" he hesitated for a fraction of a second. "It was high
as the tower, and it had figures carved all over it; them kind that
looks like kid-drawing in school, with bows and arrows stuck out in
front of 'em, threatening."

"Not the old Greek!" exclaimed one of the girls in a little,
breathless voice.

"I couldn't say as to that," Andy made guarded reply. "I never made no
special study of them things. But they was sure old. And--"

"About how large was the castle?" put in the man who wrote things.
"How many rooms, say?"

"I'd hate to give a guess at the size. I didn't step it off, and I'm a
punk guesser. The rooms I didn't count. I only explored around in the
main hall, like, a little. But it got dark early, down in there, and I
didn't have no matches to waste. And next morning I started right out
at sun-up to find the way home. No, I never counted the rooms, and if
I had, the chances are I'd have likely counted the same one more'n
once; to count them rooms would take an expert, which I ain't--not at
counting. I don't reckon, though, that there was so awful many.
Anyway, not more than fifteen or twenty. But as I say, I couldn't
rightly make a guess, even; or I'd hate to. Ruins don't interest me
much, though I was kinda surprised to run acrost that one, all right,
and I'm willing to gamble there was warm and exciting times down there
when the place was in running order. I'd kinda like to have been down
there then. Last fall, though, there wasn't nothing to get excited
over, except getting out uh there."

"A castle away out here! Just think, good people, what that means!
Romance, adventure and scientific discoveries! We must go right down
there and explore the place. Why can't we start at once--in the
morning? This gentleman can guide us to the place, and--"

"It ain't easy going," Andy remarked, conscientiously. "It's pretty
rough; some places, you'd have to walk and lead your horses."

They swept aside the discouragement.

"We'd need pick and shovels, and men to dig," cried one enthusiast.
"Uncle Peter can lend us some of his men. There may be treasure to
unearth. There may be _anything_ that is wonderful and mysterious. Get
busy, Uncle Peter, and get your outfit together; you've boasted that a
roundup can beat the army in getting under way quickly, now let us
have a practical demonstration. We want to start by six o'clock--all
of us, with a cook and four or five men to do the excavating. Bring it
to pass!" It was the voice of the girl whom her friends spoke of as
"The life of the party;" the voice of the-girl-who-does-things.

"It's sixty-five miles from here, good and strong--and mostly up and
down," put in Andy.

"'Quoth the raven,'" mocked the-girl-who-does-things. "We are prepared
to face the ups-and-downs. Do we start at six, Uncle Peter?"

Uncle Peter glanced sideways at the roundup boss. To bring it to pass,
he would be obliged to impress the roundup cook and part of the crew.
It was breaking an unwritten law of the rangeland, and worse, it was
doing something unbusiness-like and foolish. But not even the owner of
the Rocking R may withstand the pleading of a pretty woman. Uncle
Peter squirmed, but he promised:

"We start at six; earlier if you say so."

The roundup boss gave his employer a look of disgust and walked away;
the crew took it that he went off to some secluded place to swear.

Thereafter there was much discussion of ways and means, and much
enthusiasm among the visitors from the East--equalled by the
depression of the crew, for cowboys do not, as a rule, take kindly to
pick and shovel, and the excavators had not yet been chosen from among
them. They were uneasy, and they stole frequent, betraying glances at
one another. All of which amused Pink much. Pink would like to have
gone along, and would certainly have offered his services, but for the
fact that his work there was done and he would have to start back to
the Flying U just as soon as one of his best saddle horses, which had
stepped on a broken beer bottle and cut its foot, was able to travel.
That would be in a few days, probably. So Pink sighed and watched the
preparations enviously.

Since he was fairly committed into breaking all precedents, uncle
Peter plunged recklessly. He ordered the mess-wagon to be restocked
and prepared for the trip, and he took the bed-tent and half the crew.
The foreman he wisely left behind with the remnant of his outfit. They
were all to eat at the house while the mess-wagon was away, and they
were to spread their soogans--which is to say beds--where they might,
if the bunk-house proved too small or too hot.

The foreman, outraged beyond words, saddled at daybreak and rode to
the nearest town, and the unchosen half turned out in a body to watch
the departure of the explorers, which speaks eloquently of their
interest; for cowboys off duty are prone to sleep long.

Andy, as guide, bolted ahead of the party that he might open the gate.
Bolted is a good word, for his horse swerved and kept on running,
swerved again, and came down in a heap. Andy did not get up, and the
women screamed. Then Pink and some others hurried out and bore Andy,
groaning, to the bunk-house.

The visitors from the East gathered, perturbed, around the door,
sympathetic and dismayed. It looked very much as if their exploration
must end where it began, and the-girl-who-does-things looked about to
weep, until Andy, still groaning, sent Pink out to comfort them.

"He says you needn't give up the trip on his account," Pink announced
musically from the doorway. "He's drawing a map and marking the coulee
where the ruin is. He says most any of the boys that know the country
at all can find the place for yuh. And he isn't hurt permanent; he
strained his back so he can't ride, is all." Pink dimpled at the young
old lady who was admiring him frankly, and withdrew.

Inside, Andy Green was making pencil marks and giving the chosen half
explicit directions. At last he folded the paper and handed it to one
called Sandy.

"That's the best I can do for yuh," he finished. "I don't see how yuh
can miss it if yuh follow that map close. And if them gay females make
any kick on the trail, you just remind 'em that I said all along it
was rough going. So long, and good luck."

So with high-keyed, feminine laughter and much dust, passed the
exploring party from the Rocking R.

"Say," Pink began two days later to Andy, who was sitting on the shady
side of the bunk-house staring absently at the skyline, "There's a
word uh praise I've been aiming to give yuh. I've seen riding, and
I've done a trifle in that line myself, and learned some uh the
tricks. But I want to say I never did see a man flop his horse any
neater than you done that morning. I'll bet there ain't another man in
the outfit got next your play. I couldn't uh done it better myself.
Where did you learn that? Ever ride in Wyoming?"

Andy turned his eyes, but not his head--which was a way he had--and
regarded Pink slantwise for at least ten seconds. "Yes, I've rode in
Wyoming," he answered quietly. Then: "What's the chance for a job, up
your way? Is the Flying U open for good men and true?"

"It won't cost yuh a cent to try," Pink told him. "How's your back?
Think you'll be able to ride by the time Skeeker is able to travel?"

Andy, grinned. "Say," he confided suddenly, "if that hoss don't
improve some speedy, I'll be riding on ahead. I reckon I'll be able to
travel before them explorers get back, my friend."

"Why?" dimpled Pink boldly.

"Why? Well, the going is some rough, down that way. If they get them
wagons half way to the coulee marked with a cross, they'll sure have
to attach wings onto 'em. I've been some worried about that. I don't
much believe uncle Peter is going to enjoy that trip--and he sure does
get irritable by spells. I've got a notion to ride for some other
outfit, this summer."

"Was that the reason you throwed your horse down and got hurt, that
morning?" questioned Pink, and Andy grinned again by way of reply.

"They'll be gone a week, best they can do," he estimated aloud. "We
ought to be able to make our getaway by then, easy."

Pink assured him that a week would see them headed for the Flying U.

It was the evening of the sixth day, and the two were packed and ready
to leave in the morning, when Andy broke off humming and gave a snort
of dismay. "By gracious, there they come. My mother lives in Buffalo,
Pink, in a little drab house with white trimmings. Write and tell her
how her son--Oh, beloved! but they're hitting her up lively. If they
made the whole trip in that there frame uh mind, they could uh gone
clean to Miles City and back. How pretty the birds sing! Pink, you'll
hear words, directly."

Directly Pink did.

"You're the biggest liar on earth," Sherwood Branciforte contributed
to the recriminating wave that near engulfed Andy Green. "You sent us
down there on a wild-goose chase, you brute. You--"

"I never sent nobody," Andy defended. "You was all crazy to go."

"And nothing but an old stone hut some trapper had built!" came an
indignant, female tone. "There never was any castle, nor--"

"A man's home is his castle," argued Andy, standing unabashed before
them. "Putting it that way, it was a castle, all right."

There was babel, out of which--

"And the skeleton! Oh, you--it was a dead _cow!_" This from the young
old lady, who was looking very draggled and not at all young.

"I don't call to mind ever saying it was human," put in Andy, looking
at her with surprised, gray eyes.

"And the battlements!" groaned the-girl-who-does-things.

"You wanted battlements," Andy flung mildly into the uproar. "I always
aim to please." With that he edged away from them and made his escape
to where the cook was profanely mixing biscuits for supper. All-day
moves put an edge to his temper. The cook growled an epithet, and Andy
passed on. Down near the stable he met one of the chosen half, and the
fellow greeted him with a grin. Andy stopped abruptly.

"Say, they don't seem none too agreeable," he began tentatively,
jerking his thumb toward the buzzing group. "How about it, Sandy? Was
they that petulant all the way?"

Sandy, the map-bearer, chuckled. "It's lucky you got hurt at the last
minute! And yet it was worth the trip. Uh course we got stalled with
the wagons, the second day out, but them women was sure ambitious, and
made us go on with a packadero layout. I will say that, going down,
they stood the hardships remarkable. It was coming back that frazzled
the party.

"And when we found the place--say, but it was lucky you wasn't along!
They sure went hog-wild when they seen the ruins. The old party with
the pompadoor displayed temper, and shed tears uh rage. When she
looked into the cabin and seen the remains uh that cow-critter, there
was language it wasn't polite to overhear. She said a lot uh things
about you, Andy. One thing they couldn't seem to get over, and that
was the smallness uh the blamed shack. Them fourteen or fifteen rooms
laid heavy on their minds."

"I didn't say there was fourteen or fifteen rooms. I said I didn't
count the rooms; I didn't either. I never heard of anybody counting
one room. Did you, Pink?"

"No," Pink agreed, "I never did!"

Sandy became suddenly convulsed. "Oh, but the funniest thing was the
ancient pottery," he gasped, the tears standing in his eyes. "That old
Dutch oven was bad enough; but when one uh the girls--that one that
collects old dishes--happened across an old mackerel can and picked it
up and saw the fish on the label, she was the maddest female person I
ever saw in my life, barring none. If you'd been in reach about that
time, she'd just about clawed your eyes out, Andy Green. Oh me, oh
my!" Sandy slapped his thigh and had another spasm.

Sounds indicated that the wave of recrimination was rolling nearer.
Andy turned to find himself within arm's length of Uncle Pete.

"Maybe this is your idea of a practical joke, Green," he said to Andy.
"But anyway, it will cost you your job. I ought to charge you up with
the time my outfit has spent gallivanting around the country on the
strength of your wild yarn. The quicker you hit the trail, the better
it will suit me. By the way, what's your first name?" He asked,
pulling out a check-book.

"Andy," answered the unrepentant one.

"Andy," Uncle Peter paused with a fountain pen between his fingers. He
looked Andy up and down, and the frown left his face. He proceeded to
write out the check, and when it was done he handed it over with a
pleased smile.

"What did you do it for, Green?" he queried in a friendlier tone.

"Self-defence," Andy told him laconically, and turned away.

Half an hour later, Andy and Pink trailed out of the coulee that
sheltered the Rocking R. When they were out and away from the fence,
and Pink's horses, knowing instinctively that they were homeward
bound, were jogging straight west without need of guidance, Andy felt
in his pocket for cigarette material. His fingers came in contact with
the check Uncle Peter had given him, and he drew it forth and looked
it over again.

"Well, by gracious!" he said to himself. "Uncle Peter thinks we're
even, I guess."

He handed the check to Pink and rolled his cigarette; and Pink, after
one comprehending look at the slip of paper, doubled up over his
saddle-horn and shouted with glee--for the check was written: "Pay to
the order of Ananias Green."

"And I've got to sign myself a liar, or I don't collect no money,"
sighed Andy. "That's what I call tough luck, by gracious!"

       *       *       *       *       *




BLINK


The range-land was at its unpicturesque worst. For two days the wind
had raged and ranted over the hilltops, and whooped up the long
coulees, so that tears stood in the eyes of the Happy Family when they
faced it; impersonal tears blown into being by the very force of the
wind. Also, when they faced it they rode with bodies aslant over their
saddle-horns and hats pulled low over their streaming eyes, and with
coats fastened jealously close. If there were buttons enough, well and
good; if not, a strap cinched tightly about the middle was considered
pretty lucky and not to be despised. Though it was early September,
"sour-dough" coats were much in evidence, for the wind had a chill way
of searching to the very marrow--and even a good, sheepskin-lined
"sour-dough" was not always protection sufficient.

When the third day dawned bleakly, literally blown piecemeal from out
darkness as bleak, the Happy Family rose shiveringly and with sombre
disapproval of whatever met their blood-shot eyes; dressed hurriedly
in the chill of flapping tent and went out to stagger drunkenly over
to where Patsy, in the mess-tent, was trying vainly to keep the
biscuits from becoming dust-sprinkled, and sundry pans and tins from
taking jingling little excursions on their own account. Over the brow
of the next ridge straggled the cavvy, tails and manes whipping in the
gale, the nighthawk swearing so that his voice came booming down to
camp. Truly, the day opened inauspiciously enough for almost any dire
ending.

As further evidence, saddling horses for circle resolved itself, as
Weary remarked at the top of his voice to Pink, at his elbow, into "a
free-for-all broncho busting tournament." For horses have nerves, and
nothing so rasps the nerves of man or beast as a wind that never stops
blowing; which means swaying ropes and popping saddle leather, and
coat-tails flapping like wet sheets on a clothes line. Horses do not
like these things, and they are prone to eloquent manifestations of
their disapproval.

Over by the bed-wagon, a man they called Blink, for want of a better
name, was fighting his big sorrel silently, with that dogged
determination which may easily grow malevolent. The sorrel was at best
a high-tempered, nervous beast, and what with the wind and the
flapping of everything in sight, and the pitching of half-a-dozen
horses around him, he was nearly crazed with fear in the abstract.

Blink was trying to bridle him, and he was not saying a word--which,
in the general uproar, was strange. But Blink seldom did say anything.
He was one of the aliens who had drifted into the Flying U outfit that
spring, looking for work. Chip had taken him on, and he had stayed. He
could ride anything in his string, and he was always just where he was
wanted. He never went to town when the others clattered off for a few
hours' celebration more or less mild, he never took part in any of the
camp fun, and he never offended any man. If any offended him they did
not know it unless they were observant; if they were, they would see
his pale lashes wink fast for a minute, and they might read aright the
sign and refrain from further banter. So Blink, though he was counted
a good man on roundup, was left pretty much alone when in camp.

Andy Green, well and none too favorably known down Rocking R way, and
lately adopted into the Happy Family on the recommendation of Pink and
his own pleasing personality, looped the latigo into the holder, gave
his own dancing steed a slap of the don't-try-to-run-any-whizzers-on-me
variety, and went over to help out Blink.

Blink eyed his approach with much the same expression with which he
eyed the horse. "I never hollered for assistance," he remarked
grudgingly when Andy was at his elbow. "When I can't handle any of the
skates in my string, I'll quit riding and take to sheep-herding."
Whereupon he turned his back as squarely as he might upon Andy and
made another stealthy grab for the sorrel's ears. (There is such a
thing in the range-land as jealousy among riders, and the fame of Andy
Green had gone afar.)

"All right. Just as you say, and not as I care a darn," Andy retorted,
and went back to where his own mount stood tail to the wind. He did
not in the least mind the rebuff; he really felt all the indifference
his manner portrayed--perhaps even more. He had offered help where
help was needed, and that ended it for him. It never occurred to him
that Blink might feel jealous over Andy's hard-earned reputation as a
"tamer of wild ones," or mistake his good nature for patronage.

Five minutes later, when Chip looked around comprehensively at the lot
of them in various degrees of readiness; saw that Blink was still
fighting silently for mastery of the sorrel and told Andy to go over
and help him get saddled, Andy said nothing of having had his services
refused, but went. This time, Blink also said nothing, but accepted in
ungracious surrender the assistance thus thrust upon him. For on the
range-land, unless one is in a mind to roll his bed and ride away, one
does not question when the leader commands. Andy's attitude was still
that of indifference; he really thought very little about Blink or his
opinions, and the rapid blinking of the pale lashes was quite lost
upon him.

They rode, eighteen ill-natured, uncomfortable cowboys, tumultuously
away from the camp, where canvas bulged and swayed, and loose corners
cracked like pistol shots, over the hill where even the short, prairie
grass crouched and flattened itself against the sod; where stray
pebbles, loosened by the ungentle tread of pitching hoofs, skidded
twice as far as in calm weather. The gray sky bent threateningly above
them, wind-torn into flying scud but never showing a hint of blue.
Later there might be rain, sleet, snow--or sunshine, as nature might
whimsically direct; but for the present she seemed content with only
the chill wind that blew the very heart out of a man.

Whenever Chip pulled up to turn off a couple of riders that they might
search a bit of rough country, his voice was sharp with the general
discomfort. When men rode away at his command, it was with brows drawn
together and vengeful heels digging the short-ribs of horses in quite
as unlovely a mood as themselves.

Out at the end of the "circle," Chip divided the remainder of his men
into two groups for the homeward drive. One group he himself led. The
other owned Weary as temporary commander and galloped off to the left,
skirting close to the foothills of the Bear Paws. In that group rode
Pink and Happy Jack, Slim, Andy Green and Blink the silent.

"I betche we get a blizzard out uh this," gloomed Happy Jack, pulling
his coat collar up another fraction of an inch. "And the way Chip's
headed us, we got to cross that big flat going back in the thick of
it; chances is, we'll git lost."

No one made reply to this; it seemed scarcely worth while. Every man
of them rode humped away from the wind, his head drawn down as close
to his shoulders as might be. Conversation under those conditions was
not likely to become brisk.

"A fellow that'll punch cows for a living," Happy Jack asserted
venomously after a minute, "had ought to be shut up somewheres. He
sure ain't responsible. I betche next summer don't see me at it."

"Aw, shut up. We know you're feeble-minded, without you blatting it by
the hour," snapped Pink, showing never a dimple.

Happy Jack tugged again at his collar and made remarks, to which no
one paid the slightest attention. They rode in amongst the hills and
narrow ridges dividing "draws" as narrow, where range cattle would
seek shelter from the cutting blast that raked the open. Then, just as
they began to realize that the wind was not quite such a raging
torment, came a new phase of nature's unpleasant humor.

It was not a blizzard that descended upon them, though when it came
rolling down from the hilltops it much resembled one. The wind had
changed and brought fog, cold, suffocating, impenetrable. Yet such was
the mood of them that no one said anything about it. Weary had been
about to turn off a couple of men, but did not. What was the use,
since they could not see twenty yards?

For a time they rode aimlessly, Weary in the lead. Then, when it grew
no better but worse, he pulled up, just where a high bank shut off the
wind and a tangle of brush barred the way in front.

"We may as well camp right here till things loosen up a little," he
said. "There's no use playing blind-man's-buff any longer. We'll have
some fire, for a change. Mama! this is sure beautiful weather!"

At that, they brightened a bit and hurriedly dismounted and hunted dry
wood. Since they were to have a fire, the general tendency was to have
a big one; so that when they squatted before it and held out cold,
ungloved fingers to the warmth, the flames were leaping high into the
fog and crackling right cheerily. It needed only a few puffs at their
cigarettes to chase the gloom from their faces and put them in the
mood for talk. Only Blink sat apart and stared moodily into the fire,
his hands clasped listlessly around his knees, and to him they gave no
attention. He was an alien, and a taciturn one at that. The Happy
Family were accustomed to living clannishly, even on roundup, and only
when they tacitly adopted a man, as they had adopted Pink and Irish
and, last but not least important, Andy Green, did they take note of
that man's mood and demand reasons for any surliness.

"If Slim would perk up and go run down a grouse or two," Pink observed
pointedly, "we'd be all right for the day. How about it, Slim?"

"Run 'em down yourself," Slim retorted. "By golly, I ain't no lop-ear
bird dog."

"The law's out fer chickens," Happy Jack remarked dolefully.

"Go on, Happy, and get us a few. You've got your howitzer buckled on,"
fleered Andy Green. Andy it was whose fertile imagination had so
christened Happy Jack's formidable weapon.

"Aw, gwan!" protested Happy Jack.

"Happy looks like he was out for a rep," bantered Pink. "He makes me
think uh the Bad Man in a Western play. All he needs is his hat turned
up in front and his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, like he was
killing hogs. Happy would make a dandy-looking outlaw, with that gun
and that face uh his."

"Say, by golly, I bet that's what he's figurin' on doing. He ain't
going to punch cows no more--I bet he's thinking about turning out."

"Well, when I do, you'll be the first fellow I lay for," retorted
Happy, with labored wit.

"You never'd get a rep shooting at a target the size uh Slim," dimpled
Pink. "Is that toy cannon loaded, Happy?"

"I betche yuh dassen't walk off ten paces and let me show yuh,"
growled Happy.

Pink made as if to rise, then settled back with a sigh. "Ten paces is
farther than you could drive me from this fire with a club," he said.
"And you couldn't see me, in this fog."

"Say, it _is_ pretty solid," said Weary, looking around him at the
blank, gray wall. "A fellow could sit right here and be a lot ignorant
of what's going on around him. A fellow could--"

"When I was riding down in the San Simon basin," spoke up Andy,
rolling his second cigarette daintily between his finger-tips, "I had
a kinda queer experience in a fog, once. It was thick as this one, and
it rolled down just about as sudden and unexpected. That's a plenty
wild patch uh country--or it was when I was there. I was riding for a
Spanish gent that kept white men as a luxury and let the greasers do
about all the rough work--such as killing off superfluous neighbors,
and running brands artistic, and the like. Oh, he was a gay mark, all
right.

"But about this other deal: I was out riding alone after a little
bunch uh hosses, one day in the fall. I packed my gun and a pair uh
field glasses, and every time I rode up onto a mesa I'd take a long
look at all the lower country to save riding it. I guess I'd
prognosticated around like that for two or three hours, when I come
out on a little pinnacle that slopes down gradual toward a neighbor's
home ranch--only the ranch itself was quite a ride back up the basin.

"I got off my horse and set down on a rock to build me a smoke, and
was gazing off over the country idle, when I seen a rider come up out
of a little draw and gallop along quartering-like, to pass my pinnacle
on the left. You know how a man out alone like that will watch
anything, from a chicken hawk up in the air to a band uh sheep,
without any interest in either one, but just to have your eyes on
something that's alive and moves.

"So I watched him, idle, while I smoked. Pretty soon I seen another
fellow ride out into sight where the first one had, and hit her up
lively down the trail. I didn't do no wondering--I just sat and
watched 'em both for want uh something better to do."

"Finding them strays wasn't important, I s'pose?" Happy Jack
insinuated.

"It could wait, and did. So I kept an eye on these gazabos, and pretty
soon I saw the hind fellow turn off the trail and go fogging along
behind a little rise. He come into sight again, whipping down both
sides like he was heading a wild four-year-old; and that was queer,
because the only other live thing in sight was man number one, and I
didn't see no reason why he should be hurting himself to get around to
windward like that.

"Maybe it was five minutes I watched 'em: number one loping along like
there wasn't nothing urgent and he was just merely going somewhere and
taking his time for it, and number two quirting and spurring like
seconds was diamonds."

"I wish they was that valuable to you," hinted Pink.

"They ain't, so take it easy. Well, pretty soon they got closer
together, and then number two unhooked something on his saddle that
caught the light. There's where I got my field glasses into play. I
drew a bead with 'em, and seen right off it was a gun. And I hadn't no
more than got my brain adjusted to grasp his idea, when he puts it
back and takes down his rope. That there," Andy added naïvely,
"promised more real interest; guns is commonplace.

"I took down the glasses long enough to size up the layout. Glasses,
you know, are mighty deceiving when it comes to relative distances,
and a hilltop a mile back looks, through the glass, like just stepping
over a ditch. With the naked eye I could see that they were coming
together pretty quick, and they done so.

"Number one looks back, but whether he seen number two I couldn't say;
seemed to me like he just glanced back casual and in the wrong
direction. Be that is it may, number two edged off a little and rode
in behind a bunch uh mesquite--and then I seen that the trail took a
turn, right there. So he pulled up and stood still till the other one
had ambled past, and then he whirled out into the trail and swung his
loop.

"When I'd got the glasses focused on 'em again, he had number one
snared, all right, and had took his turns. The hoss he was riding--it
was a buckskin--set back and yanked number one end over end out uh the
saddle, and number one's hoss stampeded off through the brush. Number
two dug in his spurs and went hell-bent off the trail and across
country dragging the other fellow--and him bouncing over the rough
spots something horrible.

"I don't know what got the matter uh me, then; I couldn't do anything
but sit there on my rock and watch through the glasses. Anyway, while
they looked close enough to hit with a rock, they was off a mile or
more. So while I could see it all I couldn't do nothing to prevent. I
couldn't even hear number one yell--supposing he done any hollering,
which the chances is he did a plenty. It was for all the world like
one uh these moving pictures.

"I thought it was going to be a case uh dragging to death, but it
wasn't; it looked to me a heap worse. Number two dragged his man a
ways--I reckon till he was plumb helpless--and then he pulled up and
rode back to where he laid. The fellow tried to get up, and did get
partly on his knees--and number one standing over him, watching.

"What passed I don't know, not having my hearing magnified like my
sight was. I framed it up that number two was getting his past,
present and future read out to him--what I'd call a free life reading.
The rope was pinning his arms down to his sides, and number two was
taking blamed good care there wasn't any slack, so fast as he tried to
get up he was yanked back. From first to last he never had a ghost of
a show.

"Then number two reaches back deliberate and draws his gun and
commences shooting, and I commences hollering for him to quit it--and
me a mile off and can't do nothing! I tell yuh right now, that was
about the worst deal I ever went up against, to set there on that
pinnacle and watch murder done in cold blood, and me plumb helpless.

"The first shot wasn't none fatal, as I could see plainer than was
pleasant. Looked to me like he wanted to string out the agony. It was
a clear case uh butchery from start to finish; the damnedest,
lowest-down act a white man could be guilty of. He empties his
six-gun--counting the smoke-puffs--and waits a minute, watching like a
cat does a gopher. I was sweating cold, but I kept my eyes glued to
them glasses like a man in a nightmare.

"When he makes sure the fellow's dead, he rides alongside and flips
off the rope, with the buckskin snorting and edging off--at the
blood-smell, I reckon. While he's coiling his rope, calm as if he'd
just merely roped a yearling, the buckskin gets his head, plants it
and turns on the fireworks.

"When that hoss starts in pitching, I come alive and drop the glasses
into their case and make a jump for my own hoss. If the Lord lets me
come up with that devil, I aim to deal out a case uh justice on my own
hook; I was in a right proper humor for doing him like he done the
other fellow, and not ask no questions. Looked to me like he had it
coming, all right.

"I'd just stuck my toe in the stirrup, when down comes the fog like a
wet blanket on everything. I couldn't see twenty feet--" Andy stopped
and reached for a burning twig to relight his cigarette. The Happy
Family was breathing hard with the spell of the story.

"Did yuh git him?" Happy Jack asked hoarsely. Andy took a long puff at
his cigarette. "Well, I--Holy smoke! what's the matter with _you_,
Blink?" For Blink was leaning forward, half crouched, like a cat about
to pounce, and was glaring fixedly at Andy with lips drawn back in a
snarl. The Happy Family looked, then stared.

Blink relaxed, shrugged his shoulders and grinned unmirthfully. He got
up, pulled up his chaps with the peculiar, hitching gesture which
comes with long practice and grows to be second nature, and stared
back defiantly at the wondering faces lighted by the dancing flames.
He turned his back coolly upon them and walked away to where his horse
stood, took up the reins and stuck his toe in the stirrup, went up and
landed in the saddle ready for anything. Then he wheeled the big
sorrel so that he faced those at the camp-fire.

"A man's a damned fool, Andy Green, to see more than is meant for him
to see. He's plumb crazy to go round blatting all he knows. You won't
tell that tale again, _mi amigo!_"

There was the pop of a pistol, a puff of blue against the gray, and
then the fog reached out and gathered Blink and the sorrel to itself.
Only the clatter of galloping hoofs came to them from behind the damp
curtain. Andy Green was lying on his back in the grass, his cigarette
smoking dully in his fingers, a fast widening red streak trailing down
from his temple.

The Happy Family rose like a covey of frightened chickens before the
echoes were done playing with the gun-bark. On the heels of Blink's
shot came the crack of Happy Jack's "howitzer" as he fired blindly
toward the hoof-beats. There was more shooting while they scurried to
where their horses, snorting excitement, danced uneasily at the edge
of the bushes. Only one man spoke, and that was Pink, who stopped just
as he was about to swing into the saddle.

"Damme for leaving my gun in camp! I'll stay with Andy. Go on--and if
yuh don't get him, I'll--" he turned back, cursing hysterically, and
knelt beside the long figure in the grass. There was a tumult of sound
as the three raced off in pursuit, so close that the flight of the
fugitive was still distinct in the fog.

While they raced they cursed the fog that shielded from their
vengeance their quarry, and made such riding as theirs a blind gamble
with the chances all in favor of broken bones; their only comfort the
knowledge that Blink could see no better than could they. They did not
talk, just at first. They did not even wonder if Andy was dead. Every
nerve, every muscle and every thought was concentrated upon the
pursuit of Blink. It was the instant rising to meet an occasion
undreamed of in advance, to do the only thing possible without loss of
a second in parley. Truly, it were ill for Blink to fall into the
hands of those three in that mood.

They rode with quirt and spur, guided only by the muffled
_pluckety-pluck, pluckety-pluck_ of Blink's horse fleeing always just
before. Whenever the hoof-beats seemed a bit closer, Happy Jack would
lift his long-barreled .45 and send a shot at random toward the sound.
Or Weary or Slim would take a chance with their shorter guns. But
never once did they pull rein for steep or gulley, and never once did
the hoof-beats fail to come back to them from out the fog.

The chase had led afar and the pace was telling on their mounts, which
breathed asthmatically. Slim, best he could do, was falling behind.
Weary's horse stumbled and went to his knees, so that Happy Jack
forged ahead just when the wind, puffing up from the open, blew aside
the gray fog-wall. It was not a minute, nor half that; but it was long
enough for Happy Jack to see, clear and close, Blink pausing
irresolutely upon the edge of a deep, brush-filled gulley. Happy Jack
gave a hoarse croak of triumph and fired, just as the fog-curtain
swayed back maddeningly. Happy Jack nearly wept with pure rage. Weary
and Slim came up, and together they galloped to the place, riding by
instinct of direction, for there was no longer any sound to guide.

Ten minutes they spent searching the gulley's edge. Then they saw
dimly, twenty feet below, a huddled object half-hidden in the brush.
They climbed down none too warily, though they knew well what might be
lying, venomous as a coiled rattler, in wait for them below. Slipping
and sliding in the fog-dampened grass, they reached the spot, to find
the big sorrel crumpled there, dead. They searched anxiously and
futilely for more, but Blink was not there, nor was there anything to
show that he had ever been there. Then not fear, perhaps, but caution,
came to Happy Jack.

"Aw, say! he's got away on us--the skunk! He's down there in the
brush, somewheres, waiting for somebody to go in and drag him out by
the ear. I betche he's laying low, right now, waiting for a chance to
pot-shot us. We better git back out uh this." He edged away, his eyes
on the thicket just below. To ride in there was impossible, even to
the Happy Family in whole or in part. To go in afoot was not at all to
the liking of Happy Jack.

Slim gave a comprehensive, round-eyed stare at the unpromising
surroundings, and followed Happy Jack. "By golly, that's right. Yuh
don't git me into no hole like that," he assented.

Weary, foolhardy to the last, stayed longest; but even Weary could not
but admit that the case was hopeless. The brush was thick and filled
the gully, probably from end to end. Riding through it was impossible,
and hunting it through on foot would be nothing but suicide, with a
man like Blink hidden away in its depths. They climbed back to the
rim, remounted and rode, as straight as might be, for the camp-fire
and what lay beside, with Pink on guard.

It was near noon when, through the lightening fog, they reached the
place and discovered that Andy, though unconscious, was not dead. They
found, upon examination of his hurt, that the bullet had ploughed
along the side of his head above his ear; but just how serious it
might be they did not know. Pink, having a fresh horse and aching for
action, mounted and rode in much haste to camp, that the bed-wagon
might be brought out to take Andy in to the ranch and the
ministrations of the Little Doctor. Also, he must notify the crew and
get them out searching for Blink.

All that night and the next day the cowboys rode, and the next. They
raked the foothills, gulley by gulley, their purpose grim. It would
probably be a case of shoot-on-sight with them, and nothing saved
Blink save the all-important fact that never once did any man of the
Flying U gain sight of him. He had vanished completely after that
fleeting glimpse Happy Jack had gained, and in the end the Flying U
was compelled to own defeat.

Upon one point they congratulated themselves: Andy, bandaged as he
was, had escaped with a furrow ploughed through the scalp, though it
was not the fault of Blink that he was alive and able to discuss the
affair with the others--more exactly, to answer the questions they
fired at him.

"Didn't you recognize him as being the murderer?" Weary asked him
curiously.

Andy moved uneasily on his bed. "No, I didn't. By gracious, you must
think I'm a plumb fool!"

"Well, yuh sure hit the mark, whether yuh meant to or not," Pink
asserted. "He was the jasper, all right. Look how he was glaring at
yuh while you were telling about it. _He_ knew he was the party, and
having a guilty conscience, he naturally supposed yuh recognized him
from the start."

"Well, I didn't," snapped Andy ungraciously, and they put it down to
the peevishness of invalidism and overlooked the tone.

"Chip has given his description in to the sheriff," soothed Weary,
"and if he gets off he's sure a good one. And I heard that the sheriff
wired down to the San Simon country and told 'em their man was up
here. Mama! What bad breaks a man will make when he's on the dodge! If
Blink had kept his face closed and acted normal, nobody would have got
next. Andy didn't know he was the fellow that done it. But it sure was
queer, the way the play come up. Wasn't it, Andy?"

Andy merely grunted. He did not like to dwell upon the subject, and he
showed it plainly.

"By golly! he must sure have had it in for that fellow," mused Slim
ponderously, "to kill him the way Andy says he did. By golly, yuh
can't wonder his eyes stuck out when he heard Andy telling us all
about it!"

"I betche he lays for Andy yet, and gits him," predicted Happy Jack
felicitously. "He won't rest whilst an eye-witness is running around
loose. I betche he's cached in the hills right now, watching his
chance."

"Oh, go to hell, the whole lot of yuh!" flared Andy, rising to an
elbow. "What the dickens are yuh roosting around here for? Why don't
yuh go on out to camp where yuh belong? You're a nice bunch to set
around comforting the sick! _Vamos_, darn yuh!"

Whereupon they took the hint and departed, assuring Andy, by way of
farewell, that he was an unappreciative cuss and didn't deserve any
sympathy or sick-calls. They also condoled openly with Pink because he
had been detailed as nurse, and advised him to sit right down on Andy
if he got too sassy and haughty over being shot up by a real outlaw.
They said that any fool could build himself a bunch of trouble with a
homicidal lunatic like Blink, and it wasn't anything to get vain over.

Pink slammed the door upon their jibes and offered Andy a cigarette he
had just rolled; not that Andy was too sick to roll his own, but
because Pink was notably soft-hearted toward a sick man and was prone
to indulge himself in trifling attentions.

"Yuh don't want to mind that bunch," he placated. "They mean all
right, but they just can't help joshing a man to death."

Andy accepted also a light for the cigarette, and smoked moodily. "It
ain't their joshing," he explained after a minute "It's puzzling over
what I can't understand that gets on my nerves. I can't see through
the thing, Pink, no way I look at it."

"Looks plain enough to me," Pink answered. "Uh course, it's funny
Blink should be the man, and be setting there listening--"

"Yes, but darn it all, Pink, there's a funnier side to it than that,
and it's near driving me crazy trying to figure it out. Yuh needn't
tell anybody, Pink, but it's like this: I was just merely and simply
romancing when I told that there blood-curdling tale! I never was
south uh the Wyoming line except when I was riding in a circus and
toured through, and that's the truth. I never was down in the San
Simon basin. I never set on no pinnacle with no field glasses--" Andy
stopped short his labored confession to gaze, with deep disgust, upon
Pink's convulsed figure. "Well," he snapped, settling back on the
pillow, "_laugh_, darn yuh! and show your ignorance! By gracious, I
wish _I_ could see the joke!" He reached up gingerly and readjusted
the bandage on his head, eyed Pink sourly a moment, and with a grunt
eloquent of the mood he was in turned his face to the wall.

       *       *       *       *       *




MISS MARTIN'S MISSION


When Andy Green, fresh-combed and shining with soap and towel polish,
walked into the dining-room of the Dry Lake Hotel, he felt not the
slightest premonition of what was about to befall. His chief sensation
was the hunger which comes of early rising and of many hours spent in
the open, and beyond that he was hoping that the Chinaman cook had
made some meat-pie, like he had the week before. His eyes, searching
unobtrusively the long table bearing the unmistakable signs of many
other hungry men gone before--for Andy was late--failed to warn him.
He pulled out his chair and sat down, still looking for meat-pie.

"Good after_noon!_" cried an eager, feminine voice just across the
table.

Andy started guiltily. He had been dimly aware that some one was
sitting there, but, being occupied with other things, had not given a
thought to the sitter, or a glance. Now he did both while he said good
afternoon with perfunctory politeness.

"Such a _beau_tiful day, isn't it? _so_ invigorating, like rare, old
wine!"

Andy assented somewhat dubiously; it had never just struck him that
way; he thought fleetingly that perhaps it was because he had never
come across any rare, old wine. He ventured another glance. She was
not young, and she wore glasses, behind which twinkled very bright
eyes of a shade of brown. She had unpleasantly regular hair waves on
her temples, and underneath the waves showed streaks of gray. Also,
she wore a black silk waist, and somebody's picture made into a brooch
at her throat. Further, Andy dared not observe. It was enough for one
glance. He looked again for the much-desired meat-pie.

The strange lady ingratiatingly passed him the bread. "You're a
cowboy, aren't you?" was the disconcerting question that accompanied
the bread.

"Well, I--er--I punch cows," he admitted guardedly, his gaze elsewhere
than on her face.

"I _knew_ you were a cowboy, the moment you entered the door! I could
tell by the tan and the straight, elastic walk, and the silk
handkerchief knotted around your throat in that picturesque fashion.
(Oh, I'm older than you, and dare speak as I think!) I've read a great
deal about cowboys, and I do admire you all as a type of free,
great-hearted, noble manhood!"

Andy looked exactly as if someone had caught him at something
exceedingly foolish. He tried to sugar his coffee calmly, and so sent
it sloshing all over the saucer.

"Do you live near here?" she asked next, beaming upon him in the
orthodox, motherly fashion.

"Yes, ma'am, not very near," he was betrayed into saying--and she
might make what she could of it. He had not said "ma'am" before since
he had gone to school.

"Oh, I've heard how you Western folks measure distances," she teased.
"About how many miles?"

"About twenty."

"I suppose that is not far, to you knights of the plains. At home it
would be called a _dreadfully_ long journey. Why, I have known numbers
of old men and women who have never been so far from their own doors
in their lives! What would you think, I wonder, of their little forty
acre farms?"

Andy had been brought to his sixteenth tumultuous birthday on a
half-acre in the edge of a good-sized town, but he did not say so. He
shook his head vaguely and said he didn't know. Andy Green, however,
was not famous for clinging ever to the truth.

"You out here in this great, wide, free land, with the free winds ever
blowing and the clouds--"

"Will you pass the butter, please?" Andy hated to interrupt, but he
was hungry.

The strange lady passed the butter and sent with it a smile. "I have
read and heard so much about this wild, free life, and my heart has
gone out to the noble fellows living their lonely life with their
cattle and their faithful dogs, lying beside their camp-fires at night
while the stars stood guard--"

Andy forgot his personal embarrassment and began to perk up his ears.
This was growing interesting.

"--And I have felt how lonely they must be, with their rude fare and
few pleasures, and what a field there must be among them for a great
and noble work; to uplift them and bring into their lonely lives a
broader, deeper meaning; to help them to help themselves to be better,
nobler men and women--"

"We don't have any lady cowpunchers out here," interposed Andy mildly.

The strange lady had merely gone astray a bit, being accustomed to
addressing Mothers' Meetings and the like. She recovered herself
easily. "Nobler men, the bulwarks of our nation." She stopped and eyed
Andy archly. Andy, having observed that her neck was scrawny, with
certain cords down the sides that moved unpleasantly when she talked,
tried not to look.

"I wonder if you can guess what brings me out here, away from home and
friends! Can you guess?"

Andy thought of several things, but he could not feel that it would be
polite to mention them. Agent for complexion stuff, for instance, and
next to that, wanting a husband. He shook his head again and looked at
his potato.

"You _can't guess_?" The tone was the one commonly employed for the
encouragement, and consequent demoralization of, a primary class. Andy
realized that he was being talked down to, and his combativeness
awoke. "Well, away back in my home town, a woman's club has been
thinking of all you lonely fellows, and have felt their hearts swell
with a desire to help you--so far from home and mother's influence,
with only the coarse pleasures of the West, and amid all the
temptations that lie in wait--" She caught herself back from
speech-making--"and they have sent _me_--away out here--to be your
_friend_; to help you to help yourselves become better, truer men
and--" She did not say women, though, poor soul, she came near it.
"So, I am going to be your friend. I want to get in touch with you
all, first; to win your confidence and teach you to look upon me in
the light of a mother. Then, when I have won your confidence, I want
to organize a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and Social Society, to help
you in the way of self-improvement and to resist the snares laid for
homeless boys like you. Don't you think I'm very--_brave_?" She was
smiling at him again, leaning back in her chair and regarding him
playfully over her glasses.

"You sure are," Andy assented, deliberately refraining from saying
"yes, ma'am," as had been his impulse.

"To come away out here--_all alone_--among all you wild cowboys with
your guns buckled on and your wicked little mustangs--Are you sure you
won't shoot me?"

Andy eyed her pityingly. If she meant it, he thought, she certainly
was wabbly in her mind. If she thought that was the only kind of talk
he could savvy, then she was a blamed idiot; either way, he felt
antagonistic. "The law shall be respected in your case," he told her,
very gravely.

She smiled almost as if she could see the joke; after which she became
twitteringly, eagerly in earnest. "Since you live near here, you must
know the Whitmores. Miss Whitmore came out here, two or three years
ago, and married her brother's coachman, I believe--though I've heard
conflicting stories about it; some have said he was an artist, and
others that he was a jockey, or horse-trainer. I heard too that he was
a cowboy; but Miss Whitmore certainly wrote about this young man
driving her brother's carriage. However, she is married and I have a
letter of introduction to her. The president of our club used to be a
schoolmate of her mother. I shall stop with them--I have heard so much
about the Western hospitality--and shall get into touch with my
cowboys from the vantage point of proximity. Did you say you know
them?"

"I work for them," Andy told her truthfully in his deep amazement, and
immediately repented and wished that he had not been so virtuous. With
Andy, to wish was to do--given the opportunity.

"Then I can go with you out to their farm--ranchero! How nice! And on
the way you can tell me all about yourself and your life and
hopes--because I do want to get in touch with you all, you know--and
I'll tell you all my plans for you; I have some _beau_tiful plans! And
we'll be very good friends by the time we reach our destination, I'm
sure. I want you to feel from the start that I am a true friend, and
that I have your welfare very much at heart. Without the confidence of
my cowboys, I can do nothing. Are there any more at home like you?"

Andy looked at her suspiciously, but it was so evident she never meant
to quote comic opera, that he merely wondered anew. He struggled
feebly against temptation, and fell from grace quite willingly. It
isn't polite to "throw a load" at a lady, but then Andy felt that
neither was it polite for a lady to come out with the avowed intention
of improving him and his fellows; it looked to him like butting in
where she was not wanted, or needed.

"Yes, ma'am, there's quite a bunch, and they're pretty bad. I don't
believe you can do much for 'em." He spoke regretfully.

"Do they--_drink_?" she asked, leaning forward and speaking in the
hushed voice with which some women approach a tabooed subject.

"Yes ma'am, they do. They're hard drinkers. And they"--he eyed her
speculatively, trying to guess the worst sins in her category--"they
play cards--gamble--and swear, and smoke cigarettes and--"

"All the more need of someone to help them overcome," she decided
solemnly. "What you need is a coffee-house and reading room here, so
that the young men will have some place to go other than the saloons.
I shall see to that right away. And with the Mutual Improvement and
Social Society organized and working smoothly, and a library of
standard works for recreation, together with earnest personal efforts
to promote temperance and clean-living, I feel that a _wonderful_ work
can be done. I saw you drive into town, so I know you can take me out
with you; I hope you are going to start soon. I feel very impatient to
reach the field and put my sickle to the harvest."

Andy mentally threw up his hands before this unshakable person. He had
meant to tell her that he had come on horseback, but she had
forestalled him. He had meant to discourage her--head her off, he
called it to himself. But there seemed no way of doing it. He pushed
back his chair and rose, though he had not tasted his pie, and it was
lemon pie at that. He had some faint notion of hurrying out of town
and home before she could have time to get ready; but she followed him
to the door and chirped over his shoulder that it wouldn't take her
two minutes to put on her wraps. Andy groaned.

He tried--or started to try--holding out at Rusty Brown's till she
gave up in despair; but it occurred to him that Chip had asked him to
hurry back. Andy groaned again, and got the team.

She did not wait for him to drive around to the hotel for her;
possibly she suspected his intentions. At any rate, she came nipping
down the street toward the stable just as he was hooking the last
trace, and she was all ready and had a load of bags and bundles.

"I'm not going to begin by making trouble for you," she twittered. "I
thought I could just as well come down here to the wagon as have you
drive back to the hotel. And my trunk did not come on the train with
me, so I'm all ready."

Andy, having nothing in mind that he dared say to a lady, helped her
into the wagon.

At sundown or thereabouts--for the days were short and he had a load
of various things besides care--Andy let himself wearily into the
bunk-house where was assembled the Happy Family. He merely grunted
when they spoke to him, and threw himself heavily down upon his bunk.

"For Heaven's sake, somebody roll me a cigarette! I'm too wore out to
do a thing, and I haven't had a smoke since dinner," he groaned, after
a minute.

"Sick?" asked Pink solicitously.

"Sick as a dog! water, water!" moaned Andy. All at once he rolled over
upon his face and shook with laughter more than a little hysterical,
and to the questioning of the Happy Family gave no answer but howls.
The Happy Family began to look at one another uneasily.

"Aw, let up!" Happy Jack bellowed. "You give a man the creeps just to
listen at yuh."

"I'm going to empty the water-bucket over yuh in a minute," Pink
threatened, "Go get it, Cal; it's half full."

Andy knew well the metal of which the Happy Family was made, and the
night was cool for a ducking. He rolled back so that they could see
his face, and struggled for calm. In a minute he sat up and merely
gurgled.

"Well, say, I had to do something or die," he explained, gasping.
"I've gone through a heap, the last few hours, and I was right where I
couldn't do a thing. By gracious, I struck the ranch about as near
bug-house as a man can get and recover. Where's a cigarette?"

"What you've gone through--and I don't give a cuss what it is--ain't a
marker for what's going to happen if yuh don't loosen up on the
history," said Jack Bates firmly.

Andy smoked hungrily while he surveyed the lot. "How calm and innocent
yuh all look," he observed musingly, "with your hats on and saying
words that's rude, and smoking the vile weed regardless, never
dreaming what's going to drop, pretty soon quick. Yuh make me think of
a hymn-song my step-mother used to sing a lot, about 'They dreamed not
of danger, those sinners of old, whom--"

"Hand me the water bucket," directed Pink musically.

"Oh, well--take it from the shoulder, then; I was only trying to lead
up to it gradual, but yuh _will_ have it raw. You poor, dear cowboys,
that live your lonely lives watching over your cattle with your
_faithful dogs_ and the stars for company, you're going to be
_improved_. (You'll sure stand a lot of it, too!) A woman's relief
club back East has felt the burden of your no-accountness and general
orneriness, and has sent one of its leading members out here to reform
yuh. You're going to be hazed into a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and
Social Society, and quit smoking cigarettes and cussing your hosses
and laying over Rusty's bar when yuh ride into town; and for pleasure
and recreation you're going to read Tennyson's poems, and when yuh get
caught out in a blizzard yuh'll be heeled with Whittier's _Snowbound_,
pocket edition. Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and Gatty" (Andy
misquoted; he meant Goethe) "and all them stiffs is going to be set
before yuh regular and in your mind constant, purging it of unclean
thoughts, and grammar is going to be learnt yuh as a side-line. Yuh--"

"Mama mine," broke in Weary. "I have thought sometimes, when Andy
broke loose with that imagination uh his, that he'd gone the limit;
but next time he always raises the limit out uh sight. He's like the
Good Book says: he's prone to lie as the sparks fly-upward."

Andy gazed belligerently at the skeptical group. "I brought her out
from town," he said doggedly, "and whilst I own up to having an
imagination, she's stranger than fiction. She'd make the fellow that
wrote "She" lay down with a headache. She's come out here to help us
cowboys live nobler, better lives. She's going to learn yuh Browning,
darn yuh! and Emerson and Gatty. She said so. She's going to fill your
hearts with love for dumb creatures, so when yuh get set afoot out on
the range, or anything like that, yuh won't put in your time cussing
the miles between you and camp; you'll have a pocket edition of 'Much
Ado About Nothing' to read, or the speech Mark Anthony made when he
was running for office. Or supposing yuh left 'em all in camp, yuh'll
study nature. There's sermons in stones, she says. She's going to send
for a pocket library that can easy be took on roundup--"

"Say, I guess that's about enough," interrupted Pink restlessly. "We
all admit you're the biggest liar that ever come West of the
Mississippi, without you laying it on any deeper."

Whereupon Andy rose in wrath and made a suggestive movement with his
fist. "If I was romancing," he declared indignantly, "I'd do a
smoother job; when I do lie, I notice yuh all believe it--till yuh
find out different. And by gracious yuh might do as much when I'm
telling the truth! Go up to the White House and see, darn yuh! If yuh
don't find Miss Verbena Martin up there telling the Little Doctor how
her heart goes out to her dear cowboys and how she's going to get in
touch with 'em and help 'em lead nobler, better lives, you can kick me
all round the yard. And I hope, by gracious, she _does_ improve yuh!
Yuh sure do need it a lot."

The Happy Family discussed the tale freely and without regard for the
feelings of Andy; they even became heated and impolite, and they made
threats. They said that a liar like him ought to be lynched or gagged,
and that he was a disgrace to the outfit. In the end, however, they
decided to go and see, just to prove to Andy that they knew he lied.
And though it was settled that Weary and Pink should be the
investigating committee, by the time they were halfway to the White
House they had the whole Happy Family trailing at their heels. A light
snow had begun to fall since dark, and they hunched their shoulders
against it as they went. Grouped uncomfortably just outside the circle
of light cast through the unshaded window, they gazed silently in upon
Chip and the Little Doctor and J.G. Whitmore, and upon one other; a
strange lady in a black silk shirtwaist and a gold watch suspended
from her neck by a chaste, black silken cord; a strange lady with
symmetrical waves in her hair and gray on her temples, and with
glasses and an eager way of speaking.

She was talking very rapidly and animatedly, and the others were
listening and stealing glances now and then at one another. Once,
while they watched, the Little Doctor looked at Chip and then turned
her face toward the window. She was biting her lips in the way the
Happy Family had learned to recognize as a great desire to laugh. It
all looked suspicious and corroborative of Andy's story, and the Happy
Family shifted their feet uneasily in the loose snow.

They watched, and saw the strange lady clasp her hands together and
lean forward, and where her voice had before come to them with no
words which they could catch distinctly, they heard her say something
quite clearly in her enthusiasm: "Eight real cowboys _here_, almost
within reach! I must see them before I sleep! I must get in touch with
them at once, and show them that I am a true friend. Come, Mrs.
Bennett! Won't you take me where they are and let me meet my boys? for
they _are_ mine in spirit; my heart goes out to them--"

The Happy Family waited to hear no more, but went straightway back
whence they had come, and their going savored of flight.

"Mama mine! she's coming down to the bunkhouse!" said Weary under his
breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at the White House bulking
large in the night. "Let's go on down to the stable and roost in the
hay a while."

"She'll out-wind us, and be right there waiting when we come back,"
objected Andy, with the wisdom gained from his brief acquaintance with
the lady. "If she's made up her mind to call on us, there's no way
under Heaven to head her off."

They halted by the bunk-house door, undecided whether to go in or to
stay out in the open.

"By golly, she don't improve _me_!" Slim asserted pettishly. "I hate
books like strychnine, and, by golly, she can't make me read 'em,
neither."

"If there's anything I do despise it's po'try," groaned Cal Emmett.

"Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and _Gatty_," named Andy
gloomily.

Whereat Pink suddenly pushed open the door and went in as goes one who
knows exactly what he is about to do. They followed him distressfully
and silently. Pink went immediately to his bunk and began pulling off
his boots.

"I'm going to bed," he told them. "You fellows can stay up and
entertain her if yuh want to--_I_ won't!"

They caught the idea and disrobed hastily, though the evening was
young. Irish blew out the lamp and dove under the blankets just as
voices came faintly from up the hill, so that when Chip rapped a
warning with his knuckles on the door, there was no sound within save
an artificial snore from the corner where lay Pink. Chip was not in
the habit of knocking before he entered, but he repeated the summons
with emphasis.

"Who's there-e?" drawled sleepily a voice--the voice of Weary.

"Oh, I do believe they've retired!" came, in a perturbed feminine
tone, to the listening ears of the Happy Family.

"Gone to bed?" cried Chip gravely.

"Hours ago," lied Andy fluently. "We're plumb wore out. What's
happened?"

"Oh, don't disturb the poor fellows! They're tired and need their
rest," came the perturbed tone again. After that the voices and the
footsteps went up the hill again, and the Happy Family breathed freer.
Incidentally, Pink stopped snoring and made a cigarette.

Going to bed at seven-thirty or thereabouts was not the custom of the
Happy Family, but they stayed under the covers and smoked and
discussed the situation. They dared not have a light, and the night
was longer than they had ever known a night to be, for it was late
before they slept. It was well that Miss Verbena Martin could not
overhear their talk, which was unchivalrous and unfriendly in the
extreme. The general opinion seemed to be that old maid improvers
would better stay at home where they might possibly be welcome, and
that when the Happy Family wanted improving they would let her know.
Cal Emmett said that he wouldn't mind, if they had only sent a young,
pretty one. Happy Jack prophesied plenty of trouble, and boasted that
she couldn't haul _him_ into no s'ciety. Slim declared again that by
golly, she wouldn't do no improving on _him_, and the others--Weary
and Irish and Pink and Jack Bates and Andy--discussed ways and means
and failed always to agree. When each one hoots derision at all plans
but his own, it is easy guessing what will be the result. In this
particular instance the result was voices raised in argument--voices
that reached Chip, grinning and listening on the porch of the White
House--and tardy slumber overtaking a disgruntled Happy Family on the
brink of violence.

It was not a particularly happy Family that woke to memory and a snowy
Sunday; woke late, because of the disturbing evening. When they spoke
to one another their voices were but growls, and when they trailed
through the snow to their breakfast they went in moody silence.

They had just brightened a bit before Patsy's Sunday breakfast, which
included hot-cakes and maple syrup, when the door was pushed quietly
open and the Little Doctor came in, followed closely by Miss Martin;
an apologetic Little Doctor, who seemed, by her very manner of
entering, to implore them not to blame _her_ for the intrusion. Miss
Martin was not apologetic. She was disconcertingly eager and glad to
meet them, and pathetically anxious to win their favor.

Miss Martin talked, and the Happy Family ate hurriedly and with
lowered eyelids. Miss Martin asked questions, and the Happy Family
kicked one another's shins under the table by way of urging someone to
reply; for this reason there was a quite perceptible pause between
question and answer, and the answer was invariably "the soul of
wit"--according to that famous recipe. Miss Martin told them naively
all about her hopes and her plans and herself, and about the distant
woman's club that took so great an interest in their welfare, and the
Happy Family listened dejectedly and tried to be polite. Also, they
did not relish the hot-cakes as usual, and Patsy had half the batter
left when the meal was over, instead of being obliged to mix more, as
was usually the case.

When they had eaten, the Happy Family filed out decorously and went
hastily down to the stables. They did not say much, but they did
glance over their shoulders uneasily once or twice.

"The old girl is sure hot on our trail," Pink remarked when they were
safely through the big gate. "She must uh got us mixed up with some
Wild West show, in her mind. Josephine!"

"Well, by golly, she don't improve _me_," Slim repeated for about the
tenth time.

The horses were all fed and everything tidy for the day, and several
saddles were being hauled down significantly from their pegs, when
Irish delivered himself of a speech, short but to the point. Irish had
been very quiet and had taken no part in the discussion that had waxed
hot all that morning.

"Now, see here," he said in his decided way. "Maybe it didn't strike
you as anything but funny--which it sure is. But yuh want to remember
that the old girl has come a dickens of a long ways to do us some
good. She's been laying awake nights thinking about how we'll get to
calling her something nice: Angel of the Roundup, maybe--you can't
tell, she's that romantic. And right here is where I'm going to give
the old girl the worth of her money. It won't hurt _us_, letting her
talk wild and foolish at us once a week, maybe; and the poor old
thing'll just be tickled to death thinking what a lot uh good she's
doing. She won't stay long, and--well, I go in. If she'll feel better
and more good to the world improving me, she's got my permission. I
guess I can stand it a while."

The Happy Family looked at him queerly, for if there was a black sheep
in the flock, Irish was certainly the man; and to have Irish take the
stand he did was, to say the least, unexpected.

Cal Emmett blurted the real cause of their astonishment. "You'll have
to sign the pledge, first pass," he said. "That's going to be the ante
in _her_ game. How--"

"Well, I don't play nobody's hand, or stake anybody's chips, but my
own," Irish retorted, the blood showing under the tan on his cheeks.

"And we won't das't roll a cigarette, even, by golly!" reminded Slim.
For Miss Martin, whether intentionally or not, had made plain to them
the platform of the new society.

Irish got some deep creases between his eyebrows, and put back his
saddle. "You can do as yuh like," he said, coldly. "I'm going to stay
and go to meeting this afternoon, according to her invite. If it's
going to make that poor old freak feel any better thinking she's a
real missionary--" He turned and walked out of the stable without
finishing the sentence, and the Happy Family stood quite still and
watched him go.

Pink it was who first spoke. "I ain't the boy to let any long-legged
son-of-a-gun like Irish hit a gait I can't follow," he dimpled, and
took the saddle reluctantly off Toots. "If he can stand it, I guess I
can."

Weary loosened his latigo. "If Cadwolloper is going to learn poetry, I
will, too," he grinned. "Mama! it'll be good as a three-ringed circus!
I never thought uh that, before. I couldn't miss it."

"Oh, well, if you fellows take a hand, I'll sure have to be there to
see," Andy decided. "Two o'clock, did she say?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"I hate to be called a quitter," Pink remarked dispiritedly to the
Happy Family in general; a harassed looking Happy Family, which sat
around and said little, and watched the clock. In an hour they would
be due to attend the second meeting of the M.I.S.S.--and one would
think, from the look of them, that they were about to be hanged. "I
hate to be called a quitter, but right here's where I lay 'em down.
The rest of yuh can go on being improved, if yuh want to--darned if I
will, though. I'm all in."

"I don't recollect hearing anybody say we wanted to," growled Jack
Bates. "Irish, maybe, is still burning with a desire to be nice and
chivalrous; but you can count me out. One dose is about all I can
stand."

"By golly, I wouldn't go and feel that foolish again, not if yuh paid
me for it," Slim declared.

Irish grinned and reached for his hat. "I done my damnettest," he said
cheerfully. "I made the old girl happy once; now, one Irish Mallory is
due to have a little joy coming his way. I'm going to town."

    "'Break, break, break, on thy cold, gray crags, oh sea,
    And I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that come over me.'

"You will observe, gentlemen, the beautiful sentiment, the euphonious
rhythm, the noble--" Weary went down, still declaiming mincingly,
beneath four irate bodies that hurled themselves toward him and upon
him.

"We'll break, break, break every bone in your body if you don't shut
up. You will observe the beautiful sentiment of _that_ a while," cried
Pink viciously. "I've had the euphonious rhythm of my sleep broke up
ever since I set there and listened at her for two hours. Josephine!"

Irish stopped with his hand on the door knob. "I was the jay that
started it," he admitted contritely. "But, honest, I never had a hunch
she was plumb locoed; I thought she was just simply foolish. Come on
to town, boys!"

Such is the power of suggestion that in fifteen minutes the Happy
Family had passed out of sight over the top of the grade; all save
Andy Green, who told them he would be along after a while, and that
they need not wait. He looked at the clock, smoked a meditative
cigarette and went up to the White House, to attend the second meeting
of the Mutual Improvement and Social Society.

When he faced alone Miss Verbena Martin, and explained that the other
members were unavoidably absent because they had a grudge against a
man in Dry Lake and had gone in to lynch him and burn the town, Miss
Martin was shocked into postponing the meeting. Andy said he was glad,
because he wanted to go in and see the fight; undoubtedly, he assured
her, there would be a fight, and probably a few of them would get
killed off. He reminded her that he had told her right in the start
that they were a bad lot, and that she would have hard work reforming
them; and finally, he made her promise that she would not mention to
anyone what he had told her, because it wouldn't be safe for him, or
for her, if they ever got to hear of it. After that Andy also took the
trail to town, and he went at a gallop and smiled as he rode.

Miss Martin reflected shudderingly upon the awful details of the
crime, as hinted at by Andy, and packed her trunk. It might be brave
and noble to stay and work among all those savages, but she doubted
much whether it were after all her duty. She thought of many ways in
which she could do more real good nearer home. She had felt all along
that these cowboys were an untrustworthy lot; she had noticed them
glancing at one another in a secret and treacherous manner, all
through the last meeting, and she was positive they had not given her
that full confidence without which no good can be accomplished. That
fellow they called Happy looked capable of almost any crime; she had
never felt quite safe in his presence.

Miss Martin pictured them howling and dancing around the burning
dwellings of their enemies, shooting every one they could see; Miss
Martin had imagination, of a sort. But while she pictured the horrors
of an Indian massacre she continued to pack her suit-case and to
consult often her watch. When she could do no more it occurred to her
that she would better see if someone could take her to the station.
Fortunately for all concerned, somebody could. One might go further
and say that somebody was quite willing to strain a point, even, in
order to get her there in time for the next train.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Happy Family was gathered in Rusty Brown's place, watching Irish
do things to a sheep-man from Lonesome Prairie, in a game of pool.
They were just giving vent to a prolonged whoop of derision at the
sheep-man's play, when a rig flashed by the window. Weary stopped with
his mouth wide open and stared; leaned to the window and craned to see
more clearly.

"Mama mine!" he ejaculated incredulously. "I could swear I saw Miss
Verbena in that rig, with her trunk, and headed towards the depot.
Feel my pulse, Cadwolloper, and see if I'm normal."

But Pink was on his way to the back door, and from there climbed like
a cat to the roof of the coal-house, where, as he knew from
experience, one could see the trail to the depot, and the depot
itself.

"It's sure her," he announced. "Chip's driving like hell, and the
smoke uh the train's just coming around the bend from the big field.
Wonder what struck her so sudden?" He turned and looked down into the
grinning face of Andy Green.

"She was real insulted because you fellows played hookey," Andy
explained. "I tried to explain, but it didn't help none. I don't
believe her heart went out to us like she claimed, anyhow."

       *       *       *       *       *




HAPPY JACK, WILD MAN.


Happy Jack, over on the Shonkin range, saw how far it was to the river
and mopped the heat-crimsoned face of him with a handkerchief not
quite as clean as it might have been. He hoped that the Flying U
wagons would be where he had estimated that they would be; for he was
aweary of riding with a strange outfit, where his little personal
peculiarities failed to meet with that large tolerance accorded by the
Happy Family. He didn't think much of the Shonkin crew; grangers and
pilgrims, he called them disgustedly in his mind. He hoped the Old Man
would not send him on that long trip with them south of the
Highwoods--which is what he was on his way to find out about. What
Happy Jack was hoping for, was to have the Old Man--as represented by
Chip--send one of the boys back with him to bring over what Flying U
cattle had been gathered, together with Happy's bed and string of
horses. Then he would ride with the Happy Family on the familiar range
that was better, in his eyes, than any other range that ever lay
outdoors--and the Shonkin outfit could go to granny. (Happy did not,
however, say "granny").

He turned down the head of a coulee which promised to lead him, by the
most direct route--if any route in the Badlands can be called
direct--to the river, across which, and a few miles up on Suction
Creek, he confidently expected to find the Flying U wagons. The coulee
wound aimlessly, with precipitous sides that he could not climb, even
by leading his horse. Happy Jack, under the sweltering heat of
mid-June sunlight, once more mopped his face, now more crimson than
ever, and relapsed into his habitual gloom. Just when he was telling
himself pessimistically that the chances were he would run slap out on
a cut bank where he couldn't get down to the river at all, the coulee
turned again and showed the gray-blue water slithering coolly past,
with the far bank green and sloping invitingly.

The horse hurried forward at a shuffling trot and thrust his hot
muzzle into the delicious coolness. Happy Jack slipped off and, lying
flat on his stomach, up-stream from the horse, drank deep and long,
then stood up, wiped his face and considered the necessity of
crossing. Just at this point the river was not so wide as in others,
and for that reason the current flowed swiftly past. Not too swiftly,
however, if one took certain precautions. Happy Jack measured mentally
the strength of the current and the proper amount of caution which it
would be expedient to use, and began his preparations; for the sun was
sliding down hill toward the western skyline, and he wished very much
to reach the wagons in time for supper, if he could.

Standing in the shade of the coulee wall, he undressed deliberately,
folding each garment methodically as he took it off. When the pile was
complete to socks and boots, he rolled it into a compact bundle and
tied it firmly upon his saddle. Stranger, his horse, was a good
swimmer, and always swam high out of water. He hoped the things would
not get very wet; still, the current was strong, and his
characteristic pessimism suggested that they would be soaked to the
last thread. So, naked as our first ancestor, he urged his horse into
the stream, and when it was too deep for kicking--Stranger was ever
uncertain and not to be trusted too far--he caught him firmly by the
tail and felt the current grip them both. The feel of the water was
glorious after so long a ride in the hot sun, and Happy Jack reveled
in the cool swash of it up his shoulders to the back of his neck, as
Stranger swam out and across to the sloping, green bank on the home
side. When his feet struck bottom, Happy Jack should have waded
also--but the water was so deliciously cool, slapping high up on his
shoulders like that; he still floated luxuriously, towed by
Stranger--until Stranger, his footing secure, glanced back at Happy
sliding behind like a big, red fish, snorted and plunged up and on to
dry land.

Happy Jack struck his feet down to bottom, stumbled and let go his
hold of the tail, and Stranger, feeling the weight loosen suddenly,
gave another plunge and went careering up the bank, snorting back at
Happy Jack. Happy swore, waded out and made threats, but Stranger,
seeing himself pursued by a strange figure whose only resemblance to
his master lay in voice and profanity, fled in terror before him.

Happy Jack, crippling painfully on the stones, fled fruitlessly after,
still shouting threats. Then, as Stranger, galloping wildly,
disappeared over a ridge, he stood and stared stupidly at the place
where the horse had last been seen. For the moment his mind refused to
grasp all the horror of his position; he stepped gingerly over the hot
sand and rocks, sought the shelter of a bit of overhanging bank, and
sat dazedly down upon a rock too warm for comfort. He shifted uneasily
to the sand beside, found that still hotter, and returned to the rock.

He needed to think; to grasp this disaster that had come so suddenly
upon him. He looked moodily across to the southern bank, his chin
sunken between moist palms, the while the water dried upon his person.
To be set afoot, down here in the Badlands, away from the habitations
of men and fifteen miles from the probable location of the Flying U
camp, was not nice. To be set afoot _naked_--it was horrible, and
unbelievable. He thought of tramping, barefooted and bare-legged,
through fifteen miles of sage-covered Badlands to camp, with the sun
beating down on his unprotected back, and groaned in anticipation. Not
even his pessimism had ever pictured a thing so terrible.

He gazed at the gray-blue river which had caused this trouble that he
must face, and forgetting the luxury of its coolness, cursed it
venomously. Little waves washed up on the pebbly bank, and glinted in
the sun while they whispered mocking things to him. Happy Jack gave
over swearing at the river, and turned his wrath upon Stranger--Stranger,
hurtling along somewhere through the breaks, with all Happy's clothes
tied firmly to the saddle. Happy Jack sighed lugubriously when he
remembered how firmly. A fleeting hope that, if he followed the trail
of Stranger, he might glean a garment or two that had slipped loose,
died almost before it lived. Happy Jack knew too well the kind of
knots he always tied. His favorite boast that nothing ever worked
loose on his saddle, came back now to mock him with its absolute
truth.

The sun, dropping a bit lower, robbed him inch by inch of the shade to
which he clung foolishly. He hunched himself into as small a space as
his big frame would permit, and hung his hat upon his knees where they
stuck out into the sunlight. It was very hot, and his position was
cramped, but he would not go yet; he was still thinking--and the brain
of Happy Jack worked ever slowly. In such an unheard-of predicament he
felt dimly that he had need of much thought.

When not even his hat could shield him from the sun glare, he got up
and went nipping awkwardly over the hot beach. He was going into the
next river-bottom--wherever that was--on the chance of finding a
cow-camp, or some cabin where he could, by some means, clothe himself.
He did not like the idea of facing the Happy Family in his present
condition; he knew the Happy Family. Perhaps he might find someone
living down here next the river. He hoped so--for Happy Jack, when
things were so bad they could not well be worse, was forced to give
over the prediction of further evil, and pursue blindly the faintest
whisper of hope. He got up on the bank, where the grass was kinder to
his unaccustomed feet than were the hot stones below, and hurried away
with his back to the sun, that scorched him cruelly.

In the next bottom--and he was long getting to it--the sage brush grew
dishearteningly thick. Happy began to be afraid of snakes. He went
slowly, stepping painfully where the ground seemed smoothest; he never
could walk fifteen miles in his bare feet, he owned dismally to
himself. His only hope lay in getting clothes.

Halfway down the bottom, he joyfully came upon a camp, but it had long
been deserted; from the low, tumble-down corrals, and the unmistakable
atmosphere of the place, Happy Jack knew it for a sheep camp. But
nothing save the musty odor and the bare cabin walls seemed to have
been left behind. He searched gloomily, thankful for the brief shade
the cabin offered. Then, tossed up on the rafters and forgotten, he
discovered a couple of dried sheep pelts, untanned and stiff, almost,
as shingles. Still, they were better than nothing, and he grinned in
sickly fashion at the find.

Realizing, in much pain, that some protection for his feet was an
absolute necessity, he tore a pelt in two for sandals. Much search
resulted in the discovery of a bit of rotted rope, which he unraveled
and thereby bound a piece of sheepskin upon each bruised foot. They
were not pretty, but they answered the purpose. The other pelt he
disposed of easily by tying the two front legs together around his
neck and letting the pelt hang down his back as far as it would reach.
There being nothing more that he could do in the way of
self-adornment, Happy Jack went out again into the hot afternoon. At
his best, Happy Jack could never truthfully be called handsome; just
now, clothed inadequately in gray Stetson hat and two meager
sheepskins, he looked scarce human.

Cheered a bit, he set out sturdily over the hills toward the mouth of
Suction Creek. The Happy Family would make all kinds of fools of
themselves, he supposed, if he showed up like this; but he might not
be obliged to appear before them in his present state of undress; he
might strike some other camp, first. Happy Jack was still forced to be
hopeful. He quite counted on striking another camp before reaching the
wagons of the Flying U.

The sun slid farther and farther toward the western rim of tumbled
ridges as Happy Jack, in his strange raiment, plodded laboriously to
the north. The mantle he was forced to shift constantly into a new
position as the sun's rays burned deep a new place, or the stiff hide
galled his blistered shoulders. The sandals did better, except that
the rotten strands of rope were continually wearing through on the
bottom, so that he must stop and tie fresh knots, or replace the bit
from the scant surplus which he had prudently brought along.

Till sundown he climbed toilfully up the steep hills and then
scrambled as toilfully into the coulees, taking the straightest course
he knew for the mouth of Suction Creek; that, as a last resort, while
he watched keenly for the white flake against green which would tell
of a tent pitched there in the wilderness. He was hungry--when he
forgot other discomforts long enough to think of it. Worst, perhaps,
was the way in which the gaunt sage brush scratched his unclothed legs
when he was compelled to cross a patch on some coulee bottom. Happy
Jack swore a great deal, in those long, heat-laden hours, and never
did he so completely belie the name men had in sarcasm given him.

Just when he was given over to the most gloomy forebodings, a white
square stood out for a moment sharply against a background of pines,
far below him in a coulee where the sun was peering fleetingly before
it dove out of sight over a hill. Happy Jack--of a truth, the most
unhappy Jack one could find, though he searched far and long--stood
still and eyed the white patch critically. There was only the one; but
another might be hidden in the trees. Still, there was no herd grazing
anywhere in the coulee, and no jingle of cavvy bells came to his ears,
though he listened long. He was sure that it was not the camp of the
Flying U, where he would be ministered unto faithfully, to be sure,
yet where the ministrations would be mingled with much wit-sharpened
raillery harder even to bear than was his present condition of
sun-blisters and scratches. He thanked the Lord in sincere if
unorthodox terms, and went down the hill in long, ungraceful strides.

It was far down that hill, and it was farther across the coulee. Each
step grew more wearisome to Happy Jack, unaccustomed as he was to
using his own feet as a mode of travel. But away in the edge of the
pine grove were food and raiment, and a shelter from the night that
was creeping down on him with the hurried stealth of a mountain lion
after its quarry. He shifted the sheepskin mantle for the thousandth
time; this time he untied it from his galled shoulders and festooned
it modestly if unbecomingly about his middle.

Feeling sure of the unfailing hospitality of the rangeland, be the
tent-dweller whom he might, Happy Jack walked boldly through the soft,
spring twilight that lasts long in Montana, and up to the very door of
the tent. A figure--a female figure--slender and topped by thin face
and eyes sheltered behind glasses, rose up, gazed upon him in horror,
shrieked till one could hear her a mile, and fell backward into the
tent. Another female figure appeared, looked, and shrieked also--and
even louder than did the first. Happy Jack, with a squawk of dismay,
turned and flew incontinently afar into the dusk. A man's voice he
heard, shouting inquiry; another, shouting what, from a distance,
sounded like threats. Happy Jack did not wait to make sure; he ran
blindly, until he brought up in a patch of prickly-pear, at which he
yelled, forgetting for the instant that he was pursued. Somehow he
floundered out and away from the torture of the stinging spines, and
took to the hills. A moon, big as the mouth of a barrel, climbed over
a ridge and betrayed him to the men searching below, and they shouted
and fired a gun. Happy Jack did not believe they could shoot very
straight, but he was in no mood to take chances; he sought refuge
among a jumble of great, gray bowlders; sat himself down in the shadow
and caressed gingerly the places where the prickly-pear had punctured
his skin, and gave himself riotously over to blasphemy.

The men below were prowling half-heartedly, it seemed to him--as if
they were afraid of running upon him too suddenly. It came to him that
they were afraid of him--and he grinned feebly at the joke. He had not
before stopped to consider his appearance, being concerned with more
important matters. Now, however, as he pulled the scant covering of
the pelt over his shoulders to keep off the chill of the night, he
could not wonder that the woman at the tent had fainted. Happy Jack
suspected shrewdly that he could, in that rig, startle almost any one.

He watched the coulee wistfully. They were making fires, down there
below him; great, revealing bonfires at intervals that would make it
impossible to pass their line unseen. He could not doubt that some one
was _cached_ in the shadows with a gun. There were more than two men;
Happy Jack thought that there must be at least four or five. He would
have liked to go down, just out of gun range, and shout explanations
and a request for some clothes--only for the women. Happy was always
ill at ease in the presence of strange women, and he felt, just now,
quite unequal to the ordeal of facing those two. He sat huddled in the
shadow of a rock and wished profanely that women would stay at home
and not go camping out in the Badlands, where their presence was
distinctly inappropriate and undesirable. If the men down there were
alone, he felt sure that he could make them understand. Seeing they
were not alone, however, he stayed where he was and watched the fires,
while his teeth chattered with cold and his stomach ached with the
hunger he could not appease.

Till daylight he sat there unhappily and watched the unwinking
challenge of the flames below, and miserably wished himself elsewhere;
even the jibes of the Happy Family would be endurable, so long as he
had the comfort afforded by the Flying U camp. But that was miles
away. And when daylight brought warmth and returning courage, he went
so far as to wish the Flying U camp farther away than it probably was.
He wanted to get somewhere, and ask help from strangers rather than
those he knew best.

With that idea fixed in his mind, he got stiffly to his bruised feet,
readjusted the sheepskin and began wearily to climb higher. When the
sun tinged all the hilltops golden yellow, he turned and shook his
fist impotently at the camp far beneath him. Then he went on doggedly.

Standing at last on a high peak, he looked away toward the sunrise and
made out a white speck on a grassy side-hill; beside it, a gray square
moved slowly over the green. Sheep, and a sheep camp--and Happy Jack,
hater of sheep though he was, hailed the sight as a bit of rare good
luck. His spirits rose immediately, and he started straight for the
place.

Down in the next coulee--there were always coulees to cross, no matter
in what direction one would travel--he came near running plump into
three riders, who were Irish Mallory, and Weary, and Pink. They were
riding down from the direction of the camp where were the women, and
they caught sight of him immediately and gave chase. Happy Jack had no
mind to be rounded up by that trio; he dodged into the bushes, and
though they dug long, unmerciful scratches in his person, clung to the
shelter they gave and made off at top speed. He could hear the others
shouting at one another as they galloped here and there trying to
locate him, and he skulked where the bushes were deepest, like a
criminal in fear of lynching.

Luck, for once, was with him, and he got out into another
brush-fringed coulee without being seen, and felt himself, for the
present, safe from that portion of the Happy Family. Thereafter he
avoided religiously the higher ridges, and kept the direction more by
instinct than by actual knowledge. The sun grew hot again and he
hurried on, shifting the sheepskin as the need impressed.

When at last he sighted again the sheep, they were very close. Happy
Jack grew cautious; he crept down upon the unsuspecting herder as
stealthily as an animal hunting its breakfast. Herders sometimes carry
guns--and the experience of last night burned hot in his memory.

Slipping warily from rock to rock, he was within a dozen feet, when a
dog barked and betrayed his presence. The herder did not have a gun.
He gave a yell of pure terror and started for camp after his weapon.
Happy Jack, yelling also, with long leaps followed after. Twice the
herder looked over his shoulder at the weird figure in gray hat and
flapping sheepskin, and immediately after each glance his pace
increased perceptibly. Still Happy Jack, desperate beyond measure,
doggedly pursued, and his long legs lessened at each jump the distance
between. From a spectacular viewpoint, it must have been a pretty
race.

The herder, with a gasp, dove into the tent; into the tent Happy Jack
dove after him--and none too soon. The hand of the herder had almost
clasped his rifle when the weight of Happy bore him shrieking to the
earthen floor.

"Aw, yuh locoed old fool, shut up, can't yuh, a minute?" Happy Jack,
with his fingers pressed against the windpipe of the other, had the
satisfaction of seeing his request granted at once. The shrieks died
to mere gurgling. "What I want uh _you_," Happy went on crossly,
"ain't your lifeblood, yuh dam' Swede idiot. I want some clothes, and
some grub; and I want to borry that pinto I seen picketed out in the
hollow, down there. Now, will yuh let up that yelling and act white,
or must I pound some p'liteness into yuh? Say!"

"By damn, Ay tank yo' vas got soom crazy," apologized the herder
humbly, sanity growing in his pale blue eyes. "Ay tank--"

"Oh, I don't give a cuss what you _tank_," Happy Jack cut in. "I ain't
had anything to eat sence yesterday forenoon, and I ain't had any
clothes on sence yesterday, either. Send them darn dogs back to watch
your sheep, and get busy with breakfast! I've got a lot to do, t'-day.
I've got to round up my horse and get my clothes that's tied to the
saddle, and get t' where I'm going. Get up, darn yuh! I ain't going t'
eat yuh--not unless you're too slow with that grub."

The herder was submissive and placating, and permitted Happy Jack to
appropriate the conventional garb of a male human, the while coffee
and bacon were maddening his hunger with their tantalizing odor. He
seemed much more at ease, once he saw that Happy Jack, properly
clothed, was not particularly fearsome to look upon, and talked
volubly while he got out bread and stewed prunes and boiled beans for
the thrice-unexpected guest.

Happy Jack, clothed and fed, became himself again and prophesied
gloomily: "The chances is, that horse uh mine'll be forty miles away
and still going, by this time; but soon as I can round him up, I'll
bring your pinto back. Yuh needn't t' worry none; I guess I got all
the sense I've ever had."

Once more astride a horse--albeit the pinto pony of a
sheepherder--Happy Jack felt abundantly able to cope with the
situation. He made a detour that put him far from where the three he
most dreaded to meet were apt to be, and struck out at the pinto's
best pace for the river at the point where he had crossed so
disastrously the day before.

Having a good memory for directions and localities, he easily found
the place of unhappy memory; and taking up Stranger's trail through
the sand from there, he got the general direction of his flight and
followed vengefully after; rode for an hour up a long, grassy coulee,
and came suddenly upon the fugitive feeding quietly beside a spring.
The bundle of clothing was still tied firmly to the saddle, and at
sight of it the face of Happy Jack relaxed somewhat from its gloom.

When Happy rode up and cast a loop over his head Stranger nickered a
bit, as if he did not much enjoy freedom while he yet bore the
trappings of servitude. And his submission was so instant and
voluntary that Happy Jack had not the heart to do as he had threatened
many times in the last few hours--"to beat the hide off him." Instead,
he got hastily into his clothes--quite as if he feared they might
again be whisked away from him--and then rubbed forgivingly the nose
of Stranger, and solicitously pulled a few strands of his forelock
from under the brow-band. In the heart of Happy Jack was a great
peace, marred only by the physical discomforts of much sun-blister and
many deep scratches. After that he got thankfully into his own saddle
and rode gladly away, leading the pinto pony behind him. He had got
out of the scrape, and the Happy Family would never find it out; it
was not likely that they would chance upon the Swede herder, or if
they did, that they would exchange with him many words. The Happy
Family held itself physically, mentally, morally and socially far
above sheepherders--and in that lay the safety of Happy Jack.

It was nearly noon when he reached again the sheep camp, and the Swede
hospitably urged him to stay and eat with him; but Happy Jack would
not tarry, for he was anxious to reach the camp of the Flying U. A
mile from the herder's camp he saw again on a distant hilltop three
familiar figures. This time he did not dodge into shelter, but urged
Stranger to a gallop and rode boldly toward them. They greeted him
joyfully and at the top of their voices when he came within shouting
distance.

"How comes it you're riding the pinnacles over here?" Weary wanted to
know, as soon as he rode alongside.

"Aw, I just came over after more orders; hope they send somebody else
over there, if they want any more repping done," Happy Jack said, in
his customary tone of discontent with circumstances.

"Say! Yuh didn't see anything of a wild man, down next the river, did
yuh?" put in Pink.

"Aw, gwan! what wild man?" Happy Jack eyed them suspiciously.

"Honest, there's a wild man ranging around here in these hills," Pink
declared. "We've been mooching around all forenoon, hunting him. Got
sight of him, early this morning, but he got away in the brush."

Happy Jack looked guilty, and even more suspicious. Was it possible
that they had recognized him?

"The way we come to hear about him," Weary explained, "we happened
across some campers, over in a little coulee to the west uh here. They
was all worked up over him. Seems he went into camp last night, and
like to scared the ladies into fits. He ain't got enough clothes on to
flag an antelope, according to them, and he's about seven feet high,
and looks more like a missing link than a plain, ordinary man. The one
that didn't faint away got the best look at him, and she's ready to
take oath he ain't more'n half human. They kept fires burning all
night to scare him out uh the coulee, and they're going to break camp
to-day and hike for home. They say he give a screech that'd put a
crimp in the devil himself, and went galloping off, jumping about
twenty feet at a lick. And--"

"Aw, gwan!" protested Happy Jack, feebly.

"So help me Josephine, it's the truth," abetted Pink, round-eyed and
unmistakably in earnest. "We wouldn't uh taken much stock in it,
either, only we saw him ourselves, not more than two hundred yards
off. He was just over the hill from the coulee where they were camped,
so it's bound to be the same animal. It's a fact, he didn't have much
covering--just something hung over his shoulders. And he was sure
wild, for soon as he seen us he humped himself and got into the brush.
We could hear him go crashing away like a whole bunch of elephants.
It's a damn' shame he got away on us," Pink sighed regretfully. "We
was going to rope him and put him in a cage; we could sure uh made
money on him, at two bits a look."

Happy Jack continued to eye the three distrustfully. Too often had he
been the victim of their humor for him now to believe implicitly in
their ignorance. It was too good to be real, it seemed to him. Still,
if by any good luck it _were_ real, he hated to think what would
happen if they ever found out the truth. He eased the clothing
cautiously away from his smarting back, and stared hard into a coulee.

"It was likely some sheepherder gone clean nutty," mused Irish.

"Well, the most uh them wouldn't have far to go," ventured Happy Jack,
thinking of the Swede.

"What we ought to do," said Pink, keen for the chase, "is for the
whole bunch of us to come down here and round him up. Wonder if we
couldn't talk Chip into laying off for a day or so; there's no herd to
hold. I sure would like to get a good look at him."

"Somebody ought to take him in," observed Irish longingly. "He ain't
safe, running around loose like that. There's no telling what he might
do. The way them campers read his brand, he's plumb dangerous to meet
up with alone. It's lucky you didn't run onto him, Happy."

"Well, I didn't," growled Happy Jack. "And what's more, I betche there
ain't any such person."

"Don't call us liars to our faces, Happy," Weary reproved. "We told
yuh, a dozen times, that we saw him ourselves. Yuh might be polite
enough to take our word for it."

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack grunted, still not quite sure of how much--or
how little--they knew. While they discussed further the wild man, he
watched furtively for the surreptitious lowering of lids that would
betray their insincerity. When they appealed to him for an opinion of
some phase of the subject, he answered with caution. He tried to turn
the talk to his experiences on the Shonkin range, and found the wild
man cropping up with disheartening persistency. He shifted often in
the saddle, because of the deep sunburns which smarted continually and
maddeningly. He wondered if the boys had used all of that big box of
carbolic salve which used to be kept in a corner of the mess-box; and
was carbolic salve good for sun-blisters? He told himself gloomily
that if there was any of it left, and if it were good for his ailment,
there wouldn't be half enough of it, anyway. He estimated unhappily
that he would need about two quarts.

When they reached camp, the welcome of Happy Jack was overshadowed and
made insignificant by the strange story of the wild man. Happy Jack,
mentally and physically miserable, was forced to hear it all told over
again, and to listen to the excited comments of the others. He was
sick of the subject. He had heard enough about the wild man, and he
wished fervently that they would shut up about it. He couldn't see
that it was anything to make such a fuss about, anyway. And he wished
he could get his hands on that carbolic salve, without having the
whole bunch rubbering around and asking questions about something that
was none of their business. He even wished, in that first bitter hour
after he had eaten and while they were lying idly in the shady spots,
that he was back on the Shonkin range with an alien crew.

It was perhaps an hour later that Pink, always of an investigative
turn of mind, came slipping quietly up through the rose bushes from
the creek. The Happy Family, lying luxuriously upon the grass, were
still discussing the latest excitement. Pink watched his chance and
when none but Weary observed him jerked his head mysteriously toward
the creek.

Weary got up, yawned ostentatiously, and sauntered away in the wake of
Pink. "What's the matter, Cadwolloper?" he asked, when he was close
enough. "Seen a garter snake?" Pink was notoriously afraid of snakes.

"You come with me, and I'll show yuh the wild man," he grinned.

"Mama!" ejaculated Weary, and followed stealthily where Pink led.

Some distance up the creek Pink signalled caution, and they crept like
Indians on hands and knees through the grass. On the edge of the high
bank they stopped, and Pink motioned. Weary looked over and came near
whooping at the sight below. He gazed a minute, drew back and put his
face close to the face of Pink.

"Cadwolloper, go get the bunch!" he commanded in a whisper, and Pink,
again signalling needlessly for silence, slipped hastily away from the
spot.

Happy Jack, secure in the seclusion offered by the high bank of the
creek, ran his finger regretfully around the inside of the carbolic
salve box, eyed the result dissatisfiedly, and applied the finger
carefully to a deep cut on his knee. He had got that cut while going
up the bluff, just after leaving the tent where had been the shrieking
females. He wished there was more salve, and he picked up the cover of
the box and painstakingly wiped out the inside; the result was
disheartening.

He examined his knee dolefully. It was beginning to look inflamed, and
it was going to make him limp. He wondered if the boys would notice
anything queer about his walk. If they did, there was the conventional
excuse that his horse had fallen down with him--Happy Jack hoped that
it would be convincing. He took up the box again and looked at the
shining emptiness of it. It had been half full--not enough, by a long
way--and maybe some one would wonder what had become of it. Darn a
bunch that always had to know everything, anyway!

Happy Jack, warned at last by that unnamed instinct which tells of a
presence unseen, turned around and looked up apprehensively. The Happy
Family, sitting in a row upon their heels on the bank, looked down at
him gravely and appreciatively.

"There's a can uh wagon dope, up at camp," Cal Emmett informed him
sympathetically.

"Aw--" Happy Jack began, and choked upon his humiliation.

"I used to know a piece uh poetry about a fellow like Happy," Weary
remarked sweetly. "It said

    _'He raised his veil, the maid turned slowly round_
    _Looked at him, shrieked, and fell upon the ground.'_

Only, in this case," Weary smiled blandly down upon him, "Happy didn't
have no veil."

"Aw, gwan!" adjured Happy Jack helplessly, and reached for his
clothes, while the Happy Family chorused a demand for explanations.

       *       *       *       *       *




A TAMER OF WILD ONES.


When the days grow crisp at each end and languorous in the middle;
when a haze ripples the skyline like a waving ribbon of faded blue;
when the winds and the grasses stop and listen for the first on-rush
of winter, then it is that the rangeland takes on a certain
intoxicating unreality, and range-wild blood leaps with desire to do
something--anything, so it is different and irresponsible and not
measured by precedent or prudence.

In days like that one grows venturesome and ignores difficulties and
limitations with a fine disregard for probable consequences, a mental
snapping of fingers. On a day like that, the Happy Family, riding
together out of Dry Lake with the latest news in mind and speech,
urged Andy Green, tamer of wild ones, to enter the rough-riding
contest exploited as one of the features of the Northern Montana Fair,
to be held at Great Falls in two weeks. Pink could not enter, because
a horse had fallen with him and hurt his leg, so that he was picking
the gentlest in his string for daily riding. Weary would not, because
he had promised his Little Schoolma'am to take care of himself and not
take any useless risks; even the temptation of a two-hundred-dollar
purse could not persuade him that a rough-riding contest is perfectly
safe and without the ban. But Andy, impelled by the leaping blood of
him and urged by the loyal Family, consented and said he'd try it a
whirl, anyway.

They had only ridden four or five miles when the decision was reached,
and they straightway turned back and raced into Dry Lake again, so
that Andy might write the letter that clinched matters. Then, whooping
with the sheer exhilaration of living, and the exultation of being
able to ride and whoop unhindered, they galloped back to camp and let
the news spread as it would. In a week all Chouteau County knew that
Andy Green would ride for the purse, and nearly all Chouteau County
backed him with all the money it could command; certainly, all of it
that knew Andy Green and had seen him ride, made haste to find someone
who did not know him and whose faith in another contestant was strong,
and to bet all the money it could lay hands upon.

For Andy was one of those mild-mannered men whose genius runs to
riding horses which object violently to being ridden; one of those
lucky fellows who never seems to get his neck broken, however much he
may jeopardize it; and, moreover, he was that rare genius, who can
make a "pretty" ride where other broncho-fighters resemble nothing so
much as a scarecrow in a cyclone. Andy not only could ride--he could
ride gracefully. And the reason for that, not many knew: Andy, in the
years before he wandered to the range, had danced, in spangled tights,
upon the broad rump of a big gray horse which galloped around a
saw-dust ring with the regularity of movement that suggested a
machine, while a sober-clothed man in the center cracked a whip and
yelped commands. Andy had jumped through blazing hoops and over
sagging bunting while he rode--and he was just a trifle ashamed of the
fact. Also--though it does not particularly matter--he had, later in
the performance, gone hurtling around the big tent dressed in the garb
of an ancient Roman and driving four deep-chested bays abreast. As has
been explained, he never boasted of his circus experience; though his
days in spangled tights probably had much to do with the inimitable
grace of him in the saddle. The Happy Family felt to a man that Andy
would win the purse and add honor to the Flying U in the winning. They
were enthusiastic over the prospect and willing to bet all they had on
the outcome.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Happy Family, together with the aliens who swelled the crew to
round-up size, was foregathered at the largest Flying U corral,
watching a bunch of newly bought horses circle, with much snorting and
kicking up of dust, inside the fence. It was the interval between
beef-and calf-roundups, and the witchery of Indian Summer held the
range-land in thrall.

Andy, sizing up the bunch and the brands, lighted upon a rangy blue
roan that he knew--or thought he knew, and the eyes of him brightened
with desire. If he could get that roan in his string, he told himself,
he could go to sleep in the saddle on night-guard; for an easier horse
to ride he never had straddled. It was like sitting in grandma's pet
rocking chair when that roan loosened his muscles for a long, tireless
gallop over the prairie sod, and as a stayer Andy had never seen his
equal. It was not his turn to choose, however, and he held his breath
lest the rope of another should settle over the slatey-black ears
ahead of him.

Cal Emmett roped a plump little black and led him out, grinning
satisfaction; from the white saddle-marks back of the withers he knew
him for a "broke" horse, and he certainly was pretty to look at. Andy
gave him but a fleeting glance.

Happy Jack spread his loop and climbed down from the fence, almost at
Andy's elbow. It was his turn to choose. "I betche that there blue
roan over there is a good one," he remarked. "I'm going to tackle
him."

Andy took his cigarette from between his lips. "Yuh better hobble your
stirrups, then," he discouraged artfully. "I know that roan a heap
better than you do."

"Aw, gwan!" Happy, nevertheless, hesitated. "He's got a kind eye in
his head; yuh can always go by a horse's eye."

"Can yuh?" Andy smiled indifferently. "Go after him, then. And say,
Happy: if yuh ride that blue roan for five successive minutes, I'll
give yuh fifty dollars. I knew that hoss down on the Musselshell; he's
got a record that'd reach from here to Dry Lake and back." It was a
bluff, pure and simple, born of his covetousness, but it had the
desired effect--or nearly so.

Happy fumbled his rope and eyed the roan. "Aw, I betche you're just
lying," he hazarded; but, like many another, when he did strike the
truth he failed to recognize it. "I betche--"

"All right, rope him out and climb on, if yuh don't believe me." The
tone of Andy was tinged with injury. "There's fifty dollars--yes, by
gracious, I'll give yuh a _hundred_ dollars if yuh ride him for five
minutes straight."

A conversation of that character, carried on near the top of two
full-lunged voices, never fails in the range land to bring an audience
of every male human within hearing. All other conversations and
interests were immediately suspended, and a dozen men trotted up to
see what it was all about. Andy remained roosting upon the top rail,
his rope coiled loosely and dangling from one arm while he smoked
imperturbably.

"Oh, Happy was going to rope out a sure-enough bad one for his night
hoss, and out uh the goodness uh my heart, I put him wise to what he
was going up against," he explained carelessly.

"He acts like he has some thoughts uh doubting my word, so I just
offered him a hundred dollars to ride him--that blue roan, over there
next that crooked post. GET_ a reserved seat right in front of the
grand stand where all the big acts take_ PLACE;" he sung out suddenly,
in the regulation circus tone. "GET-a-seat-right-in-front-where-Happy-Jack-
the-WILD-Man-rides-the-BUCKING-BRONCHO--Go on, Happy. Don't keep the
audience waiting. Aren't yuh going to earn that hundred dollars?"

Happy Jack turned half a shade redder than was natural. "Aw, gwan. I
never said I was going to do no broncho-busting ack. But I betche yuh
never seen that roan before he was unloaded in Dry Lake."

"What'll yuh bet I don't know that hoss from a yearling colt?" Andy
challenged, and Happy Jack walked away without replying, and cast his
loop sullenly over the first horse he came to--which was _not_ the
roan.

Chip, coming up to hear the last of it, turned and looked long at the
horse in question; a mild-mannered horse, standing by a crooked corral
post and flicking his ears at the flies. "Do you know that roan?" he
asked Andy, in the tone which brings truthful answer. Andy had one
good point: he never lied except in an irresponsible mood of pure
deviltry. For instance, he never had lied seriously, to an employer.

"Sure, I know that hoss," he answered truthfully.

"Did you ever ride him?"

"No," Andy admitted, still truthfully. "I never rode him but once
myself, but I worked right with a Lazy 6 rep that had him in his
string, down at the U up-and-down, two years ago. I know the hoss, all
right; but I did lie when I told Happy I knowed him from a colt. I
spread it on a little bit thick, there." He smiled engagingly down at
Chip.

"And he's a bad one, is he?" Chip queried Over his shoulder, just as
he was about to walk away.

"Well," Andy prevaricated--still clinging to the letter, if not to the
spirit of truth. "He ain't a hoss I'd like to see Happy Jack go up
against. I ain't saying, though, that he can't be _rode_. I don't say
that about _any_ hoss."

"Is he any worse than Glory, when Glory is feeling peevish?" Weary
asked, when Chip was gone and while the men still lingered. Andy,
glancing to make sure that Chip was out of hearing, threw away his
cigarette and yielded to temptation. "Glory?" he snorted with a fine
contempt. "Why, Glory's--a--_lamb_ beside that blue roan! Why, that
hoss throwed Buckskin Jimmy clean out of a corral--Did yuh ever see
Buckskin Jimmy ride? Well, say, yuh missed a pretty sight, then;
Jimmy's a sure-enough rider. About the only animal he ever failed to
connect with for keeps, is that same cow-backed hoss yuh see over
there. Happy says he's got a kind eye in his head--" Andy stopped and
laughed till they all laughed with him. "By gracious, Happy ought to
step up _on_ him, once, and see how _kind_ he is!" He laughed again
until Happy, across the corral saddling the horse he had chosen,
muttered profanely at the derision he knew was pointed at himself.

"Why, I've seen that hoss--" Andy Green, once fairly started in the
fascinating path of romance, invented details for the pure joy of
creation. If he had written some of the tales he told, and had sold
the writing for many dollars, he would have been famous. Since he did
not write them for profit, but told them for fun, instead, he earned
merely the reputation of being a great liar. A significant mark of his
genius lay in the fact that his inventions never failed to convince;
not till afterward did his audience doubt.

That is why the blue roan was not chosen in any of the strings, but
was left always circling in the corral after a loop had settled. That
is why the Flying U boys looked at him askance as they passed him by.
That is why, when a certain Mr. Coleman, sent by the board of
directors to rake northern Montana for bad horses, looked with favor
upon the blue roan when he came to the Flying U ranch and heard the
tale of his exploits as interpreted--I should say created--by Andy
Green.

"We've got to have him," he declared enthusiastically. "If he's as bad
as all that, he'll be the star performer at the contest, and make that
two-hundred-dollar plum a hard one to pick. Some of these gay boys
have entered with the erroneous idea that that same plum is hanging
loose, and all they've got to do is lean up against the tree and it'll
drop in their mouths. We've got to have that roan. I'll pay you a good
price for him, Whitmore, if you won't let him go any other way. We've
got a reporter up there that can do him up brown in a special article,
and people will come in bunches to see a horse with that kind of a
pedigree. Is it Green, here, that knows the horse and what he'll do?
You're sure of him, are you, Green?"

Andy took time to roll a cigarette. He had not expected any such
development as this, and he needed to think of the best way out. All
he had wanted or intended was to discourage the others from claiming
the blue roan; he wanted him in his own string. Afterwards, when they
had pestered him about the roan's record, he admitted to himself that
he had, maybe, overshot the mark and told it a bit too scarey, and too
convincingly. Under the spell of fancy he had done more than make the
roan unpopular as a roundup horse; he had made him a celebrity in the
way of outlaw horses. And they wanted him in the rough-riding contest!
Andy, perhaps, had never before been placed in just such a position.

"Are you sure of what the horse will do?" Mr. Coleman repeated, seeing
that Andy was taking a long time to reply.

Andy licked his cigarette, twisted an end and leaned backward while he
felt in his pocket for a match. From the look of his face you never
could have told how very uncomfortable he felt "Naw," he drawled. "I
ain't never sure of what _any_ hoss will do. I've had too much
dealings with 'em for any uh that brand uh foolishness." He lighted
the cigarette as if that were the only matter in which he took any
real interest, though he was thinking fast.

Mr. Coleman looked nonplussed. "But I thought--you said--"

"What I said," Andy retorted evenly, "hit the blue roan two years ago;
maybe he's reformed since then; I dunno. Nobody's rode him, here." He
could not resist a sidelong glance at Happy Jack. "There was some talk
of it, but it never come to a head."

"Yuh offered me a hundred dollars--" Happy Jack began accusingly.

"And yuh never made no move to earn it, that I know of. By gracious,
yuh all seem to think I ought to _mind_-read that hoss! I ain't seen
him for two years. Maybe so, he's a real wolf yet; maybe so, he's a
sheep." He threw out both his hands to point the end of the
argument--so far as he was concerned--stuck them deep into his
trousers' pockets and walked away before he could be betrayed into
deeper deceit. It did seem to him rather hard that, merely because he
had wanted the roan badly enough to--er--exercise a little diplomacy
in order to get him, they should keep harping on the subject like
that. And to have Coleman making medicine to get the roan into that
contest was, to say the least, sickening. Andy's private belief was
that a twelve-year-old girl could go round up the milk-cows on that
horse. He had never known him to make a crooked move, and he had
ridden beside him all one summer and had seen him in all places and
under all possible conditions. He was a dandy cow-horse, and dead
gentle; all this talk made him tired. Andy had forgotten that he
himself had started the talk.

Coleman went often to the corral when the horses were in, and looked
at the blue roan. Later he rode on to other ranches where he had heard
were bad horses, and left the roan for further consideration. When he
was gone, Andy breathed freer and put his mind to the coming contest
and the things he meant to do with the purse and with the other
contestants.

"That Diamond G twister is going t' ride," Happy Jack announced, one
day when he came from town. "Some uh the boys was in town and they
said so. He can ride, too. I betche Andy don't have no picnic gitting
the purse away from _that_ feller. And Coleman's got that sorrel
outlaw uh the HS. I betche Andy'll have to pull leather on that one."
This was, of course, treason pure and simple; but Happy Jack's
prophecies were never taken seriously.

Andy simply grinned at him. "Put your money on the Diamond G twister,"
he advised calmly. "I know him--he's a good rider, too. His name's
Billy Roberts. Uh course, I aim to beat him to it, but Happy never
does like to have a sure-thing. He wants something to hang his jaw
down over. Put your money on Billy and watch it fade away, Happy."

"Aw, gwan. I betche that there sorrel--"

"I rode that there sorrel once, and combed his forelock with both
spurs alternate," Andy lied boldly. "He's pickings. Take him back and
bring me a real hoss."

Happy Jack wavered. "Well, I betche yuh don't pull down that money,"
he predicted vaguely. "I betche yuh git throwed, or something. It
don't do to be too blame sure uh nothing."

Whereat Andy laughed derisively and went away whistling. "I wish I was
as sure uh living till I was a thousand years old, and able to ride
nine months out of every year of 'em," he called back to Happy. Then
he took up the tune where he had left off.

For the days were still crisp at both ends and languorous in the
middle, and wind and grasses hushed and listened for the coming of
winter. And because of these things, and his youth and his health, the
heart of Andy Green was light in his chest and trouble stood afar off
with its face turned from him.

It was but three days to the opening of the fair when Coleman,
returning that way from his search for bad horses, clattered, with his
gleanings and three or four men to help drive them, down the grade to
the Flying U. And in the Flying U coulee, just across the creek from
the corrals, still rested the roundup tents for a space. For the
shipping was over early and work was not urgent, and Chip and the Old
Man, in their enthusiasm for the rough-riding contest and the entry of
their own man, had decided to take the wagons and crew entire to Great
Falls and camp throughout the four days of the fair. The boys all
wanted to go, anyway, as did everybody else, so that nothing could be
done till it was over. It was a novel idea, and it tickled the humor
of the Happy Family.

The "rough string," as the bad horses were called, was corralled, and
the men made merry with the roundup crew. Diamond G men they were,
loudly proclaiming their faith in Billy Roberts, and offering bets
already against Andy, who listened undisturbed and had very little to
say. The Happy Family had faith in him, and that was enough. If
everybody, he told them, believed that he would win, where would be
the fun of riding and showing them?

It was after their early supper that Coleman came down to camp at the
heels of Chip and the Old Man. Straightway he sought out Andy like a
man who has something on his mind; though Andy did not in the least
know what it was, he recognized the indefinable symptoms and braced
himself mentally, half suspecting that it was something about that
blue roan again. He was getting a little bit tired of the blue
roan--enough so that, though he had chosen him for his string, he had
not yet put saddle to his back, but waited until the roundup started
out once more, when he would ride him in his turn.

It was the blue roan, without doubt. Coleman came to a stop directly
in front of Andy, and as directly came to the point.

"Look here, Green," he began. "I'm shy on horses for that contest, and
Whitmore and Bennett say I can have that roan you've got in your
string. If he's as bad as you claim, I certainly must have him. But
you seem to have some doubts of what he'll do, and I'd like to see him
ridden once. Your shingle is out as a broncho-peeler. Will you ride
him this evening, so I can size him up for that contest?"

Andy glanced up under his eyebrows, and then sidelong at the crowd.
Every man within hearing was paying strict attention, and was eyeing
him expectantly; for broncho-fighting is a spectacle that never palls.

"Well, I can ride him, if yuh say so," Andy made cautious answer, "but
I won't gamble he's a bad hoss _now_--that is, bad enough to take to
the Falls. Yuh don't want to expect--"

"Oh, I don't expect anything--only I want to see him ridden once. Come
on, no time like the present. If he's bad, you'll have to ride him at
the fair, anyhow, and a little practice won't hurt you; and if he
isn't, I want to know it for sure."

"It's a go with me," Andy said indifferently, though he secretly felt
much relief. The roan would go off like a pet dog, and he could
pretend to be somewhat surprised, and declare that he had reformed.
Bad horses do reform, sometimes, as Andy and every other man in the
crowd knew. Then there would be no more foolish speculation about the
cayuse, and Andy could keep him in peace and have a mighty good
cow-pony, as he had schemed. He smoked a cigarette while Chip was
having the horses corralled, and then led the way willingly, with
twenty-five men following expectantly at his heels. Unlike Andy, they
fully expected an impromptu exhibition of fancy riding. Not all of
them had seen Andy atop a bad horse, and the Diamond G men, in
particular, were eager to witness a sample of his skill.

The blue roan submitted to the rope, and there was nothing spectacular
in the saddling. Andy kept his cigarette between his lips and smiled
to himself when he saw the saddle bunch hazed out through the gate and
the big corral left empty of every animal but the blue roan, as was
customary when a man tackled a horse with the record which he had
given the poor beast. Also, the sight of twenty-five men roosting
high, their boot-heels hooked under a corral rail to steady them,
their faces writ large with expectancy, amused him inwardly. He
pictured their disappointment when the roan trotted around the corral
once or twice at his bidding, and smiled again.

"If you can't top him, Green, we'll send for Billy Roberts. _He'll_
take off the rough edge and gentle him down for yuh," taunted a
Diamond G man.

"Don't get excited till the show starts," Andy advised, holding the
cigarette in his fingers while he emptied his lungs of smoke. Just to
make a pretence of caution, he shook the saddle tentatively by the
horn, and wished the roan would make a little show of resistance,
instead of standing there like an old cow, lacking only the cud, as he
complained to himself, to make the resemblance complete. The roan,
however, did lay back an ear when Andy, the cigarette again in his
lips, put his toe in the stirrup.

"Go after it, you weatherbeaten old saw-buck," he yelled, just to make
the play strong, before he was fairly in the saddle.

Then it was that the Happy Family, heart and soul and pocket all for
Andy Green and his wonderful skill in the saddle; with many dollars
backing their belief in him and with voices ever ready to sing his
praises; with the golden light of early sunset all about them and the
tang of coming night-frost in the air, received a shock that made them
turn white under their tan.

"Mama!" breathed Weary, in a horrified half-whisper.

And Slim, goggle-eyed beside him, blurted, "Well, by _golly_!" in a
voice that carried across the corral.

For Andy Green, tamer of wild ones (forsooth!) broncho-twister with a
fame that not the boundary of Chouteau County held, nor yet the
counties beyond; Andy Green, erstwhile "André de Gréno, champion
bare-back rider of the Western Hemisphere," who had jumped through
blazing hoops and over sagging bunting while he rode, turned
handsprings and done other public-drawing feats, was prosaically,
unequivocally "piled" at the fifth jump!

That he landed lightly on his feet, with the cigarette still between
his lips, the roosting twenty-five quite overlooked. They saw only the
first jump, where Andy, riding loose and unguardedly, went up on the
blue withers. The second, third and fourth jumps were not far enough
apart to be seen and judged separately; as well may one hope to decide
whether a whirling wheel had straight or crooked spokes. The fifth
jump, however, was a masterpiece of rapid-fire contortion, and it was
important because it left Andy on the ground, gazing, with an
extremely grieved expression, at the uninterrupted convolutions of the
"dandy little cow-hoss."

The blue roan never stopped so much as to look back. He was
busy--exceedingly busy. He was one of those perverted brutes which
buck and bawl and so keep themselves wrought up to a high
pitch--literally and figuratively. He set himself seriously to throw
Andy's saddle over his head, and he was not a horse which easily
accepts defeat. Andy walked around in the middle of the corral, quite
aimlessly, and watched the roan contort. He could not understand in
the least, and his amazement overshadowed, for the moment, the fact
that he had been thrown and that in public and before men of the
Diamond G.

Then it was that the men of the Diamond G yelled shrill words of
ironical sympathy. Then it was that the Happy Family looked at one
another in shamed silence, and to the taunts of the Diamond Gs made no
reply. It had never occurred to them that such a thing could happen.
Had they not seen Andy ride, easily and often? Had they not heard from
Pink how Andy had performed that difficult feat at the Rocking R--the
feat of throwing his horse flat in the middle of a jump? They waited
until the roan, leaving the big corral looking, in the fast deepening
twilight, like a fresh-ploughed field, stopped dejectedly and stood
with his nose against the closed gate, and then climbed slowly down
from the top rail of the corral, still silent with the silence more
eloquent than speech in any known language.

Over by the gate, Andy was yanking savagely at the latigo; and he,
also, had never a word to say. He was still wondering how it had
happened. He looked the roan over critically and shook his head
against the riddle; for he had known him to be a quiet, dependable,
all-round good horse, with no bad traits and an easy-going disposition
that fretted at nothing. A high-strung, nervous beast might, from
rough usage and abuse, go "bad"; but the blue roan--they had called
him Pardner--had never showed the slightest symptom of nerves. Andy
knew horses as he knew himself. That a horse like Pardner should, in
two years, become an evil-tempered past-master in such devilish
pitching as that, was past belief.

"I guess he'll do, all right," spoke Coleman at his elbow. "I've seen
horses pitch, and I will say that he's got some specialties that are
worth exhibiting." Then, as a polite way of letting Andy down easy, he
added, "I don't wonder you couldn't connect."

"Connect--_hell_!" It was Andy's first realization of what his failure
meant to the others. He left off wondering about the roan, and faced
the fact that he had been thrown, fair and square, and that before an
audience of twenty-five pairs of eyes which had seen rough riding
before, and which had expected of him something better than they were
accustomed to seeing.

"I reckon Billy Roberts will have to work on that cayuse a while,"
fleered a Diamond G man, coming over to them. "He'll gentle him down
so that anybody--_even Green_, can ride him!"

Andy faced him hotly, opened his mouth for sharp reply, and closed it.
He had been "piled." Nothing that he could say might alter that fact,
nor explanations lighten the disgrace. He turned and went out the
gate, carrying his saddle and bridle with him.

"Aw--and you was goin' t' ride in that contest!" wailed Happy Jack
recriminatingly. "And I've got forty dollars up on yuh!"

"Shut up!" snapped Pink in his ear, heart-broken but loyal to the
last. "Yuh going to blat around and let them Diamond Gs give yuh the
laugh? Hunt up something you can use for a backbone till they get out
uh camp, for Heaven's sake! Andy's our man. So help me, Josephine, if
anybody goes rubbing it in where I can hear, he'll get his face
punched!"

"Say, I guess we ain't let down on our faces, or anything!" sighed Cal
Emmett, coming up to them. "I thought Andy could ride! Gee whiz, but
it was fierce! Why, _Happy_ could make a better ride than that!"

"By golly, I want t' have a talk with that there broncho-tamer," Slim
growled behind them. "I got money on him. Is he goin t' ride for that
purse? 'Cause if he is, I ain't going a foot."

These and other remarks of a like nature made up the clamor that
surged in the ears of Andy as he went, disgraced and alone, up to the
deserted bunk-house where he need not hear what they were saying. He
knew, deep in his heart, that he could ride that horse. He had been
thrown because of his own unpardonable carelessness--a carelessness
which he could not well explain to the others. He himself had given
the roan an evil reputation; a reputation that, so far as he knew, was
libel pure and simple. To explain now that he was thrown simply
because he never dreamed the horse would pitch, and so was taken
unaware, would simply be to insult their intelligence. He was not
supposed, after mounting a horse like that, to be taken unaware. He
might, of course, say that he had lied all along--but he had no
intention of making any confession like that. Even if he did, they
would not believe him. Altogether, it was a very unhappy young man who
slammed his spurs into a far corner and kicked viciously a box he had
stumbled over in the dusk.

"Trying to bust the furniture?" it was the voice of the Old Man at the
door.

"By gracious, it seems I can't bust _bronks_ no more," Andy made
rueful reply. "I reckon I'll just about have to bust the furniture or
nothing."

The Old Man chuckled and came inside, sought the box Andy had kicked,
and sat down upon it. Through the open door came the jumble of many
voices upraised in fruitless argument, and with it the chill of frost.
The Old Man fumbled for his pipe, filled it and scratched a match
sharply on the box. In the flare of it Andy watched his kind old face
with its fringe of grayish hair and its deep-graven lines of whimsical
humor.

"Doggone them boys, they ain't got the stayin' qualities I give 'em
credit for having," he remarked, holding up the match and looking
across at Andy, humped disconsolately in the shadows. "Them Diamond G
men has just about got 'em on the run, right now. Yuh couldn't get a
hundred-t'-one bet, down there."

Andy merely grunted.

"Say," asked the Old Man suddenly. "Didn't yuh kinda mistake that blue
roan for his twin brother, Pardner? This here cayuse is called Weaver.
I tried t' get hold of t'other one, but doggone 'em, they wouldn't
loosen up. Pardner wasn't for sale at no price, but they talked me
into buying the Weaver; they claimed he's just about as good a horse,
once he's tamed down some--and I thought, seein' I've got some real
_tamers_ on my pay-roll, I'd take a chance on him. I thought yuh knew
the horse--the way yuh read up his pedigree--till I seen yuh mount
him. Why, doggone it, yuh straddled him like yuh was just climbing a
fence! Maybe yuh know your own business best--but didn't yuh kinda
mistake him for Pardner? They're as near alike as two bullets run in
the same mold--as far as _looks_ go."

Andy got up and went to the door, and stood looking down the
dusk-muffled hill to the white blotch which was the camp; listened to
the jumble of voices still upraised in fruitless argument, and turned
to the Old Man.

"By gracious, that accounts for a whole lot," he said ambiguously.

II

"I don't see," said Cal Emmett crossly, "what's the use uh this whole
outfit trailing up to that contest. If I was Chip, I'd call the deal
off and start gathering calves. It ain't as if we had a man to ride
for that belt and purse. Ain't your leg well enough to tackle it,
Pink?"

"No," Pink answered shortly, "it ain't."

"Riding the rough bunch they've rounded up for that contest ain't
going to be any picnic," Weary defended his chum. "Cadwolloper would
need two good legs to go up against that deal."

"I wish Irish was here," Pink gloomed. "I'd be willing to back him;
all right. But it's too late now; he couldn't enter if he was here."

A voice behind them spoke challengingly. "I don't believe it would be
etiquette for one outfit to enter _two_ peelers. One's enough, ain't
it?"

The Happy Family turned coldly upon the speaker. It was Slim who
answered for them all. "I dunno as this outfit has got _any_ peeler in
that contest. By golly, it don't look like it since las' night!"

Weary was gentle, as always, but he was firm. "We kinda thought you'd
want to withdraw," he added.

Andy Green, tamer of wild ones, turned and eyed Weary curiously. One
might guess, from telltale eyes and mouth, that his calmness did not
go very deep. "I don't recollect mentioning that I was busy penning
any letter uh withdrawal," he said. "I got my sights raised to that
purse and that belt. I don't recollect saying anything about lowering
'em."

"Aw, gwan. I guess _I'll_ try for that purse, too! I betche I got as
good a show as--"

"Sure. Help yourself, it don't cost nothing. I don't doubt but what
you'd make a real pretty ride, Happy." Andy's tone was deceitfully
hearty. He did not sound in the least as if he would like to choke
Happy Jack, though that was his secret longing.

"Aw, gwan. I betche I could make as purty a ride as we've
saw--lately." Happy Jack did not quite like to make the thing too
personal, for fear of what might happen after.

"Yuh mean last night, don't yuh?" purred Andy.

"Well, by golly, I wish you'd tell us what yuh done it for!" Slim cut
in disgustedly. "It was nacherlay supposed you could ride; we got
_money_ up on yuh! And then, by golly, to go and make a fluke like
that before them Diamond G men--to go and let that blue roan pile yuh
up b'fore he'd got rightly started t' pitch--If yuh'd stayed with him
till he got t' swappin' ends there, it wouldn't uh looked quite so
bad. But t' go and git throwed down right in the start--By golly!"
Slim faced Andy accusingly. "B'fore them Diamond G men--and I've got
money up, by golly!"

"Yuh ain't lost any money yet, have yuh?" Andy inquired patiently.
What Andy felt like doing was to "wade into the bunch"; reason,
however, told him that he had it coming from them, and to take his
medicine, since he could not well explain just how it had happened. He
could not in reason wonder that the faith of the Happy Family was
shattered and that they mourned as lost the money they had already
rashly wagered on the outcome of the contest. The very completeness of
their faith in him, their very loyalty, seemed to them their undoing,
for to them the case was plain enough. If Andy could not ride the blue
roan in their own corral, how was he to ride that same blue roan in
Great Falls? Or, if he could ride him, how could any sane man hope
that he could win the purse and the belt under the stringent rules of
the contest, where "riding on the spurs," "pulling leather" and a
dozen other things were barred? So Andy, under the sting of their
innuendoes and blunt reproaches, was so patient as to seem to them
cowed.

"No, I ain't lost any yet, but by golly, I can see it fixin' to fly,"
Slim retorted heavily.

Andy looked around at the others, and smiled as sarcastically as was
possible considering the mood he was in. "It sure does amuse me," he
observed, "to see growed men cryin' before they're hurt! By gracious,
I expect t' make a stake out uh that fall! I can get long odds from
them Diamond Gs, and from anybody they get a chance to talk to. I'm
kinda planning," he lied boldly, "to winter in an orange grove and
listen at the birds singing, after I'm through with the deal."

"I reckon yuh can count on hearing the birds sing, all right," Pink
snapped back. "It'll be _tra-la-la_ for yours, if last night's a fair
sample uh what yuh expect to do with the blue roan." Pink walked
abruptly away, looking very much like a sulky cherub.

"I s'pose yuh're aiming to give us the impression that you're going to
ride, just the same," said Cal Emmett.

"I sure am," came brief reply. Andy was beginning to lose his temper.
He had expected that the Happy Family would "throw it into him," to a
certain extent, and he had schooled himself to take their drubbing.
What he had not expected was their unfriendly attitude, which went
beyond mere disappointment and made his offence--if it could be called
that--more serious than the occasion would seem to warrant. Perhaps
Jack Bates unwittingly made plain the situation when he remarked:

"I hate to turn down one of our bunch; we've kinda got in the habit uh
hanging together and backing each other's play, regardless. But darn
it, we ain't millionaires, none of us--and gambling, it is a sin. I've
got enough up already to keep me broke for six months if I lose, and
the rest are in about the same fix. I ain't raising no long howl,
Andy, but you can see yourself where we're kinda bashful about sinking
any more on yuh than what we have. Maybe you can ride; I've heard yuh
can, and I've seen yuh make some fair rides, myself. But yuh sure fell
down hard last night, and my faith in yuh got a jolt that fair broke
its back. If yuh done it deliberate, for reasons we don't know, for
Heaven's sake say so, and we'll take your word for it and forget your
rep for lying. On the dead, Andy, did yuh fall off deliberate?"

Andy bit his lip. His conscience had a theory of its own about
truth-telling, and permitted him to make strange assertions at times.
Still, there were limitations. The Happy Family was waiting for his
answer, and he knew instinctively that they would believe him now. For
a moment, temptation held him. Then he squared his shoulders and spoke
truly.

"On the dead, I hit the ground unexpected and inadvertant. I--"

"If that's the case, then the farther yuh keep away from that contest
the better--if yuh ask _me_." Jack turned on his heel and followed
Pink.

Andy stared after him moodily, then glanced at the rest. With one
accord they avoided meeting his gaze. "Damn a bunch uh quitters!" he
flared hotly, and left them, to hunt up the Old Man and Chip--one or
both, it did not matter to him.

Pink it was who observed the Old Man writing a check for Andy. He took
it that Andy had called for his time, and when Andy rolled his bed and
stowed it away in the bunk-house, saddled a horse and rode up the
grade toward town, the whole outfit knew for a certainty that Andy had
quit.

Before many hours had passed they, too, saddled and rode away, with
the wagons and the cavvy following after--and they were headed for
Great Falls and the fair there to be held; or, more particularly, the
rough-riding contest to which they had looked forward eagerly and with
much enthusiasm, and which they were now approaching gloomily and in
deep humiliation. Truly, it would be hard to find a situation more
galling to the pride of the Happy Family.

But Andy Green had not called for his time, and he had no intention of
quitting; for Andy was also suffering from that uncomfortable malady
which we call hurt pride, and for it he knew but one remedy--a remedy
which he was impatient to apply. Because of the unfriendly attitude of
the Happy Family, Andy had refused to take them into his confidence,
or to ride with them to the fair. Instead, he had drawn what money was
still placed to his credit on the pay-roll, had taken a horse and his
riding outfit and gone away to Dry Lake, where he intended to take the
train for Great Falls.

In Dry Lake, however, he found that the story of his downfall had
preceded him, thanks to the exultant men of the Diamond G, and that
the tale had not shrunk in the telling. Dry Lake jeered him as openly
as it dared, and part of it--that part which had believed in him--was
quite as unfriendly as was the Happy Family. To a man they took it for
granted that he would withdraw from the contest, and they were not
careful to conceal what they thought. Andy found himself rather left
alone, and he experienced more than once the unpleasant sensation of
having conversation suddenly lag when he came near, and of seeing
groups of men dissolve awkwardly at his approach. Andy, before he had
been in town an hour, was in a mood to do violence.

For that reason he kept his plans rigidly to himself. When someone
asked him if he had quit the outfit, he had returned gruffly that the
Flying U was not the only cow-outfit in the country, and let the
questioner interpret it as he liked. When the train that had its nose
pointed to the southwest slid into town, Andy did not step on, as had
been his intention. He remained idly leaning over the bar in Rusty
Brown's place, and gave no heed. Later, when the eastbound came
schreeching through at midnight, it found Andy Green on the platform
with his saddle, bridle, chaps, quirt and spurs neatly sacked, and
with a ticket for Havre in his pocket. So the wise ones said that they
knew Andy would never have the nerve to show up at the fair, after the
fluke he had made at the Flying U ranch, and those whose pockets were
not interested considered it a very good joke.

At Havre, Andy bought another ticket and checked the sack which held
his riding outfit; the ticket had Great Falls printed on it in bold,
black lettering. So that he was twelve hours late in reaching his
original destination, and to avoid unwelcome discovery and comment he
took the sleeper and immediately ordered his berth made up, that he
might pass through Dry Lake behind the sheltering folds of the berth
curtains. Not that there was need of this elaborate subterfuge. He was
simply mad clear through and did not want to see or hear the voice of
any man he knew. Besides, the days when he had danced in spangled
tights upon the broad, gray rump of a galloping horse while a
sober-clothed man in the middle of the ring cracked a whip and yelped
commands, had bred in him the unconscious love of a spectacular entry
and a dramatic finish.

That is why he sought out the most obscure rooming house that gave any
promise of decency and comfort, and stayed off Central Avenue and away
from its loitering groups of range dwellers who might know him. That
is why he hired a horse and rode early and alone to the fair grounds
on the opening day, and avoided, by a roundabout trail a certain
splotch of gray-white against the brown of the prairie, which he knew
instinctively to be the camp of the Flying U outfit, which had made
good time and were located to their liking near the river. Andy felt a
tightening of the chest when he saw the familiar tents, and kicked his
hired horse ill-naturedly in the ribs. It was all so different from
what he had thought it would be.

In those last two weeks, he had pictured himself riding vaingloriously
through town on his best horse, with a new Navajo saddle-blanket
making a dab of bright color, and a new Stetson hat dimpled
picturesquely as to crown and tilted rakishly over one eye, and with
his silver-mounted spurs catching the light; around him would ride the
Happy Family, also in gala attire and mounted upon the best horses in
their several strings. The horses would not approve of the
street-cars, and would circle and back--and it was quite possible,
even probable, that there would be some pitching and some pretty
riding before the gaping populace which did not often get a chance to
view the real thing. People would stop and gaze while they went
clattering by, and he, Andy Green, would be pointed out by the knowing
ones as a fellow that was going to ride in the contest and that stood
a good chance of winning. For Andy was but human, that he dreamed of
these things; besides, does not the jumping through blazing hoops and
over sagging bunting while one rides, whet insiduously one's appetite
for the plaudits of the crowd?

The reality was different. He was in Great Falls, but he had not
ridden vaingloriously down Central Avenue surrounded by the Happy
Family, and watched by the gaping populace. Instead, he had chosen a
side street and he had ridden alone, and no one had seemed to know or
care who he might be. His horse had not backed, wild-eyed, before an
approaching car, and he had not done any pretty riding. Instead, his
horse had scarce turned an eye toward the jangling bell when he
crossed the track perilously close to the car, and he had gone
"side-wheeling" decorously down the street--and Andy hated a pacing
horse. The Happy Family was in town, but he did not know where. Andy
kicked his horse into a gallop and swore bitterly that he did not
care. He did not suppose that they gave him a thought, other than
those impelled by their jeopardized pockets. And that, he assured
himself pessimistically, is friendship!

He tied the hired horse to the fence and went away to the stables and
fraternized with a hump-backed jockey who knew a few things himself
about riding and was inclined to talk unprofessionally. It was not at
all as Andy had pictured the opening day, but he got through the time
somehow until the crowd gathered and the racing began. Then he showed
himself in the crowd of "peelers" and their friends, as unconcernedly
as he might; and as unobtrusively. The Happy Family, he observed, was
not there, though he met Chip face to face and had a short talk with
him. Chip was the only one, aside from the Old Man, who really
understood. Billy Roberts was there, and he greeted Andy
commiseratingly, as one speaks to the sick or to one in mourning; the
tone made Andy grind his teeth, though he knew in his heart that Billy
Roberts wished him well--up to the point of losing the contest to him,
which was beyond human nature. Billy Roberts was a rider and knew--or
thought he knew--just how "sore" Andy must be feeling. Also, in the
kindness of his heart he tried blunderingly to hide his knowledge.

"Going up against the rough ones?" he queried with careful
carelessness, in the hope of concealing that he had heard the tale of
Andy's disgrace.

"I sure am," Andy returned laconically, with no attempt to conceal
anything.

Billy Roberts opened his eyes wide, and his mouth a little before he
recovered from his surprise. "Well, good luck to yuh," he managed to
say, "only so yuh don't beat me to it. I was kinda hoping yuh was too
bashful to get out and ride before all the ladies."

Andy, remembering his days in the sawdust ring, smiled queerly; but
his heart warmed to Billy Roberts amazingly.

They were leaning elbows on the fence below the grand stand, watching
desultorily the endless preparatory manoeuvres of three men astride
the hind legs of three pacers in sulkies. "This side-wheeling business
gives me a pain," Billy remarked, as the pacers ambled by for the
fourth or fifth time. "I like _caballos_ that don't take all day to
wind 'em up before they go. I been looking over our bunch. They's
horses in that corral that are sure going to do things to us twenty
peelers!"

"By gracious, yes!" Andy was beginning to feel himself again. "That
blue hoss--uh course yuh heard how he got me, and heard it with
trimmings--yuh may think he's a man-eater; but while he's a bad hoss,
all right, he ain't the one that'll get yuh. Yuh want t' watch out,
Billy, for that HS sorrel. He's plumb wicked. He's got a habit uh
throwing himself backwards. They're keeping it quiet, maybe--but I've
seen him do it three times in one summer."

"All right--thanks. I didn't know that. But the blue roan--"

"The blue roan'll pitch and bawl and swap ends on yuh and raise hell
all around, but he can be rode. That festive bunch up in the reserve
seats'll think it's awful, and that the HS sorrel is a lady's hoss
alongside him, but a real rider can wear him out. But that
sorrel--when yuh think yuh got him beat, Billy, is when yuh want to
watch out!"

Billy turned his face away from a rolling dustcloud that came down the
home stretch with the pacers, and looked curiously at Andy. Twice he
started to speak and did not finish. Then: "A man can be a sure-enough
rider, and get careless and let a horse pile him off him when he ain't
looking, just because he knows he can ride that horse," he said with a
certain diffidence.

"By gracious, yes!" Andy assented emphatically. And that was the
nearest they came to discussing a delicate matter which was in the
minds of both.

Andy was growing more at ease and feeling more optimistic every
minute. Three men still believed in him, which was much. Also, the
crowd could not flurry him as it did some of the others who were not
accustomed to so great an audience; rather, it acted as a tonic and
brought back the poise, the easy self-confidence which had belonged to
one André de Gréno, champion bareback rider. So that, when the
rough-riding began, Andy's nerves were placidly asleep.

At the corral in the infield, where the horses and men were
foregathered, Andy met Slim and Happy Jack; but beyond his curt
"Hello" and an amazed "Well, by golly!" from Slim, no words passed.
Across the corral he glimpsed some of the others--Pink and Weary, and
farther along, Cal Emmett and Jack Bates; but they made no sign if
they saw him, and he did not go near them. He did not know when his
turn would come to ride, and he had a horse to saddle at the command
of the powers that were. Coleman, the man who had collected the
horses, almost ran over him. He said "Hello, Green," and passed on,
for his haste was great.

Horse after horse was saddled and led perforce out into the open of
the infield; man after man mounted, with more or less trouble, and
rode to triumph or defeat. Billy Roberts was given a white-eyed little
bay, and did some great riding. The shouts and applause from the grand
stand rolled out to them in a great wave of sound. Billy mastered the
brute and rode him back to the corral white-faced and with beads of
sweat standing thick on his forehead.

"It ain't going to be such damn' easy money--that two hundred," he
confided pantingly to Andy, who stood near. "The fellow that gets it
will sure have to earn it."

Andy nodded and moved out where he could get a better view. Then
Coleman came and informed him hurriedly that he came next, and Andy
went back to his place. The horse he was to ride he had never seen
before that day. He was a long-legged brown, with scanty mane and a
wicked, rolling eye. He looked capable of almost any deviltry, but
Andy did not give much time to speculating upon what he would try to
do. He was still all eyes to the infield where his predecessor was
gyrating. Then a sudden jump loosened him so that he grabbed the
horn--and it was all over with that particular applicant, so far as
the purse and the championship belt were concerned. He was out of the
contest, and presently he was also back at the corral, explaining
volubly--and uselessly--just how it came about. He appeared to have a
very good reason for "pulling leather," but Andy was not listening and
only thought absently that the fellow was a fool to make a talk for
himself.

Andy was clutching the stirrup and watching a chance to put his toe
into it, and the tall brown horse was circling backwards with
occasional little side-jumps. When it was quite clear that the horse
did not mean to be mounted, Andy reached out his hand, got a rope from
somebody--he did not know who, though, as a matter of fact, it was
Pink who gave it--and snared a front foot; presently the brown was
standing upon three legs instead of four, and the gaping populace
wondered how it was done, and craned necks to see. After that, though
the horse still circled backwards, Andy got the stirrup and put his
toe in it and went up so easily that the ignorant might think anybody
could do it. He dropped the rope and saw that it was Pink who picked
it up.

The brown at first did nothing at all. Then he gave a spring straight
ahead and ran fifty yards or so, stopped and began to pitch. Three
jumps and he ran again; stopped and reared. It was very pretty to look
at, but Happy Jack could have ridden him, or Slim, or any other range
rider. In two minutes the brown was sulking, and it took severe
spurring to bring him back to the corral. Pitch he would not. The
crowd applauded, but Andy felt cheated and looked as he felt.

Pink edged toward him, but Andy was not in the mood for reconciliation
and kept out of his way. Others of the Happy Family came near, at
divers times and places, as if they would have speech with him, but he
thought he knew about what they would say, and so was careful not to
give them a chance. When the excitement was all over for that day he
got his despised hired horse and went back to town with Billy Roberts,
because it was good to have a friend and because they wanted to talk
about the riding. Billy did not tell Andy, either, that he had had
hard work getting away from his own crowd; for Billy was kind-hearted
and had heard a good deal, because he had been talking with Happy
Jack. His sympathy was not with the Happy Family, either.

On the second afternoon, such is effect of rigid winnowing, there were
but nine men to ride. The fellow who had grabbed the saddle horn,
together with ten others, stood among the spectators and made caustic
remarks about the management, the horses, the nine who were left and
the whole business in general. Andy grinned a little and wondered if
he would stand among them on the morrow and make remarks. He was not
worrying about it, though. He said hello to Weary, Pink and Cal
Emmett, and saddled a kicking, striking brute from up Sweetgrass way.

On this day the horses were wickeder, and one man came near getting
his neck broken. As it was, his collar-bone snapped and he was carried
off the infield on a stretcher and hurried to the hospital; which did
not tend to make the other riders feel more cheerful. Andy noted that
it was the HS sorrel which did the mischief, and glanced meaningly
across at Billy Roberts.

Then it was his turn with the striking, kicking gray, and he mounted
and prepared for what might come. The gray was an artist in his line,
and pitched "high, wide and crooked" in the most approved fashion. But
Andy, being also an artist of a sort, rode easily and with a grace
that brought much hand-clapping from the crowd. Only the initiated
reserved their praise till further trial; for though the gray was not
to say gentle, and though it took skill to ride him, there were a
dozen, probably twice as many, men in the crowd who could have done as
well.

The Happy Family, drawn together from habit and because they could
speak their minds more freely, discussed Andy gravely among
themselves. Betting was growing brisk, and if their faith had not been
so shaken they could have got long odds on Andy.

"I betche he don't win out," Happy Jack insisted with characteristic
gloom. "Yuh wait till he goes up agin that blue roan. They're savin'
that roan till the las' day--and I betche Andy'll git him. If he hangs
on till the las' day." Happy Jack laughed ironically as he made the
provision.

"Any you fellows got money yuh want to put up on this deal?" came the
voice of Andy behind them.

They turned, a bit shamefaced, toward him.

"Aw, I betche--" began Happy.

"That's what I'm here for," cut in Andy. "What I've got goes
up--saddle, spurs--_all_ I've got. You've done a lot uh mourning, now
here's a chance to break even on _me_. Speak up."

The Happy Family hesitated.

"I guess I'll stay out," dimpled Pink. "I don't just savvy your play,
Andy, and if I lose on yuh--why, it won't be the first time I ever
went broke."

"Well, by golly, _I'll_ take a chance," bellowed Slim, whose voice was
ever pitched to carry long distances in a high wind. "I'll bet yuh
fifty dollars yuh don't pull down that belt or purse. By golly,
there's two or three men here that can _ride_."

"There's only one that'll be the real star," smiled Andy with
unashamed egotism. "Happy, how rich do _you_ want to get off me?"

Happy said a good deal and "betche" several things would
happen--things utterly inconsistent with one another. In the end, Andy
pinned him down to twenty dollars against Andy's silver-mounted
spurs--which was almost a third more than the spurs were worth; but
Andy had no sympathy for Happy Jack and stuck to the price doggedly
until Happy gave in.

Jack Bates advertised his lack of faith in Andy ten dollars worth, and
Cal Emmett did the same. Irish, coming in on the afternoon train and
drifting instinctively to the vicinity of the Happy Family, cursed
them all impartially for a bunch of quitters, slapped Andy on the back
and with characteristic impetuosity offered a hundred dollars to
anybody who dared take him up, that Andy would win. And this after he
had heard the tale of the blue roan and before they told him about the
two rides already made in the contest.

It is true that Happy Jack endeavored to expostulate, but Irish glared
at him in a way to make Happy squirm and stammer incoherently.

"I've heard all about it," Irish cut in, "and I don't have to hear any
more. I know a rider when I see one, and my money's on Andy from start
to finish. You make me sick. Weary, have _you_ gone against our man?"
The tone was a challenge in itself.

Weary grinned goodnaturedly. "I haven't pulled down any bets," he
answered mildly, "and I haven't put up my last cent and don't intend
to. I'm an engaged young man." He shrugged his shoulders to point the
moral. "I sure do hope Andy'll win out," he added simply.

"_Hope_? Why, damn it, yuh _know_ he'll win!" stormed Irish.

Men in their vicinity caught the belligerence of the tone and turned
about, thinking there was trouble, and the Happy Family subsided into
quieter discussion. In the end Irish, discovering that Andy had for
the time being forsworn the shelter of the Flying U tents, stuck by
him loyally and forswore it also, and went with Andy to share the
doubtful comfort of the obscure lodging house. For Irish was all or
nothing, and to find the Happy Family publicly opposed--or at most
neutral--to a Flying U man in a rough-riding contest like this,
incensed him much.

The Happy Family began to feel less sure of themselves and a bit
ashamed--though of just what, they were not quite clear, for surely
they had reason a-plenty for doubting Andy Green.

The last day found the Happy Family divided against itself and growing
a bit venomous in its remarks. Andy had not as yet done anything
remarkable, except perhaps keep in the running when the twenty had
been culled to three: Billy Roberts, Andy and a man from the
Yellowstone Valley, called Gopher by his acquaintances. Accident and
untoward circumstances had thrown out the others--good riders all of
them, or they would not have been there. Happy Jack proclaimed loudly
in camp that Andy was still in because Andy had not had a real bad
horse. "I seen Coleman looking over the blue roan and talkin' to them
guys that runs things; they're goin' t' put Andy on him t-day, I
betche--and we seen how he can _ride_ him! Piled in a heap--"

"Not exactly," Pink interrupted. "I seem to remember Andy lighting on
his feet; and he was smoking when he started, and smoking when he
quit. It didn't strike me at the time, but that's kinda funny, don't
yuh think?"

So Pink went back to his first faith, and the Happy Family straightway
became loud and excited over the question of whether Andy did really
light upon his feet, or jumped up immediately, and whether he kept his
cigarette or made a new one. The discussion carried them to the fair
grounds and remained just where it started, so far as any amicable
decision was concerned.

Now this is a fair and true report of that last day's riding: There
being but the three riders, and the excitement growing apace, the
rough-riding was put first on the program and men struggled for the
best places and the best view of the infield.

In the beginning, Andy drew the HS sorrel and Billy Roberts the blue
roan. Gopher, the Yellowstone man, got a sulky little buckskin that
refused to add one whit to the excitement, so that he was put back and
another one brought. This other proved to be the wicked-eyed brown
which Andy had ridden the first day. Only this day the brown was in
different mood and pitched so viciously that Gopher lost control in
the rapid-fire changes, and rode wild, being all over the horse and
everywhere but on the ground. He did not pull leather, however though
he was accused by some of riding on his spurs at the last. At any
rate, Andy and Billy Roberts felt that the belt lay between
themselves, and admitted as much privately.

"You've sure got to ride like a wild man if yuh beat me to it,"
grinned Billy.

"By gracious, I'm after it like a wolf myself," Andy retorted. "Yuh
know how I'm fixed--I've just got to have it, Bill."

Billy, going out to ride, made no reply except a meaning head-shake.
And Billy certainly rode, that day; for the blue roan did his worst
and his best. To describe the performance, however, would be to invent
many words to supply a dearth in the language. Billy rode the blue
roan back to the corral, and he had broken none of the stringent rules
of the contest--which is saying much for Billy.

When Andy went out--shot out, one might say--on the sorrel, the Happy
Family considered him already beaten because of the remarkable riding
of Billy. When the sorrel began pitching the gaping populace, grown
wise overnight in these things, said that he was _e-a-s-y_--which he
was not. He fought as some men fight; with brain as well as muscle,
cunningly, malignantly. He would stop and stand perfectly still for a
few seconds, and then spring viciously whichever way would seem to him
most unexpected; for he was not bucking from fright as most horses do
but because he hated men and would do them injury if he could.

When the crowd thought him worn out, so that he stood with head
drooping all that Andy would permit, then it was that Andy grew most
wary. It was as he had said. Of a sudden, straight into the air leaped
the sorrel, reared and went backward in a flash of red. But as he
went, his rider slipped to one side, and when he struck the ground
Andy struck also--on his feet. "Get up, darn yuh," he muttered, and
when the sorrel gathered himself together and jumped up, he was much
surprised to find Andy in the saddle again.

Then it was that the HS sorrel went mad and pitched as he had never,
even when building his record, pitched before. Then it was that Andy,
his own temper a bit roughened by the murderous brute, rode as he had
not ridden for many a day; down in the saddle, his quirt keeping time
with the jumps. He was just settling himself to "drag it out of him
proper," when one of the judges, on horseback in the field, threw up
his hand.

"Get off!" he shouted, galloping closer. "That horse's got to be rode
again to-day. You've done enough this time."

So Andy, watching his chance, jumped off when the sorrel stopped for a
few seconds of breath, and left him unconquered and more murderous
than ever. A man with a megaphone was announcing that the contest was
yet undecided, and that Green and Roberts would ride again later in
the afternoon.

Andy passed the Happy Family head in air, stopped a minute to exchange
facetious threats with Billy Roberts, and went with Irish to roost
upon the fence near the judge's stand to watch the races. The Happy
Family kept sedulously away from the two and tried to grow interested
in other things until the final test.

It came, when Billy Roberts, again first, mounted the HS sorrel, still
in murderous mood and but little the worse for his previous battle.
What he had done with Andy he repeated, and added much venom to the
repetition. Again he threw himself backward, which Billy expected and
so got clear and remounted as he scrambled up. After that, the sorrel
simply pitched so hard and so fast that he loosened Billy a bit; not
much, but enough to "show daylight" between rider and saddle for two
or three high, crooked jumps. One stirrup he lost, rode a jump without
it and by good luck regained it as it flew against his foot. It was
great riding, and a gratifying roar of applause swept out to him when
it was over.

Andy, saddling the blue roan, drew a long breath. This one ride would
tell the tale, and he was human enough to feel a nervous strain such
as had not before assailed him. It was so close, now! and it might
soon be so far. A bit of bad luck such as may come to any man, however
great his skill, and the belt would go to Billy. But not for long
could doubt or questioning hold Andy Green. He led the Weaver out
himself, and instinctively he felt that the horse remembered him and
would try all that was in him. Also, he was somehow convinced that the
blue roan held much in reserve, and that it would be a great fight
between them for mastery.

When he gathered up the reins, the roan eyed him wickedly sidelong and
tightened his muscles, as it were, for the struggle. Andy turned the
stirrup, put in his toe, and went up in a flash, warned by something
in the blue roan's watchful eye. Like a flash the blue roan also went
up--but Andy had been a fraction of a second quicker. There was a
squeal that carried to the grand stand as the Weaver, wild-eyed and
with red flaring nostrils, pounded the wind-baked sod with high,
bone-racking jumps; changed and took to "weaving" till one wondered
how he kept his footing--more particularly, how Andy contrived to sit
there, loose-reined, firm-seated, riding easily. The roan, tiring of
that, began "swapping ends" furiously and so fast one could scarce
follow his jumps. Andy, with a whoop of pure defiance, yanked off his
hat and beat the roan over the head with it, yelling taunting words
and contemptuous; and for every shout the Weaver bucked harder and
higher, bawling like a new-weaned calf.

Men who knew good riding when they saw it went silly and yelled and
yelled. Those who did not know anything about it caught the infection
and roared. The judges galloped about, backing away from the living
whirlwind and yelling with the rest. Came a lull when the roan stood
still because he lacked breath to continue, and the judges shouted an
uneven chorus.

"Get down--the belt's yours"--or words to that effect. It was
unofficial, that verdict, but it was unanimous and voiced with
enthusiasm.

Andy turned his head and smiled acknowledgment. "All right--but wait
till I tame this hoss proper! Him and I've got a point to settle!" He
dug in his spurs and again the battle raged, and again the crowd, not
having heard the unofficial decision, howled and yelled approval of
the spectacle.

Not till the roan gave up completely and owned obedience to rein and
voiced command, did Andy take further thought of the reward. He
satisfied himself beyond doubt that he was master and that the Weaver
recognized him as such. He wheeled and turned, "cutting out" an
imaginary animal from an imaginary herd; he loped and he walked,
stopped dead still in two jumps and started in one. He leaned and ran
his gloved hand forgivingly along the slatey blue neck, reached
farther and pulled facetiously the roan's ears, and the roan meekly
permitted the liberties. He half turned in the saddle and slapped the
plump hips, and the Weaver never moved. "Why, you're an all-right
little hoss!" praised Andy, slapping again and again.

The decision was being bellowed from the megaphone and Andy, hearing
it thus officially, trotted over to where a man was holding out the
belt that proclaimed him champion of the state. Andy reached out a
hand for the belt, buckled it around his middle and saluted the grand
stand as he used to do from the circus ring when one André de Grenó
had performed his most difficult feat.

The Happy Family crowded up, shamefaced and manfully willing to own
themselves wrong.

"We're down and ready to be walked on by the Champion," Weary
announced quizzically. "Mama mine! but yuh sure can ride."

Andy looked at them, grinned and did an exceedingly foolish thing,
just to humiliate Happy Jack, who, he afterwards said, still looked
unconvinced. He coolly got upon his feet in the saddle, stood so while
he saluted the Happy Family mockingly, lighted the cigarette he had
just rolled, then, with another derisive salute, turned a double
somersault in the air and lighted upon his feet--and the roan did
nothing more belligerent than to turn his head and eye Andy
suspiciously.

"By gracious, maybe you fellows'll some day own up yuh don't know it
all!" he cried, and led the Weaver back into the corral and away from
the whooping maniacs across the track.

       *       *       *       *       *




ANDY, THE LIAR


Andy Green licked a cigarette into shape the while he watched with
unfriendly eyes the shambling departure of their guest. "I believe the
darned old reprobate was lyin' to us," he remarked, when the horseman
disappeared into a coulee.

"You sure ought to be qualified to recognize the symptoms," grunted
Cal Emmett, kicking his foot out of somebody's carelessly coiled rope
on the ground. "That your rope, Happy? No wonder you're always on the
bum for one. If you'd try tying it on your saddle--"

"Aw, g'wan. That there's Andy's rope--"

"If you look at my saddle, you'll find my rope right where it
belongs," Andy retorted. "I ain't sheepherder enough to leave it
kicking around under foot. That rope belongs to his nibs that just
rode off. When he caught up his horse again after dinner, he throwed
his rope down while he saddled up, and then went off and forgot it. He
wasn't easy in his mind--that jasper wasn't. I don't go very high on
that hard-luck tale he told. I know the boy he had wolfing with him
last winter, and he wasn't the kind to pull out with all the stuff he
could get his hands on. He was an all-right fellow, and if there's
been any rusty work done down there in the breaks, this shifty-eyed
mark done it. He was lying--"

Somebody laughed suddenly, and another chuckle helped to point the
joke, until the whole outfit was in an uproar; for of all the men who
had slept under Flying-U tents and eaten beside the mess-wagon, Andy
Green was conceded to be the greatest, the most shameless and wholly
incorrigible liar of the lot.

"Aw, yuh don't want to get jealous of an old stiff like that," Pink
soothed musically. "There ain't one of us but what knows you could lie
faster and farther and more of it in a minute, with your tongue
half-hitched around your palate and the deaf-and-dumb language barred,
than any three men in Chouteau County. Don't let it worry yuh, Andy."

"I ain't letting it worry me," said Andy, getting a bit red with
trying not to show that the shot hit him. "When my imagination gets to
soaring, I'm willing to bet all I got that it can fly higher than the
rest of you, that have got brains about on a par with a sage-hen, can
follow. When I let my fancy soar, I take notice the rest of yuh like
to set in the front row, all right--and yuh never, to my knowledge,
called it a punk show when the curtain rung down; yuh always got the
worth uh your money, and then some.

"But if yuh'd taken notice of the load that old freak was trying to
throw into the bunch, you'd suspicion there was something scaley about
it; there was, all right. I'd gamble on it."

"From the symptoms," spoke Weary mildly, rising to an elbow, "Andy's
about to erupt one of those wide, hot, rushing streams of melted
imagination that bursts forth from his think-works ever so often.
Don't get us all worked up over it, Andy; what's it going to be this
time? A murder in the Bad-lands?"

Andy clicked his teeth together, thought better of his ill-humor and
made reply, though he had intended to remain dignifiedly silent.

"Yuh rung the bell, m'son--but it ain't any josh. By gracious, I mean
it!" He glared at those who gurgled incredulously, and went on: "No,
sir, you bet it ain't any josh with me _this_ time. That old gazabo
had something heavy on his conscience--and knowing the fellow he had
reference to, I sure believe he lied a whole lot when he said Dan
pulled out with all the stuff they'd got together, and went down
river. Maybe he went down river, all right--but if he did, it was most
likely to be face-down. Dan was as honest a boy as there is in the
country, and he had money on him that he got mining down in the little
Rockies last summer. I know, because he showed me the stuff last fall
when I met him in Benton, and he was fixing to winter with this fellow
that just left.

"Dan was kinda queer about some things, and one of 'em was about
money. It never made any difference how much or how little he had, he
always packed it in his clothes; said a bank had busted on him once
and left him broke in the middle uh winter, and he wasn't going to let
it happen again. He never gambled none, nor blowed his money any
farther than a couple uh glasses uh beer once in a while. He was one
uh these saving cusses--but he was honest; I know that for a fact.

"So he had all this money on him, and went down there with this
jasper, that he'd got in with somehow and didn't know much about, and
they wolfed all winter, according to all accounts, and must uh made
quite a stake, the way the bounty runs up, these days. And here comes
this darned Siwash, hiking out uh there fast as he can--and if he
hadn't run slap onto us at this crossing, I'll gamble he'd never uh
showed up at camp at all, but kept right on going. We didn't ask him
no questions, did we? But he goes to all the pains uh telling us his
tale uh woe, about how Dan had robbed him and pulled out down river.

"If that was the case, wouldn't he be apt to hike out after him and
try and get back his stuff? And wouldn't--"

"How much money did this friend uh yours have?" queried Jack Bates
innocently.

"Well, when I seen him in Benton, he had somewhere between six and
seven hundred dollars. He got it all changed into fifty-dollar
bills--"

"Oh, golly!" Jack Bates rolled over in disgust. "Andy's losing his
grip. Why, darn yuh, if you was in a normal, lying condition, you'd
make it ten thousand, at the lowest--and I've seen the time when you'd
uh said fifty thousand; and you'd uh made us swallow the load, too!
Buck up and do a good stunt, Andy, or else keep still. Why, Happy Jack
could tell that big a lie!"

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack rose up to avenge the insult. "Yuh needn't
compare me to Andy Green. I ain't a liar, and I can lick the darned
son-of-a-gun that calls me one. I ain't, and yuh can't say I am,
unless yuh lie worse'n Andy."

"Calm down," urged Weary pacifically. "Jack said yuh _could_ lie; he
didn't say--"

"By gracious, you'd think I was necked up with a whole bunch uh George
Washingtons!" growled Andy, half-indignantly. "And what gets me is,
that I tell the truth as often as anybody in the outfit; oftener than
some I could mention. But that ain't the point. I'm telling the truth
now, when I say somebody ought to hike down to their camp and see what
this old skunk has done with Dan. I'd bet money you'd find him sunk in
the river, or cached under a cut-bank, or something like that. If he'd
kept his face closed I wouldn't uh give it a second thought, but the
more I think uh the story he put up, the more I believe there's
something wrong. He's made way with Dan somehow, and--"

"Yes. Sure thing," drawled Pink wickedly. "Let's organize a searching
party and go down there and investigate. It's only about a three or
four days' trip, through the roughest country the Lord ever stood on
end to cool and then forgot till it crumpled down in spots and got set
that way, so He just left it go and mixed fresh mud for the job He was
working on. Andy'd lead us down there, and we'd find--"

"His friend Dan buried in a tomato can, maybe," supplied Jack Bates.

"By golly, I'll bet yuh _could_ put friend Dan into one," Slim burst
out. "By golly, _I_ never met up with no Dan that packed fifty-dollar
bills around in his gun-pocket--"

"Andy's telling the truth. He says so," reproved Weary. "And when Andy
says a thing is the truth, yuh always know--"

"It ain't." Cal Emmett finished the sentence, but Weary paid no
attention.

"--what to expect. Cadwolloper's right, and we ought to go down there
and make a hunt for friend Dan and his fifty-dollar bills. How many
were there, did yuh say?"

"You go to the devil," snapped Andy, getting up determinedly. "Yuh
bite quick enough when anybody throws a load at yuh that would choke a
rhinoscerous, but plain truth seems to be too much for the weak heads
of yuh. I guess I'll have to turn loose and _lie_, so yuh'll listen to
me. There _is_ something crooked about this deal--"

"We all thought it sounded that way," Weary remarked mildly.

"And if yuh did go down to where them two wintered, you'd find out I'm
right. But yuh won't, and that old cutthroat will get off with the
murder--and the money."

"Don't he lie natural?" queried Jack Bates solemnly.

That was too much. Andy glared angrily at the group, picked up the
wolfer's rope, turned on his heel and walked off to where his horse
was tied; got on him and rode away without once looking back, though
he knew quite well that they were watching every move he made. It did
not help to smooth his temper that the sound of much laughing followed
him as he swung into the trail taken by the man who had left not long
before.

Where he went, that afternoon when for some reason sufficient for the
foreman--who was Chip Bennett--the Flying U roundup crew lay
luxuriously snoring in the shade instead of riding hurriedly and hotly
the high divides, no one but Andy himself knew. They talked about him
after he left, and told one another how great a liar he was, and how
he couldn't help it because he was born that way, and how you could
hardly help believing him. They recalled joyously certain of his
fabrications that had passed into the history of the Flying U, and
wondered what josh he was trying to spring this time.

"What we ought to do," advised Cal, "is to lead him on and let him lie
his darndest, and make out we believe him. And then we can give him
the laugh good and plenty--and maybe cure him."

"Cure nothing!" exclaimed Jack Bates, getting up because the sun had
discovered him, and going over to the mess-wagon where a bit of shade
had been left unoccupied. "About the only way to cure Andy of lying,
is to kill him. He was working his way up to some big josh, and if yuh
let him alone you'll find out what it is, all right. I wouldn't worry
none about it, if I was you." To prove that he did not worry, Jack
immediately went to sleep.

Such being the attitude of the Happy Family, when Andy rode hurriedly
into camp at sundown, his horse wet to the tips of his ears with
sweat, they sat up, expectancy writ large upon their faces. No one
said anything, however, while Andy unsaddled and came over to beg a
belated supper from the cook; nor yet while he squatted on his heels
beside the cook-tent and ate hungrily. He seemed somewhat absorbed in
his thoughts, and they decided mentally that Andy was a sure-enough
good actor, and that if they were not dead next to him and his
particular weakness, they would swallow his yarn whole--whatever it
was. A blood-red glow was in the sky to the west, and it lighted
Andy's face queerly, like a vivid blush on the face of a girl.

Andy scraped his plate thoughtfully with his knife, looked into his
coffee-cup, stirred the dregs absently and dipped out half a spoonful
of undissolved sugar, which he swallowed meditatively. He tossed
plate, cup and spoon toward the dishpan, sent knife and fork after
them and got out his smoking material. And the Happy Family, grouped
rather closely together and watching unobtrusively, stirred to the
listening point. The liar was about to lie.

"Talk about a guilty conscience giving a man dead away," Andy began,
quite unconscious of the mental attitude of his fellows, and
forgetting also his anger of the afternoon, "it sure does work out
like that, sometimes. I followed that old devil, just out uh
curiosity, to see if he headed for Dry Lake like he said he was going.
_We_ didn't have any reason for keeping cases on him, or suspicioning
anything--but he acted like we was all out on his trail, the fool!

"I kinda had a hunch that if he had been up to any deviltry, it would
show on him when he left here, and I was plumb right about it. He went
all straight enough till he got down into Black Coulee; and right
there it looked like he got kinda panicky and suspicious, for he
turned square off the trail and headed up the coulee."

"He must uh had 'em," Weary commented, quite as if he believed.

"Yuh wait till I'm through," Andy advised, still wholly unconscious of
their disbelief. "Yuh was all kinda skeptical when I told yuh he had a
guilty conscience, but I was right about it, and come mighty near
laying out on the range to-night with my toes pointing straight up,
just because you fellows wouldn't--"

"Sun-stroke?" asked Pink, coming closer, his eyes showing purple in
the softened light.

"No--yuh wait, now, till I tell yuh." Whereupon Andy smoked
relishfully and in silence, and from the tail of his eye watched his
audience squirm with impatience. "A man gets along a whole lot better
without any conscience," he began at last, irrelevantly, "'specially
if he wants to be mean. I trailed this jasper up the coulee and out on
the bench, across that level strip between Black Coulee and Dry Spring
Gulch, and down the gulch a mile or so. He was fogging right along,
and seemed as if he looked back every ten rods--I know he spotted me
just as I struck the level at the head uh Black Coulee, because he
acted different then.

"I could see he was making across country for the trail to Chinook,
but I wanted to overhaul him and have a little casual talk about Dan.
I don't suppose yuh noticed I took his rope along; I wanted some
excuse for hazing after him like that, yuh see."

"Uh course, such accommodating cusses as you wouldn't be none strange
to him," fleered Cal.

"Well, he never found out what I was after," sighed Andy. "It wasn't
my fault I didn't come up with him, and my intentions were peaceful
and innocent. But do yuh know what happened? He got out uh sight down
Dry Spring Gulch--yuh know where that elephant-head rock sticks out,
and the trail makes a short turn around it--that's where I lost sight
of him. But he wasn't very far in the lead, and I was dead anxious to
give him his rope, so I loped on down--"

"You were taking long chances, old-timer; that's mighty rough going,
along there," hinted Chip, gravely.

"Sure, I was," Andy agreed easily. "But yuh recollect, I was in a
hurry. So I'd just rounded the elephant's head, when _bing!_ something
spats the rock, just over my right shoulder, and my horse squatted
down on his rump and said he'd gone far enough. I kinda felt the same
way about it, so when he wheeled and humped himself back up the trail,
I didn't argue none with him."

There was silence so deep one could hear the saddle-bunch cropping the
thick grasses along the creek. If this were true--this tale that Andy
was telling--The Happy Family, half tempted to believe, glanced
furtively at one another.

"Aw, gwan!" It was the familiar, protesting croak of Happy Jack. "What
did yuh turn tail for? Why didn't yuh have it out with him?" The Happy
Family drew a long breath, and the temptation to believe was pushed
aside.

"Because my gun was rolled up in my bed," Andy replied simply. "I
ain't as brave as you are, Happy. I ain't got the nerve to ride right
up on a man that's scared plumb silly and pumping lead my way fast as
he can work the lever on his rifle, and lick him with my fists till he
howls, and then throw him and walk up and down his person and flap my
wings and crow. It's awful to have to confess it, but I'm willing to
run from any man that's shooting at me when I can't shoot back. I'd
give a lot to be as brave as you are, Happy."

Happy Jack growled and subsided.

"Well, by golly, there's times when _we'd_ be justified in shooting
yuh, but I don't see what _he'd_ want to do it for," objected Slim.

"Guilty conscience, I told yuh," retorted Andy. "He seen I was chasing
him up, and I guess he thought it was somebody that had got next to
what happened--Lord, I wish I knew what did happen, down there in the
breaks! Boys," Andy got up and stood looking earnestly down at them in
the twilight, "you can't make me believe that there hasn't been a
murder done! That fellow has been up to something, or he wouldn't be
acting so damn' queer. And if it was just plain stealing, Dan would
sure be hot on his trail--because Dan thought more of his money than
most men do of their wives. It was about all he lived for, and he
wasn't any coward. That old man never would get it off him without a
big ruction, and if he did, Dan would be right after him bigger'n a
wolf. There's something wrong, you take my word."

"What do yuh want us to do about it?" It was Chip who asked the
question, and his tone was quite calm and impersonal.

Andy looked at him reproachfully. "Do? What is there to do, except go
down there and see? If we can find that out, we can put the sheriff
wise and let him do the rest. It sure does seem kinda tough, if a man
can do a murder and robbery and get off with it, just because nobody
cares enough about it to head him off."

The Happy Family stirred uneasily. Of course, it was all just a josh
of Andy's--but he was such a convincing liar! Almost they felt guilty
of criminal negligence that they did not at once saddle up and give
chase to the murderer, who had tried to kill Andy for following him,
and who was headed for Chinook after unnecessarily proclaiming himself
bound for Dry Lake.

"Do you want the whole outfit to turn out?" asked Chip calmly at last.

"No-o--"

"Say, is it anywheres near that prehistoric castle you found once?"
Ping asked maliciously, unbelief getting strong hold of him again.

Andy turned toward him, scowling. "No, Angel-child, it ain't," he
snapped. "And you fellows can back up and snort all yuh darn please,
and make idiots of yourselves. But yuh can't do any business making me
out a hot-air peddler on _this_ deal. I stand pat, just where I stood
at first, and it'll take a lot uh cackling to make me back down. That
old devil _did_ lie about Dan, and he did take a shot at me--"

"He took yuh for a horse-thief, most likely," explained Jack Bates.

"He didn't need no field glass to see you was a suspicious character,
by golly," chortled Slim.

"He thought yuh was after what little your friend Dan had overlooked,
chances is," added Cal Emmett.

"Did the fog roll down and hide the horrible sight?" asked Jack Bates.

That, and much more, brought about a distinct coldness between the
Happy Family and one Andy Green, so that the sun went down upon Andy's
wrath, and rose to find it still bubbling hotly in the outraged heart
of him.

It was Jack Bates who precipitated an open war by singing an adapted
version of "Massa's In the Cold, Cold Ground," just when they were
eating breakfast. As an alleged musical effort it was bad enough, but
as a personal insult it was worse. One hesitates to repeat the
doggerel, even in an effort to be exact. However, the chorus, bellowed
shamelessly by Jack, was this:

    "Down in the Bad-lands, hear that awful sound.
    Andy Green is there a-weeping--"

Jack Bates got no further than that, for Andy first threw his plate at
Jack and then landed upon him with much force and venom, so that Jack
went backwards and waved long legs convulsively in the air, and the
Happy Family stood around and howled their appreciation of the
spectacle.

When it dawned upon them that Andy was very much in earnest, and that
his fist was landing with unpleasant frequency just where it was most
painful to receive it, they separated the two by main strength and
argued loudly for peace. But Andy was thoroughly roused and would have
none of it, and hurled at them profanity and insulting epithets, so
that more than Jack Bates looked upon him with unfriendly eyes and
said things which were not calculated to smooth roughened tempers.

"That's a-plenty, now," quelled Chip, laying detaining hand upon the
nearest, who happened to be Andy himself. "You sound like a bunch of
old women. What do you want to do the worst and quickest, Andy?--and I
don't mean killing off any of these alleged joshers, either."

Andy clicked his teeth together, swallowed hard and slowly unclenched
his hands and grinned; but the grin was not altogether a pleasant one,
and the light of battle still shone in the big, gray eyes of him.

"You're the boss," he said, "but if yuh don't like my plans you'll
just have one less to pay wages to. What I'm going to do is throw my
saddle on my private horse and ride down into the Bad-lands and see
for myself how the cards lay. Maybe it's awful funny to the rest of
yuh, but I'm takin' it kinda serious, myself, and I'm going to find
out how about it before I'm through. I can't seem to think it's a josh
when some old mark makes a play like that fellow did, and tries to put
a bullet into my carcass for riding the same trail he took. It's me
for the Bad-lands--and you can think what yuh damn' please about it."

Chip stood quite still till he was through, and eyed him sharply. "You
better take old Buck to pack your blankets and grub," he told him, in
a matter-of-fact tone. "We'll be swinging down that way in two or
three days; by next Saturday you'll find us camped at the mouth of
Jump-off Coulee, if nothing happens. That'll give you four days to
prowl around. Come on, boys--we've got a big circle ahead of us this
morning, and it's going to be hot enough to singe the tails off our
cayuses by noon."

That, of course, settled the disturbance and set the official seal of
approval upon Andy's going; for Chip was too wise to permit the affair
to grow serious, and perhaps lose a man as good as Andy; family
quarrels had not been entirely unknown among the boys of the Flying U,
and with tact they never had been more than a passing unpleasantness.
So that, although Jack Bates swore vengeance and nursed sundry bruised
spots on his face, and though Andy saddled, packed old Buck with his
blankets and meager camp outfit and rode off sullenly with no word to
anyone and only a scowling glance or two for farewell, Chip mounted
and rode cheerfully away at the head of his Happy Family, worrying not
at all over the outcome.

"I've got half a notion that Andy was telling the truth, after all,"
he remarked to Weary when they were well away from camp. "It's worth
taking a chance on, anyhow--and when he comes back things will be
smooth again."

When Saturday came and brought no Andy to camp, the Happy Family began
to speculate upon his absence. When Sunday's circle took them within
twelve or fifteen miles of the camp in the Bad-lands, Pink suddenly
proposed that they ride down there and see what was going on. "He
won't be looking for us," he explained, to hide a secret uneasiness.
"And if he's there we can find out what the josh is. If he ain't,
we'll have it on him good and strong."

"I betche Andy just wanted a lay-off, and took that way uh getting
it," declared Happy Jack pessimistically. "I betche he's in town right
now, tearing things wide open and tickled to think he don't have to
ride in this hot sun. Yuh can't never tell what Andy's got cached up
his sleeve."

"Chip thinks he was talking on the level," Weary mused. "Maybe he was;
as Happy says, yuh can't tell."

As always before, this brought the Happy Family to argument which
lasted till they neared the deep, lonely coulee where, according to
Andy, "friend Dan" had wintered with the shifty-eyed old man.

"Now, how the mischief do we get down?" questioned Jack Bates
complainingly. "This is bound to be the right place--there's the cabin
over there against the cottonwoods."

"Aw, come on back," urged Happy Jack, viewing the steep bluff with
disfavor. "Chances is, Andy's in town right now. He ain't down--"

"There's old Buck, over there by the creek," Pink announced. "I'd know
him far as I could see him. Let's ride around that way. There's sure
to be a trail down." He started off, and they followed him
dispiritedly, for the heat was something to remember afterwards with a
shudder.

"Here's the place," Pink called back to them, after some minutes of
riding. "Andy's horse is down there, too, but I don't see Andy--"

"Chances is--" began Happy Jack, but found no one listening.

It would be impossible to ride down, so they dismounted and prepared
for the scramble. They could see Buck, packed as if for the homeward
trail, and they could see Andy's horse, saddled and feeding with reins
dragging. He looked up at them and whinnied, and the sound but
accentuated the loneliness of the place. Buck, too, saw them and came
toward them, whinnying wistfully; but, though they strained eyes in
every direction, they could see nothing of the man they sought.

It was significant of their apprehension that not even Happy Jack made
open comment upon the strangeness of it. Instead, they dug bootheels
deep where the slope was loose gravel, and watched that their horses
did not slide down upon them; climbed over rocks where the way was
barred, and prayed that horse and man might not break a leg. They had
been over rough spots, and had climbed in and out of deep coulees, but
never had they travelled a rougher trail than that.

"My God! boys, look down there!" Pink cried, when yet fifty
perpendicular feet lay between them and the level below.

They looked, and drew breath sharply. Huddled at the very foot of the
last and worst slope lay Andy, and they needed no words to explain
what had happened. It was evident that he had started to climb the
bluff and had slipped and fallen to the bottom, And from the way he
was lying--The Happy Family shut out the horror of the thought and
hurried recklessly to the place.

It was Pink who, with a last slide and a stumbling recovery at the
bottom, reached him first. It was Jack Bates who came a close second
and helped to turn him--for he had fallen partly on his face. From the
way one arm was crumpled back under him, they knew it to be broken.
Further than that they could only guess and hope. While they were
feeling for heart-beats, the others came down and crowded close. Pink
looked up at them strainedly.

"Oh, for God's sake, some of yuh get water," he cried sharply. "What
good do yuh think you're doing, just standing around?"

"We ought to be hung for letting him come down here alone," Weary
repented. "It ain't safe for one man in this cursed country. Where's
he hurt, Cadwolloper?"

"How in hell do _I_ know?" Anxiety ever sharpened the tongue of Pink.
"If somebody'd bring some water--"

"Happy's gone. And there ain't a drop uh whisky in the crowd! Can't we
get him into the shade? This damned sun is enough to--"

"Look out how yuh lift him, man! You ain't wrassling a calf, remember!
You take his shoulder, Jack--_easy_, yuh damned, awkward--"

"Here comes Happy, with his hat full. Don't slosh it all on at once! A
little at a time's better. Get some on his head."

So with much incoherence and with everybody giving orders and each
acting independently, they bore him tenderly into the shade of a rock
and worked over him feverishly, their faces paler than his. When he
opened his eyes and stared at them dully, they could have shouted for
very relief. When he closed them again they bent over him solicitously
and dripped more water from the hat of Happy Jack. And not one of them
but remembered remorsefully the things they had said of him, not an
hour before; the things they had said even when he was lying there
alone and hurt--hurt unto death, for all they knew.

When he was roused enough to groan when they moved him, however
gently, they began to consider the problem of getting him to camp, and
they cursed the long, hot miles that lay between. They tried to
question him, but if he understood what they were saying he could not
reply except by moaning, which was not good to hear. All that they
could gather was that when they moved his body in a certain way the
pain of it was unbearable. Also, he would faint when his head was
lowered, or even lifted above the level. They must guard against that
if they meant to get him to camp alive.

"We'll have to carry him up this cussed hill, and then--If he could
ride at all, we might make it."

"The chances is he'll die on the road," croaked Happy Jack tactlessly,
and they scowled at him for voicing the fear they were trying to
ignore. They had been trying not to think that he might die on the
road, and they had been careful not to mention the possibility. As it
was, no one answered.

How they ever got him to the top of that heartbreaking slope, not one
of them ever knew. Twice he fainted outright. And Happy Jack,
carefully bearing his hat full of water for just that emergency,
slipped and spilled the whole of it just when they needed it most. At
the last, it was as if they carried a dead man between them--Jack
Bates and Cal Emmett it was who bore him up the last steep climb--and
Pink and Weary, coming behind with all the horses, glanced fearfully
into each other's eyes and dared not question.

At the top they laid him down in the grass and swore at Happy Jack,
because they must do something, and because they dared not face what
might be before them. They avoided looking at one another while they
stood helplessly beside the still figure of the man they had maligned.
If he died, they would always have that bitter spot in their
memory--and even with the fear of his dying they stood remorseful.

Of a sudden Andy opened his eyes and looked at them with the light of
recognition, and they bent eagerly toward him. "If--yuh could--on--my
horse--I--I--could ride--maybe." Much pain it cost him, they knew by
the look on his face. But he was game to the last--just as they knew
he would be.

"Yuh couldn't ride Twister, yuh know yuh couldn't," Pink objected
gently. "But--if yuh could ride Jack's horse--he's dead gentle, and
we'd help hold yuh on. Do you think yuh could?"

Andy moved his head uneasily. "I--I've got to," he retorted weakly,
and even essayed a smile to reassure them. "I--ain't all--in yet," he
added with an evident effort, and the Happy Family gulped
sympathetically, and wondered secretly if they would have such nerve
under like conditions.

"It's going to be one hell of a trip for yuh," Weary murmured
commiseratingly, when they were lifting him into the saddle. Of a
truth, it did seem absolutely foolhardy to attempt it, but there was
nothing else to do, unless they left him there. For no wagon could
possibly be driven within miles of the place.

Andy leaned limply over the saddle-horn, his face working with the
agony he suffered. Somehow they had got him upon the horse of Jack
Bates, but they had felt like torturers while they did it, and the
perspiration on their faces was not all caused by heat.

"My God, I'd rather be hung than go through this again," muttered Cal,
white under the tan. "I--"

"I'll tackle--it now," gasped Andy, with a pitiful attempt to sit
straight in the saddle. "Get on--boys--"

Reluctantly they started to obey, when the horse of Jack Bates gave a
sudden leap ahead. Many hands reached out to grasp him by the bridle,
but they were a shade too late, and he started to run, with Andy
swaying in the saddle. While they gazed horrified, he straightened
convulsively, turned his face toward them and raised a hand; caught
his hat by the brim and swung it high above his head.

"Much obliged, boys," he yelled derisively. "I sure do appreciate
being packed up that hill; it was too blamed hot to walk. Say! if
you'd gone around that bend, you'd uh found a good trail down. Yuh
struck about the worst place there is. So-long--I ain't all in yet!"
He galloped away, while the Happy Family stared after him with bulging
eyes.

"The son-of-a-gun!" gasped Weary weakly, and started for his horse.

"Darn yuh, you'll _be_ all in when we get hold of yuh!" screamed Jack
Bates, and gave chase.

It was when they were tearing headlong after him down the coulee's rim
and into a shallow gully which seamed unexpectedly the level, that
they saw his horse swerve suddenly and go bounding along the edge of
the slope with Andy "sawing" energetically upon the bit.

"What trick's he up to now?" cried Cal Emmett resentfully, feeling
that, in the light of what had gone before, Andy could not possibly
make a single motion in good faith.

Andy brought his horse under control and turned back to meet them, and
the Happy Family watched him guardedly until they reached the gulley
and their own horses took fright at a dark, shambling object that
scuttled away down toward the coulee-head. Andy was almost upon them
before they could give him any attention.

"Did you see it?" he called excitedly. "It was a bear, and he was
digging at something under that shelving rock. Come on and let's take
a look."

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack adjured crossly. He was thinking of all the
water he had carried painstakingly in his hat, for the relief of this
conscienceless young reprobate, and he was patently suspicious of some
new trick.

"Well, by gracious!" Andy rode quite close--dangerously close,
considering the mood they were in--and eyed them queerly. "I sure must
have a horrible rep, when yuh won't believe your own eyes just because
I happen to remark that a bear is a bear. I'll call it a pinto hog, if
it'll make yuh feel any better. And I'll say it wasn't doing any
digging; only, I'm going down there and take a look. There's an
odor--"

There was, and they could not deny it, even though Andy did make the
assertion. And though they had threatened much that was exceedingly
unpleasant, and what they would surely do to Andy if they ever got him
within reach, they followed him quite peaceably.

They saw him get off his horse and stand looking down at
something--and there was that in his attitude which made them jab
spurs against their horses' flanks. A moment later they, too, were
looking down at something, and they were not saying a word.

"It's Dan, all right," said Andy at last, and his tone was hushed. "I
hunted the coulee over--every foot of it--and looked up some of the
little draws, and went along the river; but I couldn't find any trace
of him. I never thought about coming up here.

"Look there. His head was smashed in with a rock or something--ugh!
Here, let me away, boys. This thing--" He walked uncertainly away and
sat down upon a rock with his face in his hands, and what they could
see of his face was as white as the tan would permit. Somehow, not a
man of them doubted him then. And not a man of them but felt much the
same. They backed away and stood close to where Andy was sitting.

"You wouldn't believe me when I told yuh," he reproached, when the
sickness had passed and he could lift his head and look at them. "You
thought I was lying, and yuh made yourselves pretty blamed obnoxious
to me--but I got even for _that_." There was much satisfaction in his
tone, and the Happy Family squirmed. "Yuh see, I was telling the
truth, all right--and now I'm going to get even some more. I'm going
to take--er--Pink along for a witness, and notify the outfit that yuh
won't be back for a day or two, and send word to the sheriff. And you
jaspers can have the pleasure uh standing guard over--_that_." He
shivered a little and turned his glance quickly away. "And I hope," he
added maliciously, as he mounted his own horse, "you'll make Jack
Bates stand an all-night guard by his high lonesome. He's sure got it
coming to him!"

With Pink following close at his heels he rode away up the ridge.

"Say, there's grub enough on old Buck to do yuh to-night," he called
down to them, "in case Chip don't send yuh any till to-morrow." He
waved a subdued farewell and turned his face again up the ridge, and
before they had quite decided what to do about it, he was gone.

       *       *       *       *       *




"WOLF! WOLF!"


Andy Green, of the Flying U, loped over the grassy level and hummed a
tune as he rode. The sun shone just warm enough to make a man feel
that the world was good enough for him, and the wind was just a lazy,
whispering element to keep the air from growing absolutely still and
stagnant. There was blue sky with white, fluffy bits of cloud like
torn cotton drifting as lazily as the wind, and there were
meadow-larks singing and swaying, and slow-moving range cattle with
their calves midway to weaning time. Not often may one ride leisurely
afar on so perfect a day, and while Andy was a sunny-natured fellow at
all times, on such a day he owned not a care.

A mile farther, and he rode over a low shoulder of the butte he was
passing, ambled down the long slope on the far side, crossed another
rounded hill, followed down a dry creek-bed at the foot of it, sought
with his eye for a practicable crossing and went headlong down a
steep, twenty-foot bank; rattled the loose rocks in the dry, narrow
channel and went forging up a bank steeper than the first, with
creaking saddle-leather and grunting horse, and struck again easy
going.

"She slipped on me," he murmured easily, meaning the saddle. "I'm
riding on your tail, just about; but I guess we can stand it the rest
uh the why, all right." If he had not been so lazy and self-satisfied
he would have stopped right there and reset the saddle. But if he had,
he might have missed something which he liked to live over o' nights.

He went up a gentle rise, riding slowly because of the saddle, passed
over the ridge and went down another short slope. At the foot of the
slope, cuddled against another hill, stood a low, sod-roofed cabin
with rusty stove-pipe rising aslant from one corner. This was the spot
he had been aiming for, and he neared it slowly.

It was like a dozen other log cabins tucked away here and there among
the foothills of the Bear Paws. It had an air of rakish hominess, as
if it would be a fine, snuggy place in winter, when the snow and the
wind swept the barren land around. In the summer, it stood open-doored
and open-windowed, with all the litter of bachelor belongings
scattered about or hanging from pegs on the wall outside. There was a
faint trail of smoke from the rusty pipe, and it brought a grunt of
satisfaction from Andy.

"He's home, all right. And if he don't throw together some uh them
sour-dough biscuits uh his, there'll be something happen! Hope the
bean-pot's full. G'wan, yuh lazy old skate." He slapped the rein-ends
lightly down the flanks of his horse and went at a trot around the end
of the cabin. And there he was so utterly taken by surprise that he
almost pulled his mount into a sitting posture.

A young woman was stooping before the open door, and she was pouring
something from a white earthen bowl into a battered tin pan. Two
waggle-tailed lambs--a black one and a white--were standing on their
knees in their absorption, and were noisily drinking of the stuff as
fast as it came within reach.

Andy had half a minute in which to gaze before the young woman looked
up, said "Oh!" in a breathless sort of way and retreated to the
doorstep, where she stood regarding him inquiringly.

Andy, feeling his face go unreasonably red, lifted his hat. He knew
that she was waiting for him to speak, but he could not well say any
of the things he thought, and blurted out an utterly idiotic question.

"What are yuh feeding 'em?"

The girl looked down at the bowl in her hands and laughed a little.

"Rolled oats," she answered, "boiled very thin and with condensed
cream added to taste. Good morning." She seemed about to disappear,
and that brought Andy to his senses. He was not, as a rule, a bashful
young man.

"Good morning. Is--er--Mr. Johnson at home?" He came near saying
"Take-Notice," but caught himself in time. Take-Notice Johnson was
what men called the man whom Andy had ridden over to see upon a more
or less trivial matter.

"He isn't, but he will be back--if you care to wait." She spoke with a
certain preciseness which might be natural or artificial, and she
stood in the doorway with no symptoms of immediate disappearance.

Andy slid over a bit in the saddle, readjusted his hat so that its
brim would shield his eyes from the sunlight, and prepared to be
friendly. "Oh, I'll wait," he said easily. "I've got all the time
there is. Would you mind if I smoked a cigarette?"

"Indeed, I was wishing you would," she told him, with surprising
frankness. "I've so longed to see a dashing young cowboy roll a
cigarette with deft, white fingers."

Andy, glancing at her startled, spilled much tobacco down the front of
him, stopped to brush it away and let the lazy breeze snatch the tiny
oblong of paper from between his unwatchful fingers. Of course, she
was joshing him, he thought uneasily, as he separated the leaves of
his cigarette book by blowing gently upon them, and singled out
another paper. "Are yuh so new to the country that it's anything of a
treat?" he asked guardedly.

"Yes, I'm new. I'm what you people call a pilgrim. Don't you do it
with one hand? I thought--oh, yes! You hold the reins between your
firm, white teeth while you roll--"

"Lady, I never travelled with no show," Andy protested mildly and
untruthfully. _Was_ she just joshing? Or didn't she know any better?
She looked sober as anything, but somehow her eyes kind of--

"You see, I know some things about you. Those are chaps" (Heavens! She
called them the way they are spelled, without the soft sound of s!)
"That you're wearing for--trousers" (Andy blushed modestly. He was not
wearing them "for trousers".), "and you've got jingling rowels at your
heels, and those are taps--"

"You're going to be shy a yard or two of calico if that black
lamb-critter has his say-so," Andy cut in remorselessly, and hastily
made and lighted his cigarette while she was rescuing her blue calico
skirt from the jaws of the black lamb and puckering her eyebrows over
the chewed place. When her attention was once more given to him, he
was smoking as unobtrusively as possible, and he was gazing at her
with a good deal of speculative admiration. He looked hastily down at
the lambs. "Mary had _two_ little lambs," he murmured inanely.

"They're not mine," she informed him, taking him seriously--or seeming
to do so. Andy had some trouble deciding just how much of her was
sincere. "They were here when I came, and I can't take them back with
me, so there's no use in claiming them. They'd be such a nuisance on
the train--"

"I reckon they would," Andy agreed, "if yuh had far to go."

"Well, you can't call San Jose _close_," she observed, meditatively.
"It takes four days to come."

"You're a long way from home. Does it--are yuh homesick, ever?" Andy
was playing for information without asking directly how long she
intended to stay--a question which had suddenly seemed quite
important. Also, why was she stopping here with Take-Notice Johnson,
away off from everybody?

"Seeing I've only been here four days, the novelty hasn't worn off
yet," she replied. "But it does seem more like four weeks; and how
I'll ever stand two months of it, not ever seeing a soul but father--"

Andy looked reproachful, and also glad. Didn't she consider him a
soul? And Take-Notice was her dad! To be sure, Take-Notice had never
mentioned having a daughter, but then, in the range-land, men don't go
around yawping their personal affairs.

Before Take-Notice returned, Andy felt that he had accomplished much.
He had learned that the young woman's name really was Mary, and that
she was a stenographer in a real-estate office in San Jose, where her
mother lived; that the confinement of office-work had threatened her
with pulmonary tuberculosis (Andy failed, at the moment, to recognize
the disease which had once threatened him also, and wondered vaguely)
and that the doctor had advised her coming to Montana for a couple of
months; that she had written to her father (it seemed queer to have
anyone speak of old Take-Notice as "father") and that he had told her
to "come a-running."

She told Andy that she had not seen her father for five years (Andy
knew that Take-Notice had disappeared for a whole winter, about that
long ago, and that no one had discovered where he went) because he and
her mother were "not congenial."

He had dismounted, at her invitation, and had gone clanking to the
doorstep and sat down--giving a furtive kick now and then at the black
lamb, which developed a fondness for the leathern fringe on his
chaps--and had eaten an orange which she had brought in her trunk all
the way from San Jose, and which she had picked from a tree which
stood by her mother's front gate. He had nibbled a ripe olive--eating
it with what Andy himself would term "long teeth"--and had tried hard
not to show how vile he found it. He had inspected two star-fishes
which she had found last Fourth-of-July at Monterey and had dried; and
had crumpled a withered leaf of bay in his hands and had smelled and
nearly sneezed his head off; and had cracked and eaten four
walnuts--also gathered from her mother's yard--and three almonds from
the same source, and had stared admiringly at a note-book filled with
funny marks which she called shorthand.

Between-whiles Andy had told her his name and the name of the outfit
he worked for; had explained what he meant by "outfit," and had drawn
a large U in the dirt to show her what a Flying U was, and had wanted
to murder the black lamb which kept getting in his way and trying to
eat the stick Andy used for a pencil; had confessed that he did
sometimes play cards for money, as do the cowboys in Western stories,
but assured her that he had never killed off any of his friends during
any little disagreement. He had owned to drinking a glass of whisky
now and then, but declared that it was only for snake bite and did not
happen oftener than once in six months or so. Yes, he had often had
rattlers in his bed, but not to hurt. This is where he began to
inspect the star-fishes, and so turned the conversation safely back to
California and himself away from the temptation to revel in fiction.

All of which took time, so that Take-Notice came before they quite
felt a longing for his presence; and though the sun shone straight in
the cabin door and so proved that it was full noon, there was no fire
left in the stove and nothing in sight that was eatable save another
ripe olive--which Andy had politely declined--and two more almonds and
an orange.

A stenographer, with a fluffy pompadour that dipped distractingly at
one side, and a gold watch suspended around the neck like a locket,
and with sleeves that came no farther than the elbow and heels higher
than any riding boot Andy ever owned in his life, and with teeth that
were very white and showed a glint of gold here and there, and eyes
that looked at one with insincere gravity, and fingers with nails that
shone--fingers that pinched red lips together meditatively--a
stenographer who has all these entrancing attributes, Andy discovered,
may yet lack those housewifely accomplishments that make a man dream
of a little home for two. So far as Andy could see, her knowledge of
cookery extended no farther than rolled oat porridge for the two
lambs.

Take-Notice it was who whittled shavings and started the fire without
any comment upon the hour or his appetite; who went to the spring and
brought water, half-filled the enameled teakettle which had large,
bare patches where the enamel had been chipped off in the stress of
baching, and sliced the bacon and mixed the "sour-dough" biscuits. To
be sure, he had done those things for years and thought nothing of it;
Andy, also, had done those things, many's the time, and had thought
nothing of it, either. But to do them while a young woman sits calmly
by and makes no offer of help, but talks of many things, unconscious
even of her world-old, feminine duties and privileges, that struck
Andy with a cold breath of disillusionment.

He watched her unobtrusively while she talked. She never once seemed
to feel that cooking belonged to woman, and as far as he could see
Take-Notice did not feel so either. So Andy mentally adjusted himself
to the novelty and joyed in her presence.

To show how successful was his mental adjustment, it is necessary
merely to state one fact: Where he had intended to stop an hour or so,
he stayed the afternoon; ate supper there and rode home at sundown,
his mind a jumble of sunny Californian days where one may gather
star-fishes and oranges, bay leaves and ripe olives at will, and of
black and white lambs which always obtrude themselves at the wrong
moment and break off little, intimate confidences about life in a
real-estate office, perhaps; and of polished finger-nails that never
dip themselves in dishwater--Andy had come to believe that it would be
neither right or just to expect them to do so common a thing.

The season was what the range calls "between roundups," so that Andy
went straight to the ranch and found the Happy Family in or around the
bunk-house, peacefully enjoying their before-bedtime smoke. Andy,
among other positive faults and virtues, did not lack a certain degree
of guile. Men there were at the Flying U who would ride in haste if
they guessed that a pompadoured young woman from California was at the
end of the trail, and Andy, knowing well the reputation he bore among
them, set that reputation at work to keep the trail empty of all
riders save himself. When someone asked him idly what had kept him so
long, he gazed around at them with his big, innocent gray eyes.

"Why, I was just getting acquainted with the new girl," he answered
simply and truthfully.

Truth being something which the Happy Family was unaccustomed to from
the lips of Andy Green, they sniffed scornfully.

"What girl?" demanded Irish bluntly.

"Why, Take-Notice's girl. His young lady daughter that is visiting
him. She's mighty nice, and she's got style about her, and she was
feeding two lambs. Her name," he added softly, "is Mary."

Since no one had ever heard that Take-Notice had a daughter, the Happy
Family could not be blamed for doubting Andy. They did doubt,
profanely and volubly.

"Say, did any of you fellows ever eat a ripe olive?" Andy broke in,
when he could make himself heard. "Well," he explained mildly, when
came another rift of silence in the storm-cloud of words, "When yuh
ride over there, she'll likely give yuh one to try; but yuh take my
advice and pass it up. I went up against one, and I ain't got the
taste out uh my mouth yet. It's sure fierce."

More words, from which Andy gathered that they did not believe
anything he said; that he was wasting time and breath, and that his
imagination was weak and his lies idiotic. He'd better not let
Take-Notice hear how he was taking his name in vain and giving him a
daughter--and so on.

"Say, did yuh ever see a star-fish? Funniest thing yuh ever saw, all
pimply, and pink, and with five points to 'em. She's got two. When yuh
go over, you ask her to let yuh see 'em." Andy was in bed, then, and
he spoke through the dusk toward the voices. What those voices had
just then been saying seemed to have absolutely no effect upon him.

"Oh, dry up!" Irish commanded impatiently. "Nobody's thinking uh
riding over there, yuh chump. What kind of easy marks do yuh think we
are?"

Andy laughed audibly in his corner next the window. "Say, you fellows
do amuse me a lot. By gracious, I'll bet five dollars some of yuh take
the trail over there, soon or late. I--I'll bet five dollars to _one_
that yuh do! The bet to hold good for--well, say six weeks. But yuh
better not take me up, boys--especially Irish, that ain't got a girl
at present. Yes, or _any_ of yuh, by gracious! It'll be a case for
breach-uh-promise for any one uh yuh. Say, she's a bird! Got goldy
hair, and a dimple in her chin and eyes that'd make a man--"

With much reviling they accepted the wager, and after that Andy went
peacefully to sleep, quite satisfied for the time with the effect
produced by his absolute truthfulness; it did not matter much, he told
himself complacently, what a man's reputation might be, so long as he
recognized its possibilities and shaped his actions properly.

It is true that when he returned from Dry Lake, not many days after,
with a package containing four new ties and a large, lustrous silk
handkerchief of the proper, creamy tint, the Happy Family seemed to
waver a bit. When he took to shaving every other day, and became
extremely fastidious about his finger-nails and his boots and the knot
in his tie, and when he polished the rowels of his spurs with Patsy's
scouring brick (which Patsy never used) and was careful to dent his
hat-crown into four mathematically correct dimples before ever he
would ride away from the ranch, the Happy Family looked thoughtful and
discussed him privately in low tones.

But when Andy smilingly assured them that he was going over to call on
Take-Notice's girl, and asked them if they wouldn't like to come along
and be introduced, and taste a ripe olive, and look at the
star-fishes, and smell a crumpled leaf of bay, they backed
figuratively from the wiles of him and asserted more or less
emphatically he couldn't work _them_. Then Andy would grin and ride
gaily away, and Flying U Coulee would see him no more for several
hours. It was mere good fortune--from Andy's viewpoint--that duty did
not immediately call the Happy Family, singly or as a whole, to ride
across the hills toward the cabin of Take-Notice Johnson. Without a
legitimate excuse, he felt sure of their absence from the place, and
he also counted optimistically upon their refusing to ask any one whom
they might meet, if Take-Notice Johnson had a daughter visiting him.

Four weeks do not take much space in a calendar, nor much time to
live; yet in the four that came just after Andy's discovery, he
accomplished much, even in his own modest reckoning. He had taught the
girl to watch for his coming and to stand pensively in the door with
many good-bye messages when he said he must hit the trail. He had
formed definite plans for the future and had promised her quite
seriously that he would cut out gambling, and never touch liquor in
any form--unless the snake was a _very_ big one and sunk his fangs in
a vital spot, in which dire contingency Mary absolved him from his
vow. He had learned the funny marks that meant his name and hers in
shorthand and had watched with inner satisfaction her efforts to learn
how to fry canned corn in bacon grease, and to mix sour-dough biscuits
that were neither yellow with too much soda nor distressfully "soggy"
with too little, and had sat a whole, blissful afternoon in his
shirtsleeves, while Mary bent her blond pompadour domestically over
his coat, sewing in the sleeve-linings that are prone to come loose
and torment a man. To go back to the first statement, which includes
all these things and much more, Andy had, in those four weeks,
accomplished much.

But a girl may not live forever in that lonely land with only Andy
Green to discover her presence, and the rumors which at first buzzed
unheeded in the ears of the Happy Family, stung them at last to the
point of investigation; so that on a Sunday--the last Sunday before
the Flying U wagons took again to the trailless range-land, Irish and
Jack Bates rode surreptitiously up the coulee half an hour after Andy,
blithe in his fancied security, had galloped that way to spend a long
half-day with Mary. If he discovered them they would lose a dollar
each--but if they discovered a girl such as Andy had pictured, they
felt that it would be a dollar well lost.

In the range-land many strange things may happen. Irish and Jack
pulled up short when, off to their right, in a particularly, lonely
part of that country, broken into seamed coulees and deep-scarred
hills, they heard a faint halloo. With spurs pricking deep and
frequent they hurried to the spot; looked down a grassy swale and saw
Andy lying full length upon the ground in rather a peculiar pose,
while his horse fed calmly a rein-length away.

They stopped and looked at him, and at each other; rode cautiously to
within easy rifle shot and stopped again.

"Ain't yuh getting tired feelings kinda unseasonable in the day?" Jack
Bates called out guardedly.

"I--I'm hurt, boys," Andy lifted his head to say, strainedly. "My hoss
stepped in a hole, and I wasn't looking for it. I guess--my leg's
broke."

Jack snorted. "That so? Sure it ain't your neck, now? Seems to me your
head sets kinda crooked. Better feel it and find out, while we go on
where we're going." He half turned his horse up the hill again,
resenting the impulse which had betrayed him a hand's breadth from the
trail.

Andy waited a moment. Then: "On the dead, boys, my leg's broke--like
you'd bust a dry stick. Come and see--for yourselves."

"Maybe--" Irish began, uncertainly, in an undertone. Andy's voice had
in it a note of pain that was rather convincing.

"Aw, he's just trying to head us off. Didn't I help pack him up that
ungodly bluff, last spring, thinking he was going to die before we got
him to the top--and him riding off and giving us the horse-laugh to
pay for it? You can bite, if yuh want to; I'm going on. I sure savvy
Andy Green."

"Come and look," Andy begged from below. "If I'm joshing--"

"You can josh and be darned," finished Jack for him. "I don't pack you
up hill more than once, old-timer. We're going to call on your
Mary-girl. When yuh get good and refreshed up, you can come and look
on at me and Irish acting pretty and getting a stand-in. So-long!"

Irish, looking back over his shoulder, saw Andy raise his head and
gaze after them; saw it drop upon his arms just before they went quite
over the hill. The sight stuck persistently and unpleasantly in his
memory.

"Yuh know, he _might_ be hurt," he began tentatively when they had
ridden slowly a hundred yards or so.

"He might. But he ain't. He's up to some game again, and he wouldn't
like anything better than to have us ride down there and feel his
bones. If you'd been along, that day in the Bad-lands, you'd know the
kind of bluff he can put up. Why, we all thought sure he was going to
die. He acted that natural we felt like we was packing a corpse at a
funeral--and him tickled to death all the while at the load he was
throwing! No sir, yuh don't see me swallowing no such dope as _that_,
any more. When he gets tired uh laying there, he'll recover rapid and
come on. Don't yuh worry none about Andy Green; why, man, do yuh
reckon any horse-critter could break _his_ leg--a rider like him? He
knows more ways uh falling off a horse without losing the ashes off
his cigarette than most men know how to--how to punish grub! Andy
Green _couldn't_ get hurt with a horse! If he could, he'd uh been dead
and playing his little harp long ago."

Such an argument was more convincing than the note of pain in the
voice of Andy, so that Irish shook off his uneasiness and laughed at
the narrow escape he'd had from being made a fool. And speedily they
forgot the incident.

It was Take-Notice who made them remember, when they had been an hour
or so basking themselves, so to speak, in the smiles of Mary. They had
fancied all along that she had a curiously expectant air, and that she
went very often to the door to see what the lambs were up to--and
always lifted her eyes to the prairie slope down which they had ridden
and gazed as long as she dared. They were not dull; they understood
quite well what "lamb" it was that held half the mind of her, and they
were piqued because of their understanding, and not disposed to
further the cause of the absent. Therefore, when Take-Notice asked
casually what had become of Andy, Jack Bates moved his feet
impatiently, shot a sidelong glance at the girl (who was at that
moment standing where she could look out of the window) and laughed
unpleasantly.

"Oh, Andy's been took again with an attack uh bluff," he answered
lightly. "He gets that way, ever so often, you know. We left him
laying in a sunny spot, a few miles back, trying to make somebody
think he was hurt, so they'd pack him home and he'd have the laugh on
them for all summer."

"Wasn't he hurt?" The girl turned suddenly and her voice told how much
it meant to her. But Jack was not sympathetic.

"No, he wasn't hurt. He was just playing off. He got us once, that
way, and he's never given up the notion that he could do it again. We
may be easy, but--"

"I don't understand," the girl broke in sharply. "Do you mean that he
would deliberately try to deceive you into believing he was hurt, when
he wasn't?"

"Miss Johnson," Jack replied sorrowfully, "he would. He would lose
valuable sleep for a month, studying up the smoothest way to deceive.
I guess," he added artfully, and as if the subject was nearly
exhausted, "yuh don't know Mr. Green very well."

"I remember hearing about that job he put up on yuh," Take-Notice
remarked, not noticing that the girl's lips were opened for speech,
"Yuh made a stretcher, didn't yuh, and--"

"No--he told it that way, but he's such a liar he couldn't tell the
truth if he wanted to. We found him lying at the bottom of a steep
bluff, and he appeared to be about dead. It looked as if he'd slipped
and fallen down part way. So we packed water and sloshed in his face,
and he kinda come to, and then we packed him up the bluff--and yuh
know what the Bad-lands is like, Take-Notice. It was unmerciful hot,
too, and we like to died getting him up. At the top we laid him down
and worked over him till we got him to open his eyes, and he could
talk a little and said maybe he could ride if we could get him on a
horse. The--he made us _lift_ him into the saddle--and considering the
size of him, it was something of a contract--and then he made as if he
couldn't stay on, even. But first we knew he digs in the spurs, yanks
off his hat and lets a yell out of him you could hear a mile, and
says: 'Much obliged, boys, it was too blamed hot to walk up that
hill,' and off he goes."

Take-Notice stretched his legs out before him, pushed his hands deep
down in his trousers' pockets, and laughed and laughed. "That was sure
one on you," he chuckled. "Andy's a hard case, all right."

But the girl stood before him, a little pale and with her chin high.
"Father, how can you think it's funny?" she cried impatiently. "It
seems to me--er--I think it's perfectly horrid for a man to act like
that. And you say, Mr. Bates, that he's out there _now_"--she swept a
very pretty hand and arm toward the window--"acting the same silly
sort of falsehood?"

"I don't know where he is _now_," Jack answered judicially. "That's
what he was doing when we came past."

She went to the door and stood looking vaguely out at nothing in
particular, and Irish took the opportunity to kick Jack on the
ankle-bone and viciously whisper, "Yuh damned chump!" But Jack smiled
serenely. Irish, he reflected, had not been with them that day in the
Bad-lands, and so had not the same cause for vengeance. He remembered
that Irish had laughed, just as Take-Notice was laughing, when they
told him about it; but Jack had never been able to see the joke, and
his conscience did not trouble him now.

More they said about Andy Green--he and Take-Notice, with Irish mostly
silent and with the girl extremely indignant at times and at others
slightly incredulous, but always eager to hear more. More they said,
not with malice, perhaps, for they liked Andy Green, but with the
spirit of reminiscence strong upon them. Many things that he had said
and done they recalled and laughed over--but the girl did not laugh.
At sundown, when they rode away, she scribbled a hasty note, put it in
an envelope and entrusted it to Irish for immediate delivery to the
absent and erring one. Then they rode home, promising each other that
they would sure devil Andy to death when they saw him, and wishing
that they had ridden long ago to the cabin of Take-Notice. It was not
pleasant to know that Andy Green had again fooled them completely.

None at the ranch had seen Andy, and they speculated much upon the
nature of the game he was playing. Happy Jack wanted to bet that Andy
really had broken his leg--but that was because he had a present
grievance against Irish and hated to agree with anything he said. But
when they went to bed, the Happy Family had settled unanimously upon
the theory that Andy had ridden to Dry Lake, and would come loping
serenely down the trail next day.

Irish did not know what time it was when he found himself sitting up
in bed listening, but he discovered Pink getting quietly into his
clothes. Irish hesitated a moment, and then felt under his pillow for
his own garments--long habit had made him put them there--and began to
dress. "I guess I'll go along with yuh," he whispered.

"Yuh can if yuh want to," Pink answered ungraciously. "But yuh needn't
raise the long howl if--"

"Hold on, boys; my ante's on the table," came guardedly from Weary's
bunk, and there was a soft, shuffling sound as of moving blankets; the
subdued scrape of boots pulled from under bunks, and the quiet
searching for hats and gloves. There was a clank of spur-chains, the
faint squeal of a hinge gone rusty, a creak of a loose board, and then
the three stood together outside under the star-sprinkle and avoided
looking at one another. Without a word they went down the deep-worn
path to the big gate, swung it open and headed for the corral where
slept their horses.

"If them bone-heads don't wake up, nobody'll be any the wiser--and
it's a lovely night for a ramble," murmured Weary, consoling himself.

"Well, I couldn't sleep," Irish confessed, half defiantly. "I expect
it's just a big josh, but--it won't do any hurt to make sure."

"Yuh all think Andy Green lives to tell lies," snapped Pink, throwing
the saddle on his horse with a grunt at the weight of it. The horse
flinched away from its impact, and Pink swore at it viciously. "Yuh
might uh gone down and made sure, anyhow," he criticised.

"Well, I was going to; but Jack said--" Irish stooped to pick up the
latigo and did not finish. "But I can't get over the way his head
dropped down on his arms, when we were riding out uh sight. As if--oh,
hell! If it was a josh, I'll just about beat the head off him for
spoiling my sleep this way. Get your foot off that rein, yuh damned,
clumsy bench!" This last to his horse.

They rode slowly away from the ranch and made the greater haste when
the sound of their galloping could not reach the dulled ears of those
who slept. They did not talk much, and when they did it was to tell
one another what great fools they were--but even in the telling they
urged their horses to greater speed.

"Well," Pink summed up at last, "if he's hurt, out here, we're doing
the right thing; and if he ain't, he won't be there to have the laugh
on us; so it's all right either way."

There was black shadow in the grassy swale where they found him. His
horse had wandered off and it was only the sure instinct of Irish that
led them to the spot where he lay, a blacker shadow in the darkness
that a passing cloud had made. Just at first they thought him dead,
but when they lifted him he groaned and then spoke.

"It's one on me, this time," he said, and the throat of Irish pinched
achingly together at the sound of his voice, which had in it the note
of pain he had been trying to forget.

After that he said nothing at all, because he was a senseless weight
in their arms.

At daylight Irish was pounding vehemently the door of the White House
and calling for the Little Doctor. Andy lay stretched unconscious upon
the porch beside him, and down in the bunk-house the Happy Family was
rubbing eyes and exclaiming profanely at the story Pink was telling.

"And here," finished Irish a couple of hours later, when he was
talking the thing over with the Little Doctor, "here's a note
Take-Notice's girl gave me for him. I don't reckon there's any good
news in it, so maybe yuh better hold it out on him till he's got over
the fever. I guess we queered Andy a lot--but I'll ride over, soon as
I can, and fix it up with her and tell her he broke his leg, all
right. Maybe," he finished optimistically, "she'll come over to see
him."

Irish kept his word, though he delayed until the next day; and the
next day it was too late. For the cabin of Take-Notice was closed and
empty, and the black lamb and the white were nosing unhappily their
over-turned pan of mush, and bleating lonesomely. Irish waited a while
and started home again; rode into the trail and met Bert Rogers, who
explained:

"Take-Notice was hauling his girl, trunk and all, to the depot," he
told Irish. "I met 'em just this side the lane. They aimed to catch
the afternoon train, I reckon. She was going home, Take-Notice told
me."

So Irish rode thoughtfully back to the ranch and went straight to the
White House where Andy lay, meaning to break the news as carefully as
he knew how.

Andy was lying in bed looking big-eyed at the ceiling, and in his hand
was the note. He turned his head and glanced indifferently at Irish.

"Yuh sure made a good job of it, didn't yuh?" he began calmly, though
it was not the calm which meant peace. "I was just about engaged to
that girl. If it'll do yuh any good to know how nice and thorough yuh
busted everything up for me, read that." He held out the paper, and
Irish turned a guilty red when he took it.

  "Mr. Green: I have just been greatly entertained with the history
  of your very peculiar deeds and adventures, and I wish to say that
  I have discovered myself wholly lacking the sense of humor which
  is necessary to appreciate you.

  "As I am going home to-morrow, this is my only opportunity of
  letting you know how thoroughly I detest falsehood in _any_ form.
  Yours truly,

  "MARY EDITH JOHNSON."

"Ain't yuh proud?" Andy inquired in a peculiar, tired voice. "Maybe
I'm a horrible liar, all right--but I never done anybody a dirty trick
like that."

Irish might have said it was Jack Bates who did the mischief, but he
did not. "We never knew it was anything serious," he explained
contritely. "On the dead, I'm sorry--"

"And that does a damned lot uh good--if she's gone!" Andy cut in,
miserably.

"Oh, she's gone, all right. She went to-day," murmured Irish, and went
out and shut the door softly behind him.

       *       *       *       *       *




FOOL'S GOLD.


Andy Green, unshaven as to face and haggard as to eyes, leaned upon
his stout, willow stick and looked gloomily away to the west. He was a
good deal given to looking to the west, these days when a leg
new-healed kept him at the ranch, though habit and inclination would
have sent him riding fast and far over prairies untamed. Inaction
comes hard when a man has lived his life mostly in the open, doing
those things which keep brain and muscle keyed alike to alertness and
leave no time for brooding.

If Andy had not broken his leg but had gone with the others on
roundup, he would never have spent the days glooming unavailingly
because a girl with a blond pompadour and teasing eyes had gone away
and taken with her a false impression of his morals, and left behind
her the sting of a harsh judgment against which there seemed no
appeal. As it was, he spent the time going carefully over his past in
self-justification, and in remembering every moment that he had spent
with Mary Johnson in those four weeks when she stayed with her father
and petted the black lamb and the white.

In his prejudiced view, he had never done anything to make a girl hate
him. He had not always told the truth--he would admit that with
candid, gray eyes looking straight into your own--but he had never
lied to harm a man, which, it seemed to him, makes all the difference
in the world.

If he could once have told her how he felt about it, and showed her
how the wide West breeds wider morals--he did not quite know how you
would put these things, but he felt them very keenly. He wanted to
make her feel the difference; to see that little things do not count
in a man's life, after all, except when they affect him as a man when
big things are wanted of him. A little cowardice would count, for
instance, because it would show that the man would fail at the test;
but a little lie? just a harmless sort of lie that was only a "josh"
and was taken as such by one's fellows? Andy was not analytic by
nature, and he would have stumbled vaguely among words to explain his
views, but he felt very strongly the injustice of the girl's
condemnation, and he would scarcely speak to Jack Bates and Irish when
they came around making overtures for peace and goodwill.

"If she hadn't gone home so sudden, I could uh squared it all right,"
he told the Little Doctor, whenever her sympathetic attitude won him
to speech upon the subject.

"Yes, I believe you could," she would agree cheeringly. "If she's the
right sort, and cared, you could."

"She's the right sort--I know that," Andy would assert with much
decision, though modesty forbade his telling the Little Doctor that he
was also sure she cared. She did care, if a girl's actions count for
anything, or her looks and smiles. Of course she cared! Else why did
she rush off home like that, a good month before she had intended to
go? They had planned that Andy would get a "lay-off" and go with her
as far as Butte, because she would have to wait there several hours,
and Andy wanted to take her out to the Columbia Gardens and see if she
didn't think they were almost as nice as anything California could
show. Then she had gone off without any warning because Jack Bates and
Irish had told her a lot of stuff about him, Andy; if that didn't
prove she cared, argued Andy to himself, what the dickens would you
want for proof?

It was from thinking these things over and over while he lay in bed,
that Andy formed the habit of looking often towards the west when his
hurt permitted him to hobble around the house. And when a man looks
often enough in any direction, his feet will, unless hindered by fate
itself, surely follow his gaze if you give them time enough.

It was the excursion rates advertised in a Great Falls paper that
first put the idea consciously into the brain of Andy. They seemed
very cheap, and the time-limit was generous, and--San Jose was not
very far from San Francisco, the place named in the advertisement; and
if he could only see the girl and explain--It would be another month
before he would be able to work, anyway, and--A man might as well get
rid of a hundred or so travelling, as to sit in a poker game and watch
it fade away, and he would really get more out of it. Anyhow, nobody
need know where he had gone. They could think he was just going to
Butte. And he didn't give a darn if they did find it out!

He limped back into the house and began inspecting, with much
dissatisfaction, his wardrobe. He would have to stake himself to new
clothes--but he needed clothes, anyway, that fall. He could get what
he wanted in Butte, while he waited for the train to Ogden. Now that
Andy had made up his mind to go, he was in a great hurry and grudged
the days, even the hours, that must pass before he could see Mary
Edith Johnson.

Not even the Little Doctor knew the truth, when Andy appeared next
morning dressed for his journey, ate a hasty and unsatisfactory
breakfast and took the Old Man to one side with elaborate carelessness
and asked for a sum that made the Old Man blink. But no man might have
charge of the Happy Family for long without attaining that state of
mental insulation which renders a shock scientifically impossible. The
Old Man wrote a check, twisted his mouth into a whimsical knot and
inquired mildly: "What's the brand of devilment this time, and how
long's it going to take yuh?" With a perceptible emphasis on the word
_this_.

For probably the first time in his life Andy blushed and stammered
over a lie, and before he had got out more than two words, the Old Man
seemed to understand the situation quite thoroughly. He said "Oh, I
see. Well, git a round-trip ticket and be dead sure yuh don't out-stay
the limit." He took out his pipe and filled it meditatively.

Andy blushed again--six weeks indoors had lightened the tan on his
face so that his blushes showed very plainly--and made desperate
denial. "I'm only going up to Butte. But a fellow can't have any kind
of a time there without a fair-sized roll, and--I'll be back in two or
three weeks--soon as my leg's mended thorough. I--"

"Get along with yuh!" growled the Old Man, though his eyes twinkled.
"Doggone it, don't yuh lie to _me_. Think I was shipped in on the last
train? A man don't git red in the face when he's just merely headed
for Butte. Why, doggone yuh--"

The last words had to serve for a farewell, because Andy was limping
away as fast as he could, and did not come back to the house again. He
did not even tell the Little Doctor good-by, though it was fifteen
minutes before John Wedum, the ranchhand, had the team ready to drive
Andy to town, and he was one of the Little Doctor's most loyal
subjects.

       *       *       *       *       *

Andy walked haltingly down a palm-shaded street in San Jose and
wondered just what would be the best and quickest way in which to find
Mary Edith Johnson. Three ways were open to him: He could hunt up all
the Johnsons in town--there were three full pages of them in the
directory, as he remembered with a sigh--and find out which one was
the right one; but San Jose, as he had already discovered, was not a
village, and he doubted if he could stand the walking. He could visit
all the real estate offices in town--and he was just beginning to
realize that there were almost as many real estate offices as there
were Johnsons. And he could promenade the streets in the hope of
meeting her. But always there was the important fact to face--the fact
that San Jose is not a village.

He came upon a particularly shady spot and a bench placed invitingly.
Andy sat down, eased the new-healed leg out before him and rolled a
cigarette. "This is going to be some different from hunting a stray on
the range," he told himself, with an air of deliberate cheerfulness.
"If I could get out and scurrup around on a hoss, and round her up
that way--but this footing it all over town is what grinds me." He
drew a match along the under side of the bench and held the blaze
absently to the cigarette. "There was one thing--she told about an
orange tree right beside her mother's front gate, Maybe--" He looked
around him hopefully. Just across the street was a front gate, and
beside it an orange tree; he knew because there were ripe oranges
hanging upon it. He started to rise, his blood jumping queerly, sat
down again and swore. "Every darned gate in town, just about, has got
an orange tree stuck somewhere handy by. I remember 'em now, damn
'em!"

Three cigarettes he smoked while he sat there. When he started on
again his face was grimly set toward the nearest business street. At
the first real-estate sign he stopped, pulled together his courage,
and went in. A girl sat in a corner of the room before a typewriter.
Andy saw at a glance that her hair was too dark; murmured something
and backed out. At the next place, a man was crumpled into a big
chair, reading a paper. Behind a high desk a typewriter clicked, but
Andy could not see the operator without going behind the railing, and
he hesitated.

"Looking for a snap?" asked the man briskly, coming up from his
crumpled state like a spring.

"Well, I was looking--"

"Now, here. It may not be what you want, but I'm just going to show
you this proposition and see what you think of it. It ain't going to
last--somebody's goin' to snap it up before you know it. Now, here--"

It was half an hour before Andy got away from that office, and he had
not seen who was running the machine behind the desk, even then. He
had, however, spoken rather loudly and had informed the man that he
was from Montana, with no effect whatever upon the clicking. He had
listened patiently to the glowing description of several "good buys,"
and had escaped with difficulty within ten minutes after hearing the
unseen typist addressed as "Fern."

At the third place he merely looked in at the door and retreated
hastily when the agent, like a spider on the watch, started forward.

When he limped into the office of his hotel at six o'clock, Andy was
ready to swear that every foot of land in California was for sale, and
that every man in San Jose was trying his best to sell it and looked
upon him, Andy Green, as a weak-minded millionaire who might be
induced to purchase. He had not visited all the places where they kept
bulletin-boards covered with yellowed placards abounding in large type
and many fat exclamation points and the word ONLY with a dollar mark
immediately after. All? He had not visited half of them, or a third!

That night he dreamed feverishly of "five-room, modern cottages with
bath," and of "ONLY $500.00 down and balance payable monthly," and of
ten-acre "ranches" and five-acre "ranches"--he who had been used to
numbering acres by the thousand and to whom the word "ranch" meant
miles of wire fencing and beyond that miles of open!

It took all the longing he felt for Mary Johnson to drive him out the
next morning and to turn his face toward those placarded places which
infested every street, but he went. He went with eyes that glared
hostility at every man who said "buy," and with chin set to stubborn
purpose. He meant to find Mary Edith Johnson, and he meant to find her
without all California knowing that he was looking for her. Not once
had he mentioned her name, or showed that he cared whether there was a
typewriter in the office or whether it was a girl, man or Chinaman who
clicked the keys; and yet he knew exactly how every girl typist had
her hair dressed, and what was the color of her eyes.

At two o'clock, Andy stopped suddenly and stared down at a crack in
the pavement, and his lips moved in muttered speech. "She's worked
three years in one of them places--and she 'thoroughly detests
falsehood in _any_ form'! Hell!" Is exactly what he was saying out
loud, on one of the busiest streets in San Jose.

A policeman glanced at him, looked again and came slowly toward him.
Andy took the hint and moved on decorously to the next bulletin-board,
but the revelation that had come to him there in the street dulled
somewhat his alertness, so that he came near committing himself to the
purchase of one of those ubiquitous "five-room, modern cottages with
bath" before he realized what he was doing and fled to the street
again, on the pretense that he had to catch the car which was just
slowing down for that crossing.

He boarded the car, though he had no idea of where it was going, and
fished in his pocket for a nickel. And just when he was reaching up
from the step where he stood clinging--reaching over the flower-piled
hat of a girl, to place the nickel in the outstretched palm of the
conductor, he heard for the first time in many weeks the name of Mary
Johnson. A girl at his elbow was asking the other: "What'n the world's
become of Mary Johnson? She wasn't to the dance last night, and it's
the first one--"

Andy held his breath.

"Oh, Mame quit her place with Kelly and Gray, two weeks ago. She's
gone to Santa Cruz and got a place for the summer. Her and Lola
Parsons went together, and--"

Andy took advantage of another crossing, and dropped off. He wanted to
find out when the next train left for Santa Cruz. It never occurred to
him that there might be two Mary Johnsons in the world, which was
fortunate, perhaps; he wasted no time in hesitation, and so, within
twenty minutes, he was hearing the wheels of a fast train go
_clickety-click, clickety-click_ over the switches in the suburbs of
San Jose, and he was asking the conductor what time the train would
reach Santa Cruz, and was getting snubbed for his anxiety.

Santa Cruz, when he did reach it, seemed, on a superficial
examination, to be almost as large as San Jose, and the real-estate
offices closer together and even more plentifully supplied with modern
cottages and bath--and the heart of him sank prophetically. For the
first time since he dropped off the street-car in San Jose, it seemed
to him that Mary Johnson was quite as far off, quite as unattainable
as she had ever been.

He walked slowly up Pacific Avenue and watched the hurrying crowds,
and wondered if chance would be kind to him; if he should meet her on
the street, perhaps. He did not want to canvass all the real-estate
offices in town. "It would take me till snow flies," he murmured
dispiritedly, forgetting that here was a place where snow never flew,
and sought a hotel where they were not "full to the eaves" as two
complacent clerks had already told him.

At supper, he made friends with a genial-voiced insurance agent--the
kind who does not insist upon insuring your life whether you want it
insured or not. The agent told Andy to call him Jack and use him good
and plenty--perhaps because something wistful and lonely in the gray
eyes of Andy appealed to him--and Andy took him at his word and was
grateful. He discovered what day of the week it was: Saturday, and
that on the next day Santa Cruz would be "wide-open" because of an
excursion from Sacramento. Jack offered to help him lose himself in
the crowd, and again Andy was grateful. For the first time since
leaving the Flying U he went to bed feeling not utterly alone and
friendless, and awoke pleasantly expectant. Friend Jack was to pilot
him down to the Casino at eleven, and he had incidentally made one
prediction which stuck closely to Andy, even in his sleep. Jack had
assured him that the whole town would be at the beach; and if the
whole town were at the beach, why then, Mary would surely be somewhere
in the crowd. And if she were in the crowd--"If she's there, I'll sure
get a line on her before night," Andy told himself, with much
assurance. "A fellow that's been in the habit of cutting any certain
brand of critter out of a big herd ought to be able to spot his girl
in a crowd"--and he hummed softly while he dressed.

The excursion train was already in town, and the esplanade was,
looking down from Beach Hill, a slow-moving river of hats, with
splotches of bright colors and with an outer fringe of men and women.
"That's a good-sized trail-herd uh humans," Andy remarked, and the
insurance agent laughed appreciatively.

"You wait till you see them milling around on the board walk," he
advised impressively. "If you happen to be looking for anybody, you'll
realize that there's some people scattered around in your vicinity. I
had a date with a girl, down here one Sunday during the season, and we
hunted each other from ten in the morning till ten at night and never
got sight of each other."

Andy gave him a sidelong, suspicious glance, but friend Jack was
evidently as innocent as he looked, and so Andy limped silently down
the hill to the Casino and wondered if fate were going to cheat him at
the last moment.

Once in the crowd, it was as Jack had told him it would be. He could
not regard the moving mass of humanity as individuals, though long
living where men are few had fixed upon him the habit. Now, although
he observed far more than did Jack, he felt somewhat at a loss; the
realization that Mary Johnson might pass him unrecognized troubled him
greatly. It did not once occur to him that he, with his gray Stetson
hat and his brown face and keen eyes and tall, straight-backed figure,
looked not at all like the thousands of men all around him, so that
many eyes turned to give him another glance when he passed. Mary
Johnson must be unobserving in the extreme if she failed to know him,
once she glimpsed him in the crowd.

Somewhere near one o'clock he lost Jack completely, and drifted
aimlessly alone. Jack had been hailed by a friend, had stopped for a
minute to talk, and several hundred men, women and children had come
between him and Andy, pushing and crowding and surging, because a band
had started playing somewhere. Andy got down the steps and out upon
the sand, and Jack was thereafter but a memory. He found the loose
sand hard walking with his lame leg, and almost as crowded as the
promenade, and as he stood for a minute looking up at the board walk
above him, it occurred to him that if he could get somewhere and stay
there long enough, every human being at the Casino would eventually
pass by him. He went up the steps again and worked his way along the
edge of the walk until he found a vacant spot on the railing and sat
grimly down upon it to wait.

Many cigarettes he smoked while he roosted there, watching until the
eyes of him ached with the eternal panorama of faces that were
strange. Many times he started eagerly because he glimpsed a fluffy,
blond pompadour with blue eyes beneath, and fancied for an instant
that it was Mary.

Then, when he was speculating upon the advisability of following the
stream of people that flowed out upon the pleasure pier, Mary passed
by so close that her skirt brushed his toes; passed him by, and he sat
there like a paralytic and let her go. And in the heart of him was a
queer, heavy throb that he did not in the least understand.

She was dressed in blue linen with heavy, white lace in patches here
and there, and she had a big, white hat tilted back from her face and
a long white plume drooping to one shoulder. Another girl was with
her, and a man--a man with dented panama hat and pink cheeks and a
white waistcoat and tan shoes; a man whom Andy suddenly hated most
unreasonably.

When they were all but lost in the crowd, Andy got down, gripped his
cane vindictively and followed. After all, the man was walking beside
the other girl, and not beside Mary--and the reflection brought much
solace. With the nodding, white feather to guide him, he followed them
down the walk, lost them for a second, saw them turn in at the
wide-open doors of the natatorium, saw them pause there, just inside.
Then a huge woman pushed before him, stood there and narrowed his
range of vision down to her own generous hat with its huge roses, and
when he had edged past her the three were gone.

Andy waited, comforted by the knowledge that they had not come out,
until the minutes passed his patience and he went in, searched the
gallery unavailingly, came out again and wandered on dispiritedly to
the pleasure pier. There, leaning over the rail, he saw her again
almost beneath him in the sand, scantily clad in a bathing suit. The
man, still more scantily clad, was trying to coax her into the water
and she was hanging back and laughing a good deal, with an occasional
squeal.

Andy leaned rather heavily upon the railing and watched her
gloweringly, incredulously. Custom has much to do with a man's (or a
woman's) idea of propriety, and one Andrew Green had for long been
unaccustomed to the sight of nice young women disporting themselves
thus in so public a place. He could not reconcile it with the girl as
he had known her in her father's cabin, and he was not at all sure
that he wanted to do so.

He was just turning gloomily away when she glanced up, saw him and
waved her hand. "Hello, Andy," she called gaily. "Come on down and
take a swim, why don't you?"

Andy, looking reproachfully into her upturned face, shook his head. "I
can't," he told her. "I'm lame yet." It was not at all what he had
meant to say, any more than this was the meeting he had dreamed about.
He resented both with inner rage.

"Oh. When did you come?" she asked casually, and was whisked away by
the man before Andy could tell her. The other girl was there also, and
the three ran gleefully down to meet a roller larger than the others
had been; met it, were washed, with much screaming and laughter, back
to shore and stood there dripping. Andy glared down upon them and
longed for the privilege of drowning the fellow.

"We're going up into the plunge," called Mary. "Come on. I'll see you,
when I come out." They scampered away, and he, calling himself many
kinds of fool, followed.

In the plunge, Andy was still more at a disadvantage, for since he was
a spectator, a huge sign informed him that he must go up stairs. He
went up with much difficulty into the gallery, found himself a seat
next the rail and searched long for Mary among the bathers below. He
would never have believed that he would fail to know her at sight, but
with fifty women, more or less, dressed exactly alike and with ugly
rubber caps pulled down to eyebrows and ears, recognition must
necessarily be slow.

While he leaned and stared, an avalanche of squeals came precipitately
down the great slide; struck the water and was transformed to gurgling
screams, and then heads came bobbing to the surface--three heads, and
one of them was Mary's. She swept the water from her eyes, looked up
and saw him, waved her hand and scrambled rather ungracefully over the
rail in her wet, clinging suit. The others followed, the man trotting
at her heels and calling something after her.

Andy, his brows pulled down over unhappy eyes, glared fixedly up at
the top of the slide. In a minute they appeared, held gesticulating
counsel, wavered and came down together, upon their stomachs. The
strange girl was in the lead, with Mary next holding to the girl's
feet. Behind her slid the man, gripping tightly the ankles of Mary.
Andy's teeth set savagely together, though he saw that others were
doing exactly the same; old women, young women, girls, men and boys
came hurtling down the big slide, singly, in couples, in three and
fours.

The spectacle began to fascinate him, so that for a minute or two he
could forget Mary and the man. There was a roar of voices, the barking
as of seals, screams, laughter and much splashing. Men and women dove
from the sides like startled frogs into a pond; they swam, floated and
stood panting along the walls; swung from the trapeze (Andy,
remembering his career with the circus, when he was "André de Gréno,"
Champion Bareback Rider of the Western Hemisphere, wished that his leg
was well so that he could show them a few things about that trapeze
business) and troubled the waters with much splashing. He could not
keep Mary always in view, but when he did get sight of her she seemed
to be having a very good time, and not to be worrying in the least
about him and his sins.

Twice Andy Green half rose from his seat, meaning to leave the plunge,
the Casino and the whole merry-making crowd; but each time he settled
back, telling himself that he hated a quitter, and that he guessed
he'd buy a few more chips and stay in the game.

It seemed a long time before Mary finally emerged in the blue linen
and the white hat, but Andy was waiting doggedly at the entrance and
took his place beside her, forcing the man to walk beside the girl
whom Mary introduced as Lola Parsons. The man's name was Roberts, but
the girls called him Freddie, and he seemed composed mostly of a
self-satisfied smile and the latest fad in male attire. Andy set
himself to the task of "cutting Mary out of the main herd" so that he
might talk with her. Thus it happened that, failing a secluded spot in
the immediate neighborhood of the Casino, which buzzed like a
disturbed hive of gigantic bees, Mary presently found herself on a car
that was clanging its signal of departure, and there was no sign of
Freddie and Lola Parsons.

"We lost 'em, back there," Andy told her calmly when she inquired.
"And as to where we're going, I don't know; as far as this
lightning-wagon will take us."

"This car goes clear out to the Cliffs," Mary said discouragingly.

"All right. We're going out to the cliffs, then," Andy smiled blandly
down upon the nodding, white feather in her hat.

"But I promised Lola and Freddie--"

"Oh, that's all right. I'll take the blame. Were yuh surprised to see
me here?"

"Why should I be? Everybody comes to Santa Cruz, sooner or later."

"I came sooner," said Andy, trying to meet her eye. He wanted to bring
the conversation to themselves, so that he might explain and justify
himself, and win forgiveness for his sins.

While they walked along the cliffs he tried, and going home he had not
given up the attempt. But afterward, when he could sit down quietly
and think, he was forced to admit that he had not succeeded very well.
It seemed to him that, while Mary still liked him and was quite ready
to be friends, she had forgotten just why she had so suddenly left
Montana. She was sorry he had broken his leg, but in the same breath,
almost, she told him of such a narrow escape that Freddie had last
week, when an auto nearly ran him down. Andy regretted keenly that it
had not.

He had mentioned Irish and Jack Bates, meaning to refute the tales
they had told of him, and she had asked about the black lamb and the
white, and then had told him that he must go out to the whistling buoy
and see the real whale they had anchored out there, and related with
much detail how Freddie had taken her and Lola out, and how the water
was so rough she got seasick, and a wave splashed over and ruined
Freddie's new summer suit, that spotted dreadfully; it wasn't, she
remarked, a durable color. She hoped Andy would stay a month or two,
though the "season" was about over. She knew he would just love the
plunge and the surf-bathing, and there was going to be a boomers'
barbacue up at the Big Trees in two weeks--and it would seem like home
to him, seeing a cow roasted whole! She did love Montana, and she
hoped he brought his chaps and spurs along, for she had told Lola so
much about him, and she wanted Lola to see him in his Wild West
clothes.

All this should have pleased Andy very much. She had not grown cold,
and her eyes were quite as teasing and her smiles as luring as before.
She did not even lay personal claim to Freddie, that he should be
jealous. When she spoke of Freddie, his name was linked with Lola
Parsons, and Andy could not glean that she had ever gone anywhere
alone with him. She had seemed anxious that he should enjoy his
vacation to the limit, and had mentioned three or four places that he
must surely see, and informed him three times that she was "off" at
five every evening, and could show him around.

They had dined together at a café, and had gone back to the Casino for
the band concert, and they had not been interrupted by meeting Lola
Parsons and Freddie, and she had given him a very cordial good-night
when they parted on the steps of her boarding house at eleven.

So there was absolutely no reason for the mood Andy was in when he
accepted his key from the hotel clerk and went up to his room. For a
man who has traveled more than a thousand miles in search of the girl
he had dreamed of o'nights, and who had found her and had been
properly welcomed, he was distinctly gloomy. He sat down by the open
window and smoked four cigarettes, said "Damn Freddy!" three times and
with added emphasis each time, though he knew very well that Freddie
had nothing to do with it, and then went to bed.

In the morning he felt better, and went out by himself to the cliffs
where they had been before, and sat down on a hummock covered with
short grass, and watched the great unrest of the ocean, and wondered
where the Flying U wagons would be camping, that night. Somehow, the
wide reach of water reminded him of the prairie; the rolling billows
were like many, many cattle milling restlessly in a vast herd and
tossing white heads and horns upward. Below him, the pounding surf was
to him the bellowing of a thirsty herd corralled.

"This is sure all right," he approved, rousing a little. "It's almost
as good as sitting up on a pinnacle and looking out over the range. If
I had a good hoss, and my riding outfit, and could get out there and
go to work cutting-out them white-caps and hazing 'em up here on a
run, it wouldn't be so poor. By gracious, this is worth the trip, all
right." It never occurred to Andy that there was anything strange in
the remark, or that he sat there because it dulled the heavy ache that
had been his since yesterday--the ache of finding what he had sought,
and finding with it disillusionment.

Till hunger drove him away he stayed, and his dreams were of the wide
land he had left. When he again walked down Pacific Avenue the hall
clock struck four, and after he had eaten he looked up at it and saw
that it lacked but fifteen minutes of five.

"I'm supposed to meet her when she quits work," he remembered, "and
Lola and Freddie will go to the plunge with us." He stopped and stared
in at the window of a curio store. "Say, that's a dandy Navajo
blanket," he murmured. "It would be out-uh-sight for a saddle
blanket." He started on, hesitated and went back. "I've got time
enough to get it," he explained to himself. He went in, bought the
blanket and two Mexican _serapes_ that caught his fancy, tucked the
bundle under his arm and started down the street toward the office
where Mary worked. It was just two minutes _to five_.

He got almost to the door--so near that his toe struck against a
corner of the belabelled bulletin board--when a sudden revulsion swept
his desires back like a huge wave. He stood a second irresolutely and
then turned back. "Aw--hell! What's the use?" he muttered.

The clock was just on the last stroke of five when he went up to the
clerk in his hotel. "Say, when does the next train pull out?--I don't
give a darn in what direction," he wanted to know. When the clerk told
him seven-thirty, he grinned and became undignifiedly loquacious.

"I want to show yuh a couple of dandy _serapes_ I just glommed, down
street," he said, and rolled the bundle open upon the desk. "Ain't
they a couple uh beauts? I got 'em for two uh my friends; they done me
a big favor, a month or two ago, and I wanted to kinda square the
deal. That's why I got 'em just alike. Yes, you bet they're peaches;
yuh can't get 'em like this in Montana. The boys'll sure appreciate
'em." He retied the bundle, took his room-key from the hand of the
smiling clerk and started up the stairway, humming a tune under his
breath as he went.

At the first turn he stopped and looked back. "Send the bell-hop up to
wake me at seven," he called down to the clerk. "I'm going to take a
much-needed nap--and it'll be all your life's worth to let me miss
that train!"

       *       *       *       *       *




LORDS OF THE POTS AND PANS


The camp of the Flying U, snuggled just within the wide-flung arms of
an unnamed coulee with a pebbly-bottomed creek running across its
front, looked picturesque and peaceful--from a distance.
Disenchantment lay in wait for him who strayed close enough to hear
the wrangling in the cook-tent, however, or who followed Slim to where
he slumped bulkily down into the shade of a willow fifty yards or so
from camp--a willow where Pink, Weary, Andy Green and Irish were lying
sprawled and smoking comfortably.

Slim grunted and moved away from a grass-hidden rock that was gouging
him in the back. "By golly, things is getting pretty raw around this
camp," he growled, by way of lifting the safety-valve of his anger.
"I'd like to know when that darned grub-spoiler bought into the
outfit, anyhow. He's been trying to run it to suit himself all
spring--and if he keeps on, by golly, he'll be firing the wagon-boss
and giving all the orders himself!"

It would seem that sympathy should be offered him; as if the pause he
made plainly hinted that it was expected. Andy Green rolled over and
sent him a friendly glance just to hearten him a bit.

"We were listening to the noise of battle," he observed, "and we were
going over, in a minute, to carry off the dead. You had a kinda
animated discussion over something, didn't yuh?" Andy was on his good
behavior, as he had been for a month. His treatment of his fellows
lately was little short of angelic. His tone soothed Slim to the point
where he could voice his woe.

"Well, by golly, I guess he knows what I think of him, or pretty near.
I've stood a lot from Patsy, off and on, and I've took just about all
I'm going to. It's got so yuh can't get nothing to eat, hardly, when
yuh ride in late, unless yuh fight for it. Why, by golly, I caught him
just as he was going to empty out the coffee-boiler--and he knew
blamed well I hadn't eat. He'd left everything go cold, and he was
packing away the grub like he was late breaking camp and had a forty
mile drive before dinner, by golly! I just did save myself some
coffee, and that was all--but it was cold as that creek, and--" Habit
impelled him to stop there long enough to run his tongue along the
edge of a half-rolled cigarette, and accident caused his eyes to catch
the amused quirk on the lips of Pink and Irish, and the laughing
glance they exchanged. Possibly if he could have looked in all
directions at the same time he would have been able to detect signs of
mirth on the faces of the others as well; for Slim's grievances never
seemed to be taken seriously by his companions--which is the price
which one must pay for having a body shaped like Santa Claus and a
face copied after our old friend in the moon.

"Well, by golly, maybe it's funny--but I took notice yuh done some
yowling, both uh yuh, the other day when yuh didn't get no pie," he
snorted, lighting his cigarette with unsteady fingers.

"We wasn't laughing at that," lied Pink pacifically.

"And then, by golly, the old devil lied to me and said there wasn't no
pie left," went on Slim complainingly, his memory stirred by the taunt
he had himself given. "But I wouldn't take his word for a thing if I
knew it was so; I went on a still-hunt around that tent on my own
hook, and I found a pie--a _whole pie_, by golly!--cached away under
an empty flour-sack behind the stove! That," he added, staring,
round-eyed, at the group, "that there was right where me and Patsy
mixed. The lying old devil said he never knew a thing about it being
there at all."

Pink turned his head cautiously so that his eyes met the eyes of Andy
Green. The two had been at some pains to place that pie in a safe
place so that they might be sure of something appetizing when they
came in from standing guard that night, but neither seemed to think it
necessary to proclaim the fact and clear Patsy.

"I'll bet yuh didn't do a thing to the pie when yuh did find it?" Pink
half questioned, more anxious than he would have owned.

"By golly, I eat the whole thing and I cussed Patsy between every
mouthful!" boasted Slim, almost in a good-humor again. "I sure got the
old boy stirred up; I left him swearin' Dutch cuss-words that sounded
like he was peevish. But I'll betche he won't throw out the coffee
till I've had what I want after this, by golly!"

"Happy Jack is out yet," Weary observed after a sympathetic silence.
"You oughtn't to have put Patsy on the fight till everybody was filled
up, Slim. Happy's liable to go to bed with an empty tummy, if yuh
don't ride out and warn him to approach easy. Listen over there!"

From where they lay, so still was the air and so incensed was Patsy,
they could hear plainly the rumbling of his wrath while he talked to
himself over the dishwashing. When he appeared at the corner of the
tent or plodded out toward the front of the wagon, his heavy tread and
stiff neck proclaimed eloquently the mood he was in. They watched and
listened and were secretly rather glad they were fed and so need not
face the storm which Slim had raised; for Patsy thoroughly roused was
very much like an angry bull: till his rage cooled he would charge
whoever approached him, absolutely blind to consequences.

"Well, I ain't going to put nobody next," Slim asserted. "Happy's got
to take chances, same as I did. And while we're on the subject, Patsy
was on the prod before I struck camp, or he wouldn't uh acted the way
he done. Somebody else riled him up, by golly--I never."

"Well, you sure did put the finishing touches to him," contended
Irish, guiltily aware that he himself was originally responsible; for
Patsy never had liked Irish very well because of certain incidents
connected with his introduction to Weary's double. Patsy never could
quite forget, though he might forgive, and resentment lay always close
to the surface of his mood when Irish was near.

Happy Jack, hungry and quite unconscious that he was riding straight
into the trail of trouble, galloped around a ragged point of
service-berry bushes, stopped with a lurch at the prostrate corral and
unsaddled hastily. Those in the shade of the willow watched him, their
very silence proclaiming loudly their interest. They might have warned
him by a word, but they did not; for Happy Jack was never eager to
heed warnings or to take advice, preferring always to abide by the
rule of opposites. Stiff-legged from long riding, the knees of his
old, leather chaps bulging out in transient simulation of bowed limbs,
he came clanking down upon the cook-tent with no thought but to ease
his hunger.

Those who watched saw him stoop and thrust his head into the tent,
heard a bellow and saw him back out hastily. They chuckled unfeelingly
and strained ears to miss no word of what would follow.

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack expostulated, not yet angry. "I got here quick
as I could--and _I_ ain't heard nothing about no new laws uh getting
here when the whistle blows. Gimme what there is, anyhow."

Some sentences followed which, because of guttural tones and German
accent emphasized by excitement, were not quite coherent to the
listeners. However, they did not feel at all mystified as to his
meaning--knowing Patsy as they did.

"Aw, come off! Somebody must uh slipped yuh a two-gallon jug uh
something. I've rode the range about as long as you've cooked on it,
and I never knowed a man to go without his supper yet, just because he
come in late. I betche yuh dassent stand and say that before Chip, yuh
blamed old Dutch--" Just there, Happy Jack dodged and escaped getting
more than a third of the basin of water which came splashing out of
the tent.

The group under the willows could no longer lie at ease while they
listened; they jumped up and moved closer, just as a crowd always does
surge nearer and nearer to an exciting centre. They did not, however,
interfere by word or deed.

"If yuh wasn't just about ready t' die of old age and general
cussedness," stormed Happy Jack, "I'd just about kill yuh for that."
This, however, is a revised version and not intended to be exact. "I
want my supper, and I want it blame quick, too, or there'll be a dead
Dutchman in camp. No, yuh don't! You git out uh that tent and lemme
git in, or--" Happy Jack had the axe in his hand by then, and he swung
it fearsomely and permitted the gesture to round out his sentence.

Perhaps there would have been something more than words between them,
for even a Happy Jack may be goaded too far when he is hungry; but
Chip, who had been washing out some handkerchiefs down by the creek,
heard the row and came up, squeezing a ball of wet muslin on the way.
He did not say much when he arrived, and he did not do anything more
threatening than hang the handkerchiefs over the guy-ropes to dry,
tying the corners to keep the wind from whipping them away up the
coulee, but the result was satisfying--to Happy Jack, at least. He ate
and was filled, and Patsy retired from the fray, sullenly owning
defeat for that time at least. He went up the creek out of sight from
camp, and he stayed there until the dusk was so thick that his big,
white-aproned form was barely distinguishable in the gloom when he
returned.

At daylight he was his old self, except that he was perhaps a trifle
gruff when he spoke and a good deal inclined to silence, and harmony
came and abode for a season with the Flying U.

Patsy had for years cooked for Jim Whitmore and his "outfit"; so many
years it was that memory of the number was never exact, and even the
Old Man would have been compelled to preface the number with a few
minutes of meditation and a "Lemme see, now; Patsy's been cooking for
me--eighty-six was that hard winter, and he come the spring--no, the
fall before that. I know because he like to froze before we got the
mess-house chinked up good--I'll be doggoned if Patsy ain't gitting
_old_!" That was it, perhaps: Patsy was getting old. And old age does
not often sweeten one's temper, if you notice. Those angelic old men
and old ladies have nearly all been immortalized in stories and songs,
and the unsung remainder have nerves and notions and rheumatism and
tongues sharpened by all the disappointments and sorrows of their long
lives.

Patsy never had been angelic; he had always been the victim of more or
less ill-timed humor on the part of the Happy Family, and the victim
of hunger-sharpened tempers as well. He had always grumbled and
rumbled Dutch profanity when they goaded him too hard, and his
amiability had ever expressed itself in juicy pies and puddings rather
than in words. On this roundup, however, he was not often amiable and
he was nearly always rumbling to himself. More than that, he was
becoming resentful of extra work and bother and he sometimes permitted
his resentment to carry him farther than was wise.

To quarrel with Patsy was rapidly becoming the fashion, and to gossip
about him and his faults was already a habit; a habit indulged in too
freely, perhaps, for the good of the camp. Isolation from the world
brings small things into greater prominence than is normally their
due, and large troubles are born of very small irritations.

For two days there was peace of a sort, and then Big Medicine, having
eaten no dinner because of a headache, rode into camp about three
o'clock and headed straight for the mess-wagon, quite as if he had a
right that must not be questioned. Custom did indeed warrant him in
lunching without the ceremony of asking leave of the cook, for Patsy
even in his most unpleasant moods had never until lately tried to stop
anyone from eating when he was hungry.

On this day, however, Big Medicine unthinkingly cut into a fresh-baked
pie set out to cool. There were other pies, and in cutting one Big
Medicine was supported by precedent; but Patsy chose to consider it an
affront and snatched the pie from under Big Medicine's very nose.

"You fellers vot iss always gobbling yet, you iss quit it alreatty!"
rumbled Patsy, bearing the pie into the tent with Big Medicine's knife
still lying buried in the lately released juice. "I vork und vork mine
head off keeping you fellers filled oop tree times a day alreatty; I
not vork und vork to feed you effery hour, py cosh. You go mitout till
supper iss reaty for you yet."

Big Medicine, his frog-like eyes standing out from his sun-reddened
face, stared agape. "Well, by cripes!" He hesitated, looking about
him; but whether his search was for more pie or for moral support he
did not say. Truth to tell, there was plenty of both. He reached for
another pie and another knife, and he grinned his wide grin at Irish,
who had just come up. "Dutchy's trying to run a whizzer," he remarked,
cutting a defiant gash clean across the second pie. "What do yuh know
about that?"

"He's often took that way," said Irish soothingly. "You don't want all
that pie--give me about half of it."

Big Medicine, his mouth too full for coherent utterance, waved his
hand and his knife toward the shelf at the back of the mess-wagon
where three more pies sat steaming in the shade. "Help yourself," he
invited juicily when he could speak.

Those familiar with camp life in the summer have perhaps observed the
miraculous manner in which a million or so "yellow-jackets" will come
swarming around when one opens a can of fruit or uncovers the sugar
jar. It was like that. Irish helped himself without any hesitation
whatever, and he had not taken a mouthful before Happy Jack, Weary and
Pink were buzzing around for all the world like the "yellow-jackets"
mentioned before. Patsy buzzed also, but no one paid the slightest
attention until the last mouthful of the last pie was placed in
retirement where it would be most appreciated. Then Weary became aware
of Patsy and his wrath, and turned to him pacifically.

"Oh, yuh don't want to worry none about the pie," he smiled winningly
at him. "Mamma! How do you expect to keep pies around this camp when
yuh go right on making such good ones? Yuh hadn't ought to be such a
crackajack of a cook, Patsy, if you don't want folks to eat themselves
sick."

If any man among them could have soothed Patsy, Weary would certainly
have been the man; for next to Chip he was Patsy's favorite. To say
that he failed is only one way of making plain how great was Patsy's
indignation.

"Aw, yuh made 'em to be eat, didn't yuh?" argued Happy Jack. "What
difference does it make whether we eat 'em now or two hours from now?"

Patsy tried to tell them the difference. He called his hands and his
head to help his rage-tangled tongue and he managed to make himself
very well understood. They did not argue the fine point of gastronomic
ethics which he raised, though they felt that his position was not
unassailable and his ultimate victory not assured.

Instead, they peered into boxes and cans which were covered, gleaned a
whole box of seeded raisins and some shredded cocoanut just to tease
him and retired to wrangle ostentatiously over their treasure trove in
the shade of the bed-tent, leaving Patsy to his anger and his empty
tins.

Other men straggled in, drifted with the tide of their appetites to
the cook-tent, hovered there briefly and retired vanquished and still
hungry. They invariably came over to the little group which was
munching raisins and cocoanut and asked accusing questions. What was
the matter with Patsy? Who had put him on the fight like that? and
other inquiries upon the same subject.

Just because they were all lying around camp with nothing to do but
eat, Patsy was late with his supper that night. It would seem that he
dallied purposely and revengefully, and though the Happy Family flung
at him taunts and hurry-up orders, it is significant that they shouted
from a distance and avoided coming to close quarters.

Just how and when they began their foolish little game of imitation
broncho-fighting does not matter. When work did not press and red
blood bubbled they frequently indulged in "rough-riding" one another
to the tune of much taunting and many a "Bet yuh can't pitch _me_
off!" Before supper was called they were hard at it and they quite
forgot Patsy.

"I'll give any man a dollar that can ride me straight up, by cripes!"
bellowed Big Medicine, going down upon all fours by way of invitation.

"Easy money, and mine from the start!" retorted Irish and immediately
straddled Big Medicine's back. Horses and riders pantingly gave over
their own exertions and got out of the way, for Big Medicine played
bronk as he did everything else: with all his heart and soul and
muscles, and since he was strong as a bull, riding him promised much
in the way of excitement.

"Yuh can hold on by my collar, but if yuh choke me down I'll murder
yuh in cold blood," he warned Irish before he started. "And don't yuh
dig your heels in my ribs neither, or I'm liable to bust every bone
yuh got to your name. I'm ticklish, by cripes!"

"I'll ride yuh with my arms folded if yuh say so," Irish offered
generously. "Move, you snail!" He struck Big Medicine spectacularly
with his hat, yelled at the top of his voice and the riding began
immediately and tumultuously.

It is very difficult to describe accurately and effectively the
evolutions of a horse when he "pitches" his worst and hardest. It is
still more difficult to set down in words the gyrations of a man when
he is playing that he is a broncho and is trying to dislodge the
fellow upon his back. Big Medicine reared and kicked and bellowed and
snorted. He came down upon a small "pin-cushion" cactus and was
obliged to call a recess while he extracted three cactus spines from
his knee with his smallest knife-blade and some profanity.

He rolled down his trousers' leg, closed his knife and tossed it to
Pink for fear he might lose it, examined critically a patch of grass
to make sure there were no more cacti hidden there and bawled: "Come
on, now, I'll sure give yuh a run for your money _this_ time, by
cripes!" and began all over again.

How human muscles can bear the strain he put upon his own must be
always something of a mystery. He described curves in the air which
would sound incredible; he "swapped ends" with all the ease of a real
fighting broncho and came near sending Irish off more than once.
Insensibly he neared the cook-tent, where Patsy so far forgot himself
as to stand just without the lifted flap and watch the fun with sour
interest.

"Ah-h _want_ yuh!" yelled Big Medicine, quite purple but far from
surrender, and gave a leap.

"Go _get_ me!" shouted Irish, whipping down the sides of his mount
with his hat.

Big Medicine answered the taunt by a queer, twisted plunge which he
had saved for the last. It brought Irish spread-eagling over his head,
and it landed him fairly in the middle of Patsy's great pan of soft
bread "sponge"--and landed him upon his head into the bargain. Irish
wriggled there a moment and came up absolutely unrecognizable and a
good deal dazed. Big Medicine rolled helplessly in the grass, laughing
his big, bellowing laugh.

It was straight into that laugh and the great mouth from where it
issued, that Patsy, beside himself with rage at the accident,
deposited all the soft dough which was not clinging to the head and
face of Irish. He was not content with that. While the Happy Family
roared appreciation of the spectacle, Patsy returned with a kettle of
meat and tried to land that neatly upon the dough.

"Py cosh, if dat iss der vay you wants your grub, py cosh, dat iss der
vay you gets it alreatty!" he brought the coffee-boiler and threw that
also at the two, and followed it with a big basin of stewed corn.

Irish, all dough as he was, went for him blindly and grappled with
him, and it was upon this turbulent scene which Chip looked first when
he rode up. The Happy Family crowded around him gasping and tried to
explain.

"They were doing some rough-riding--"

"By golly, Patsy no business to set his bread dough on the ground!"

"He's throwed away all the supper there is, and I betche--"

"Mamma! Yuh sure missed it, Chip. You ought--"

"By cripes, if that Dutch--"

"Break away there, Irish!" shouted Chip, dismounting hurriedly. "Has
it got so you must fight an old man like that?"

"Py cosh, _I'll_ fight mit him alreatty! I'll fight mit any mans vat
shpoils mine bread. Maybe I'm old yet but I ain't dead yet und I could
fight--" The words came disjointedly, mere punctuation points to his
wild sparring.

It was plain that Irish, furious though he was, was trying not to hurt
Patsy very much; but it took four men to separate them for all that.
When they had dragged Irish perforce down to the creek by which they
had camped, and had yelled to Big Medicine to come on and feed the
fish, quiet should have been restored--but it was not.

Patsy was, in American parlance, running amuck. He was jumbling three
languages together into an indistinguishable tumult of sound and he
was emptying the cook-tent of everything which his stout, German
muscles could fling from it. Not a thing did he leave that was eatable
and the dishes within his reach he scattered recklessly to all the
winds of heaven. When one venturesome soul after another approached to
calm him, he found it expedient to duck and run to cover. Patsy's aim
was terribly exact.

The Happy Family, under cover or at a safe distance from the hurtling
pans, cans and stove wood, caressed sundry bumps and waited meekly.
Irish and Big Medicine, once more disclosing the features God had
given them, returned by a circuitous route and joined their fellows.

"Look at 'em over there--he's emptying every grain uh rolled oats on
the ground!" Happy Jack was a "mush-fiend." "Somebody better go over
and stop 'im--"

"You ain't tied down," suggested Cal Emmett rather pointedly, and
Happy Jack said no more.

Chip, usually so incisively clear as to his intentions and his duties,
waited irresolutely and dodged missiles along with the rest of them.
When Patsy subsided for the very good reason that there was nothing
else which he could throw out, Chip took the matter up with him and
told him quite plainly some of the duties of a cook, a few of his
privileges and all of his limitations. The result, however, was not
quite what he expected. Patsy would not even listen.

"Py cosh, I not stand for dose poys no more," he declared, wagging his
head with its shiny crown and the fringe of grizzled hair around the
back. "I not cook grub for dat Irish und dat Big Medicine und Happy
Jack und all dose vat cooms und eats mine pies und shpoils mine pread
und makes deirselves fools all der time. If dose fellers shtay on dis
camp I quits him alreatty." To make the bluff convincing he untied his
apron, threw it spitefully upon the ground and stamped upon it
clumsily, like a maddened elephant.

"Well, quit then!" Chip was fast losing his own temper, what with the
heat and his hunger and a general distaste for camp troubles. "This
jangling has got to stop right here. We've had about enough of it in
the last month. If you can't cook for the outfit peaceably--" He did
not finish the sentence, or if he did the distance muffled the words,
for he was leading his horse back to the vicinity of the rope corral
that he might unsaddle and turn him loose.

He heard several voices muttering angrily, but his wrath was ever of
the stiff-necked variety so that he would not look around to see what
was the matter. The tumult grew, however, until when he did turn he
saw Patsy stalking off across the prairie with his hat on and his coat
folded neatly over his arm, and Irish and Big Medicine fighting
wickedly in the open space between the two tents. He finished
unsaddling and then went stalking over to quell this latest
development.

"They're trying to find out who was to blame," Weary informed him when
he was quite close. "Bud hasn't got much tact: he called Irish a
dough-head. Irish didn't think it was true humor, and he hit Bud on
the nose. He claims that Bud pitched him into that dishpan uh dough
with malice aforethought. Better let 'em argue the point to a finish,
now they're started. It's black eyes for the peacemaker--you believe
_me_."

While the dusk folded them close and the nighthawks swooped from afar,
the Happy Family gathered round and watched them fight. Chip and Weary
thoughtfully went into the bed-tent and got the guns which were stowed
away in the beds of the combatants, so that when their anger reached
the killing point they must let it bubble harmlessly until the fires
which fed it went cold. Which was exceeding wise of the two, for Big
Medicine and Irish did get to that very point and raged all over the
camp because they could not shoot each other.

The hottest battle must perforce end sometime, and so the camp of the
Flying U did at last settle into some semblance of calm. Irish rolled
his bed, saddled a horse and rode off toward town, quite as if he were
going for good and all. Big Medicine went down to the creek for the
second time that evening to wash away the marks of strife, and when he
returned he went straight to bed without a word to anyone. Patsy was
gone, no man knew whither, and the cook-tent was as nearly wrecked as
might be.

"Makes me think uh that time we had the ringtailed tiger in camp,"
sighed Andy Green, shaking sand out of the teakettle so that it could
be refilled.

"By golly, I'd ruther have a whole band uh tagers than this fighting
bunch," Slim affirmed earnestly. Slim was laboring sootily with the
stove-pipe which Patsy had struck askew with a stick of wood.

Outside, Happy Jack was protesting in what he believed to be an
undertone against being installed in Patsy's place. "Aw, that's always
the way! Anything comes up, it's 'Happy, you git in and rustle some
chuck.' _I_ ain't no cook--or if I be they might pay me cook's wages.
I betche there ain't another man in camp would stand for it.
Somebody's got to take that bacon down to the creek and wash it off,
if yuh want any meat for supper. There ain't no time to boil beef. If
I'd a been boss uh this outfit, I betche no blame cook on earth would
uh made rough-house like Patsy done." But no one paid the slightest
attention to Happy Jack, having plenty to think of and to do before
they slept.

Not even the sun, when it shone again, could warm their hearts to a
joy in living. Happy Jack cooked the breakfast, but his coffee was
weak and his biscuits "soggy," and Patsy had managed to make the
butter absolutely uneatable with sand; also they were late and Chip
was surly over the double loss of cook and cowboy. Happy Jack packed
food and dishes in much the same spirit which Patsy had shown the
night before, climbed sullenly to the high seat, gathered up the reins
of the four restive horses, released the brake and let out a yell
surcharged with all the bitterness bottled within his soul. _He_ had
not done anything to precipitate the trouble. Beyond eating half a pie
he had been an innocent spectator, not even taking part in the
rough-riding. Yet here he was, condemned to the mess-wagon quite as if
he were to blame for Patsy's leaving. The eyes of Happy Jack gazed
gloomily upon the world, and his driving seemed a reckless invitation
to disaster. "I betche I'll make 'em good and sick uh _my_ cooking!"
he plotted while he went rattling and bumping over the untrailed
prairie.

He succeeded so well that two days later Chip gave a curt order or two
and headed his wagons, horses and his lean-stomached bunch of riders
for Dry Lake, passing by even the Flying U coulee in his haste. Just
outside the town, upon the creek which saves the inhabitants from
dying of thirst or _delirium tremens_, he left the wagons with Happy
Jack, Slim and one alien to set up camp and rode dust-dogged to the
little, red depot.

The telegram which went speeding to Great Falls and to a friend there
was brief, but it was eloquent and not quite flattering to Happy Jack.
It read like this:

  "JOHN G. SCOTT,

  "The Palace, Great Falls.

  "For God's sake send me a cook by return train; must deliver goods
  or die hard.

  "BENNETT, Flying U."

Whether the cook must die hard, or whether he meant the friend, Chip
did not trouble to make plain. Telegrams are bound by such rigid
limitations, and he had gone over the ten-word rate as it was. But he
told Weary to receive the cook, be he white or black, have him restock
the mess-wagon to his liking and then bring the outfit to the ranch,
when Chip would again take it in hand. He said that he was going home
to get a square meal, and he mentioned Happy Jack along with several
profane words. "Johnny Scott will send a cook, and a good one,"; he
added hopefully. "Johnny never threw down a friend in his life and he
never will. And say, Weary, if he wires, you collect the message and
act accordingly. I'm going to have a decent supper, to-night!" He was
riding a good horse and there was no reason why he should be late in
arriving, especially if he kept the gait at which he left town.

In two hours Weary, Pink and Andy Green were touching hat-brims over a
telegram from Johnny Scott--a telegram which was brief as Chip's, and
more illuminating:

    "CHIP BENNETT,

    "Dry Lake.

    "Kidnaped Park hotel chef best cook in town will be on next train.
    J.G. SCOTT."

"Sounds good," mused Andy, reading it for the fourth time. "But
there's thirteen words in that telegram, if yuh notice."

"I wish yuh wouldn't try to butt in on Happy Jack's specialty," Weary
remonstrated, folding the message and slipping it inside the yellow
envelope. "If this is the same jasper that cooked there a month ago,
we're going to eat ourselves plumb to death; a better meal I never
laid away inside me than the one I got at the Park Hotel when I was up
there last time. Come on over to the hotel and eat; their chuck isn't
the best in the world, but it could be a lot worse and still beat
Happy Jack to a jelly."


PART TWO


The whole Happy Family--barring Happy Jack, who was sulking in camp
because of certain things which had been said of his cooking and which
he had overheard--clanked spurs impatiently upon the platform and
waited for the arrival of the train from the West. When at last it
snorted into town and nosed its way up to the platform they bunched
instinctively and gazed eagerly at the steps which led down from the
smoker.

A slim little man in blue serge, a man with the complexion of a strip
of rawhide and the mustache of a third-rate orchestra leader, felt his
way gingerly down by the light of the brakeman's lantern, hesitated
and then came questioningly toward them, carrying with some difficulty
a bulky suitcase.

"It's him, all right," muttered Pink while they waited.

The little man stopped apologetically before the group, indistinct in
the faint light from the office window. Already the train was sliding
away into the dark. "Pardon," he apologized. "I am looking for the U
fich flies."

"This is it," Weary assured him gravely. "We'll take yuh right on out
to camp. Pretty dark, isn't it? Let me take your grip--I know the way
better than you do." Weary was not in the habit of making himself a
porter for any man's accommodation, but the way back to where they had
left the horses was dark, and the new cook was very small and slight.
They filed silently back to Rusty Brown's place, invited the cook in
for a drink and were refused with soft-voiced regret and the gracious
assurance that he would wait outside for them.

Weary it was, and Pink to bear him company, who piloted the stranger
out to camp and showed him where he might sleep in Patsy's bed. Patsy
had left town, the Happy Family had been informed, with the
declaration often repeated that he was "neffer cooming back alreatty."
He had even left behind him his bed and his clothes rather than meet
again any member of the Flying U outfit.

"We'd like breakfast somewhere near sunrise," Weary told the cook at
parting. "Soon as the store opens in the morning, we'll drive in and
you can stock up the wagon; we're pretty near down to cases, judging
from the meals we have been getting lately. Hope yuh make out all
right."

"I will do very nicely, I thank you," smiled the new cook in the light
of the lantern which stood upon the fireless cook-stove. "I wish you
good-night, gentlemen, and sweet dreams of loved ones."

"Say, he's a polite son-of-a-gun," Pink commented when they were
riding back to town. "'The U fich flies'--that's a good one! What is
he, do you thing? French?"

"He's liable to be most anything, and I'll gamble he can build a good
dinner for a hungry man. That's the main point," said Weary.

At daybreak Weary woke and heard him humming a little tune while he
moved softly about the cook-tent and the mess-wagon, evidently
searching mostly for the things which were not there, to judge from
stray remarks which interrupted the love song. "Rolled oat--I do not
find him," he heard once. And again: "Where the clean towels they are,
that I do not discover." Weary smiled sleepily and took another nap.

The cook's manner of announcing breakfast was such that it awoke even
Jack Bates, notoriously a sleepy-head, and Cal Emmett who was almost
as bad. Instead of pounding upon a pan and lustily roaring
"_Grub-pi-i-ile!_" in the time-honored manner of roundup cooks, he
came softly up to the bed-tent, lifted a flap deprecatingly and
announced in a velvet voice:

"Breakfast is served, gentlemen."

Andy Green, whose experiences had been varied, sat up and blinked at
the gently swaying flap where the cook had been standing. "Say, what
we got in camp?" he asked curiously. "A butler?"

"By golly, that's the way a cook _oughta_ be!" vowed Slim, and reached
for his hat.

They dressed hastily and trooped down to the creek for their morning
ablutions, and hurried back to the breakfast which waited. The new
cook was smiling and apologetic and anxious to please. The Happy
Family felt almost as if there were a woman in camp and became very
polite without in the least realizing that they were not behaving in
the usual manner, or dreaming that they were unconsciously trying to
live up to their chef.

"The breakfast, it is of a lacking in many things fich I shall
endeavor to remedy," he assured them, pouring coffee as if he were
serving royalty. He was dressed immaculately in white cap and apron,
and his mustache was waxed to a degree which made it resemble a cat's
whiskers. The Happy Family tasted the coffee and glanced eloquently at
one another. It was better than Patsy's coffee, even; and as for Happy
Jack--

There were biscuits, the like of which they never had tasted before.
The bacon was crisp and delicately brown and delicious, the potatoes
cooked in a new and enticing way. The Happy Family showed its
appreciation as seemed to them most convincing: They left not a scrap
of anything and they drank two cups of coffee apiece when that was not
their habit.

Later, they hitched the four horses to the mess-wagon, learned that
the new cook, though he deeply regretted his inefficiency, did not
drive anything. "The small burro," he explained, "I ride him, yes, and
also the automobile drive I when the way is smooth. But the horses I
make not acquainted with him. I could ride upon the elevated seat,
yes, but to drive the quartet I would not presume."

"Happy, you'll have to drive," said Weary, his tone a command.

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack objected, "He rode out here all right last
night--unless somebody took him up in front on the saddle, which I
hain't heard about nobody doing. A cook's supposed to do his own
driving. I betche--"

Weary went close and pointed a finger impressively. "Happy, you
_drive_," he said, and Happy Jack turned without a word and climbed
glumly up to the seat of the mess-wagon.

"Well, are yuh coming or ain't yuh?" he inquired of the cook in a tone
surcharged with disgust.

"If you will so kindly permit, it give me great pleasure to ride with
you and to make better friendship. It now occurs to me that I have not
yet introduce. Gentlemen, Jacques I have the honor to be name. I am
delighted to meet you and I hope for pleasant association." The bow he
gave the group was of the old school.

Big Medicine grinned suddenly and came forward. "Honest to grandma,
I'm happy to know yuh!" he bellowed, and caught the cook's hand in a
grip that sent him squirming upon his toes. "These here are my
friends: Happy Jack up there on the wagon, and Slim and Weary and Pink
and Cal and Jack Bates and Andy Green--and there's more scattered
around here, that don't reely count except when it comes to eating. We
like you, by cripes, and we like your cookin' fine! Now, you amble
along to town and load up with the best there is--huh?" It occurred to
him that his final remarks might be construed as giving orders, and he
glanced at Weary and winked to show that he meant nothing serious. "So
long, Jakie," he added over his shoulder and went to where his horse
waited.

Jacques--ever afterward he was known as "Jakie" to the Flying
U--clambered up the front wheel and perched ingratiatingly beside
Happy Jack, and they started off behind the riders for the short mile
to Dry Lake. Immediately he proceeded to win Happy from his glum
aloofness.

"I would say, Mr. Happy, that I should like exceeding well to be
friends together," he began purringly. "So superior a gentleman must
win the admiration of the onlooker and so I could presume to question
for advisement. I am experience much dexterity for cooking, yes, but I
am yet so ignorant concerning the duties pertaining to camp. If the
driving of these several horses transpire to pertain, I will so gladly
receive the necessary instruction and endeavor to fulfil the
accomplishment. Yes?"

Happy Jack, more in stupefaction at the cook's vocabulary than
anything else, turned his head and took a good look at him. And the
trustful smile of Jakie went straight to the big, soft heart of him
and won him completely. "Aw, gwan," he adjured gruffly to hide his
surrender. "I don't mind driving for yuh. It ain't that I was kicking
about."

"I thank you for the so gracious assurement. If I transgress not too
greatly, I should like for inquire what is the chuck for which I am
told to fill the wagon. I do not," he added humbly, "understand yet
all the language of your so glorious country, for fich I have so
diligently study the books. Words I have not yet assimilated
completely, and the word chuck have yet escape my knowledge."

"Chuck," grinned Happy Jack, "is grub."

"Chuck, it is grub," repeated Jakie thoughtfully. "And grub, that
is--Yes?"

Happy Jack struggled mentally with the problem. "Well, grub is grub;
all the stuff yuh eat is grub. Meat and flour and coffee and--"

"Ah, the light it dawns!" exclaimed Jakie joyously. "Grub it is the
supply of provision fich I must obtain for camping, yes? I thank you
so graciously for the information; because," he added a bit wistfully,
"that little word chuck she annoy me exceeding and make me for not
sleep that I must grasp the meaning fich elude. I am now happy that I
do not make the extensive blunder for one small word fich I apprehend
must be a food fich I must buy and perhaps not to understand the
preparation of it. Yes? It is the excellent jest at the expense of
me."

"There ain't much chuck in camp," Happy observed helpfully, "so yuh
might as well start in and get anything yuh want to cook. The outfit
is good about one thing They don't never kick on the stuff yuh eat.
The cook always loads up to suit himself, and nobody don't ask
questions or make a holler--so long as there's plenty and it's good."

Jakie listened attentively, twisting his mustache ends absently. "It
is simply that I purchase the supplies fich I shall choose for my
judgment," he observed, to make quite sure that he understood. "I am
to have _carte blanche_, yes?"

"Sure, if yuh want it," said Happy Jack. "Only they might not keep it
here. Yuh can't get _everything_ in a little place like this." It is
only fair to Happy Jack to state that he would have understood the
term if he had seen it in print. It was the pronunciation which made
the words strange to him.

Jakie looked puzzled, but being the soul of politeness he made no
comment--perhaps because Happy Jack was at that moment bringing his
four horses to a reluctant stand at the wide side-door of the store.

"The horses, they are of the vivacious temperament, yes?" Jakie had
scrambled from the seat to within the door and was standing there
smiling appreciatively at the team.

"Aw, they're all right. You go on in--I guess Weary's there. If he
ain't, you go ahead and get what yuh want. I'll be back after awhile."
Thirst was calling Happy Jack; he heeded the summons and disappeared,
leaving the new cook to his own devices.

So, it would seem, did every other member of the Flying U. Weary had
been told that Miss Satterly was in town, and he forgot all about
Jakie in his haste to find her. No one else seemed to feel any
responsibility in the matter, and the store clerks did not care what
the Flying U outfit had to eat. For that reason the chuck-wagon
contained in an hour many articles which were strange to it, and
lacked a few things which might justly be called necessities.

"Say, you fellows are sure going to live swell," one of the clerks
remarked, when Happy Jack finally returned. "Where did yuh pick his
nibs? Ain't he a little bit new and shiny?"

"Aw, he's all right," Happy Jack defended jealously. "He's a real
_chaff_, and he can build the swellest meals yuh ever eat. Patsy can't
cook within a mile uh him. And _clean_--I betche _he_ don't keep his
bread-dough setting around on the ground for folks to tromp on." Which
proves how completely Jakie had subjugated Happy Jack.

That night--nobody but the horse-wrangler and Happy Jack had shown up
at dinner-time--the boys of the Flying U dined luxuriously at their
new-made camp upon the creek-bank at the home ranch, and ate things
which they could not name but which pleased wonderfully their palates.
There was a salad to tempt an epicure, and there was a pudding the
like of which they had never tasted. It had a French name which left
them no wiser than before asking for it, and it looked, as Pink
remarked, like a snowbank with the sun shining on it, and it tasted
like going to heaven.

"It makes me plumb sore when I think of all the years I've stood for
Patsy's slops," sighed Cal Emmett, rolling over upon his back because
he was too full for any other position--putting it plainly.

"By golly, I never knowed there was such cookin' in the world," echoed
Slim. "Why, even Mis' Bixby can't cook that good."

"The Countess had ought to come down and take a few lessons," declared
Jack Bates emphatically. "I'm going to take up some uh that pudding
and ask her what she thinks of it."

"Yuh can't," mourned Happy Jack. "There ain't any left--and I never
got more'n a taste. Next time, I'm going to tell Jakie to make it in a
wash tub, and make it full; with some uh you gobblers in camp--"

He looked up and discovered the Little Doctor approaching with Chip.
She was smiling a friendly welcome, and she was curious about the new
cook. By the time she had greeted them all and had asked all the
questions she could think of and had gone over to meet Jakie and to
taste, at the urgent behest of the Happy Family, a tiny morsel of
salad which had been overlooked, it would seem that the triumph of the
new cook was complete and that no one could possibly give a thought to
old Patsy.

The Little Doctor, however, seemed to regret his loss--and that in the
face of the delectable salad and the smile of Jakie. "I do think it's
a shame that Patsy left the way he did," she remarked to the Happy
Family in general, being especially careful not to look toward Big
Medicine. "The poor old fellow _walked_ every step of the way to the
ranch, and Claude"--that was Chip's real name--"says it was
twenty-five or six miles. He was so lame and he looked so old and
so--well, friendless, that I could have _cried_ when he came limping
up to the house! He had walked all night, and he got here just at
breakfast time and was too tired to eat.

"I dosed him and doctored his poor feet and made him go to bed, and he
slept all that day. He wanted to start that night for Dry Lake, but of
course we wouldn't let him do that. He was wild to leave, however, so
J.G. had to drive him in the next day. He went off without a word to
any of us, and he looked so utterly dejected and so--so _old_. Claude
says he acted perfectly awful in camp, but I'm sure he was sorry for
it afterwards. J.G. hasn't got over it yet; I believe he has taken it
to heart as much as Patsy seemed to do. He's had Patsy with him for so
long, you see--he was like one of the family." She stopped and
regarded the Happy Family a bit anxiously. "This new cook is a very
nice little man," she added after a minute, "but after all, he isn't
Patsy."

The Happy Family did not answer, and they refrained from looking at
one another or at the Little Doctor.

At last Big Medicine brought his big voice into the awkward silence.
"Honest to grandma, Mrs. Chip," he said earnestly, "I'd give a lot
right now to have old Patsy back--er--just to have _around_, if it
made him feel bad to leave. I reckon maybe that was my fault: I hadn't
oughta pitched quite so hard, and I had oughta looked where I was
throwin' m' rider. I reelize that no cook likes to have a fellow
standin' on his head in a big pan uh bread-sponge, on general
principles if not on account uh the bread. Uh course, we've all knowed
old Patsy to take just about as great liberties himself with his
sponge--but we've got to recollect that it was _his_ dough, by cripes,
and that pipe ashes ain't the same as a fellow takin' a shampoo in the
pan. No, I reelize that I done wrong, and I'm willin' to apologize for
it right here and now. At the same time," he ended dryly, "I will own
that I'm dead stuck on little Jakie, and I'd ruther ride for the
Flying U and eat Jakie's grub than any other fate I can think of right
now. Whilst I'm sorry for what I done, yuh couldn't pry me loose from
Jakie with a stick uh dynamite--and that's a fact, Mrs. Chip."

The Little Doctor laughed, pushed back her hair in the way she had,
glanced again at the unresponsive faces of the original members of the
Happy Family and gave up as gracefully as possible.

"Oh, of course Patsy's an old crank, and Jakie's a waxed angel," she
surrendered with a little grimace. "You think so now, but that's
because you are being led astray by your appetites, like all men. You
just wait: You'll be _homesick_ for a sight of that fat, bald-headed,
cranky old Patsy bouncing along on the mess-wagon and swearing in
Dutch at his horses, before you're through. If you're not so
completely gone over to Jakie that you will eat nothing but what he
has cooked, come on up to the house. The Countess is making a
twogallon freezer of ice-cream for you, and she has a big pan of angel
cake to go with it! You don't deserve it--but come along anyway."
Which was another endearing way of the Little Doctor's--the way of
sweetening all her lectures with something very nice at the end.

The Happy Family felt very much ashamed and very sorry that they could
not feel kindly toward Patsy, even to please the Little Doctor. They
sincerely wanted to please her and to have her unqualified approval;
but wanting Patsy back, or feeling even the slightest regret that he
was gone, seemed to them a great deal too much to ask of them. Since
this is a story of cooks and of eating, one may with propriety add,
however, that the invitation to ice cream and angel cake, coming
though it did immediately after that wonderful supper of Jakie's, was
accepted with alacrity and their usual thoroughness of accomplishment;
not for the world would they have offended the Little Doctor by
declining so gracious an invitation--the graciousness being manifested
in her smile and her voice rather than in the words she spoke--leaving
out the enchantment which hovers over the very name of angel cake and
ice cream. The Happy Family went to bed that night as complacently
uncomfortable as children after a Christmas dinner.

Not often does it fall to the lot of a cowboy to have served to him
stuffed olives and lobster salad with mayonnaise dressing, French
fried potatoes and cream puffs from the mess-tent of a roundup outfit.
During the next week it fell to the lot of the Happy Family, however.
When the salads and the cream puffs disappeared suddenly and the smile
of Jakie became pensive and contrite, the Happy Family, acting
individually but unanimously, made inquiries.

"It is that I no more possess the fresh vegetables, nor the eggs,
gentlemen," purred Jakie. "Many things of a deliciousness must I now
abstain because of the absence of two, three small eggs! But see, one
brief arrival in the small town would quickly remedy, yes? It is that
we return with haste that I may buy more of the several articles for
fich I require?" He spread his small hands appealingly.

"By golly, _Patsy_ never had no eggs--" began Slim traitorously.

"Aw, gwan! Patsy never fed yuh like Jakie does, neither!" Happy Jack
was heart and soul the slave of the chef. "If Chip don't care, I'll
ride over to Nelson's and git some eggs. Jakie said he'd make some
more uh that pudding if he had some. It ain't but six or seven miles."

"Should you but obtain the juvenile hen, yes, I should be delighted to
serve the chicken salad for luncheon. It is the great misfortune that
the fresh vegetable are not obtain, but I will do the best and
substitute with a cleverness fich will conceal the defect--yes?"
Jakie's caps and aprons had lost their first immaculate freshness, but
his manner was as royally perfect as ever and his smile as wistfully
friendly.

"Well, I'll ask Chip about it," Happy Jack yielded.

Eggs and young chickens were of a truth strange to a roundup in full
blast, but so was a chef like Jakie, and so were the salads, stuffed
olives and cream puffs; and the white caps and the waxed mustache and
the beautiful flow of words and the smile. The Happy Family was in no
condition, mentally or digestively, to judge impartially. A month ago
they would have whooped derision at the suggestion of riding anywhere
after fresh eggs and "juvenile hens," but now it seemed to them very
natural and very necessary. So much for the demoralization of expert
cookery and white caps and a smile.

Chip also seemed to have fallen under the spell. It may have been that
the heavenly peace which wrapped the Flying U was, in his mind, too
precious to be lightly disturbed. At any rate he told Happy Jack
briefly to "Go ahead, if you want to," and so left unobstructed the
path to the chicken salad and cream puffs. Happy Jack wiped his hands
upon an empty flour sack, rolled down his shirtsleeves and hurried off
to saddle a horse.

Happy Jack did not realize that he was doing two thirds of the work
about the cook-tent, but that was a fact. Because Jakie could not
drive the mess-wagon team, Happy Jack had been appointed his
assistant. As assistant he drove the wagon from one camping place to
another, "rustled" the wood, peeled the potatoes, tended fires and
washed dishes, and did the thousand things which do not require expert
hands, and which, in time of stress, usually falls to the
horse-wrangler. Jakie was ever smiling and always promising, in his
purring voice, to cook something new and delicious, and left with the
leisure which Happy's industry gave him, he usually kept his promise.

"Now, Mr. Happy," he would smile, "I am agreeable to place the
confidence in your so gracious person that you prepare the potatoes,
yes? And that you attend to the boiling of meat and the unpacking and
arrangement of those necessary furnishings for fich you possess the
great understanding. And I shall prepare the so delicious dessert of
the floating island, what you call in America. Yes? Our friends will
have the so delightful astonishment when they arrive. They shall
exclaim and partake joyously, is it not? And for your reward, Mr.
Happy, I shall be so pleased to set aside a very extensive portion of
the delicious floating island, so that you can eat no more except you
endanger your handsome person from the bursting. Yes?" And oh, the
smile of him!

A man of sterner stuff than Happy Jack would have fallen before such
guile and would have labored willingly--nay, gladly in the service of
so delightful a diplomat as Jakie. Except for that willing service,
Jakie would have been quite overwhelmed by the many and peculiar
duties of a roundup cook. He would have been perfectly helpess before
the morning and noon packing of dishes and food, and the skilful haste
necessary to unpack and prepare a meal for fifteen ravenous appetites
within the time limit would have been utterly impossible. Jakie was a
chef, trained to his profession in well-appointed kitchens and with
assistance always at hand; which is a trade apart from cooking for a
roundup crew.

Happy Jack, in the fulness of time, returned with the eggs. That is,
he returned with six eggs and a quart or two of a yellowish mixture
thickly powdered with shell. He took the pail to Jakie and he saw the
seraphic smile fade from his face and an unpleasant glitter creep into
his eyes.

"It is the omelet fich you furnish, yes? The six eggs, they will not
make the pudding. The omelet--I do not perceive yet the desirableness
of the omelet. And the juvenile hen--yes?"

"Aw, they wouldn't sell no chickens." Happy Jack's face had gone long
and scarlet before the patent displeasure of the other. "And my horse
was scared uh the bucket and pitched with me."

Jackie looked again into the pail, felt gingerly the yellow mess and
discovered one more egg which retained some semblance of its original
form. "The misfortune distresses me," he murmured. "It is that you
return hastily, Mr. Happy, and procure other eggs fich you will place
unbroken in my waiting hands, yes?"

Happy Jack mopped his forehead and glanced at the sun, burning hotly
down upon the prairie. They had made a short move that day and it was
still early. But the way to Nelson's and back had been hot and
tumultuous and he was tired. For the first time since his abject
surrender to the waxed smile, Happy Jack chafed a bit under the yoke
of voluntary servitude. "Aw, can't yuh cook something that don't take
so many eggs?" he asked in something like his old, argumentative tone.

The unpleasant glitter in the eyes of Jakie grew more pronounced; grew
even snaky, in the opinion of Happy Jack. "It is that I am no more
permitted the privilege of preparing the food for fich I have the
judgment, yes?" His voice purred too much to be convincing. "It is
that I am no more the chef to be obeyed by my servant?"

"Aw, gwan! I ain't anybody's servant that I ever heard of!" Happy Jack
felt himself bewilderedly slipping from his loyalty. What had come
over Jakie, to act like this? He walked away to where there was some
shade and sat down sullenly. Jakie's servant, was he? Well! "The
darned little greasy-faced runt," he mumbled rebelliously, and
immediately felt the better for it.

Two cigarettes brought coolness and calm. Happy Jack wanted very much
to lie there and take a nap, but his conscience stirred uneasily. The
boys were making a long circle that day and would come in with the
appetites--and the tempers--of wolves. It occurred to Happy Jack that
their appetites were much keener than they had ever been before, and
he sat there a little longer while he thought about it; for Happy
Jack's mind was slow and tenacious, and he hated to leave a new idea
until he had squeezed it dry of all mystery. He watched Jakie moving
in desultory fashion about the tent--but most of the time Jakie stayed
inside.

"I betche the boys ain't gitting enough old stand-by-yuh chuck," he
decided at length. "Floatin' island and stuffed olives--for them that
likes stuffed olives--and salad and all that junk _tastes_ good--but I
betche the boys need a good feed uh beans!" Which certainly was
brilliant of Happy Jack, even if it did take him a full hour to arrive
at that conclusion. He got up immediately and started for the
cook-tent.

"Say, Jakie," he began before he was inside, "ain't there time enough
to boil a pot uh beans if I make yuh a good fire? I betche the boys
would like a good feed--"

"A-a-hh!" Happy Jack insisted afterward that it sounded like the
snarling of a wolf over a bone. "Is it that you come here to give the
orders? Is it that you _insult_?" Followed a torrent of molten French,
as it were. Followed also Jakie, with the eyes of a snake and the
toothy grin of a wild animal and with a knife which Happy Jack had
never seen before; a knife which caught the sunlight and glittered
horridly.

Happy Jack backed out as if he had inadvertently stirred a nest of
hornets. Jakie almost caught him before he took to his heels. Happy
never waited to discover what the new cook was saying, or whether he
was following or remaining at the tent. He headed straight for the
protection of the horse-wrangler, who watched his cavvy not far away,
and his face was the color of stale putty.

The horse-wrangler saw him coming and came loping up to meet him.
"What's eating yuh, Happy?" he inquired inelegantly.

"Jakie--he's gone nutty! He come at me with a knife, and he'd uh
killed me if I'd stayed!" Happy Jack pantingly recovered himself. "I
didn't have no time ta git my gun," he added in a more natural tone,
"or I'd uh settled him pretty blame quick. So I come out to borrow
yourn. I betche _I'll_ have the next move."

The horse-wrangler grinned heartlessly. "I reckon he's about half
shot," he said, sliding over in the saddle and getting out the
inevitable tobacco sack and papers. "Old Pete Williams rode past while
you were gone, loaded to the guards and with a bottle uh whisky in
each saddle-pocket and two in his coat. He gave me a drink, and then
he went on and stopped at camp. He was hung up there for quite a
spell, I noticed. I didn't _see_ him pass any uh the vile liquor to
little Jakie, but--" he twirled a blackened match stub in his fingers
and then tossed it from him.

"Aw, gwan! Jakie wouldn't touch nothing when he was in town," Happy
Jack objected. "I betche he's gone crazy, or else--"

"Well," interrupted the horse-wrangler, "I've told yuh what I know and
all I know. Take it or leave it." He rode back to turn the lead-horse
from climbing a ridge where he did not want the herd to follow. He did
not lend Happy Jack his gun, and for that reason--perhaps--Jakie
remained alive and unpunctured until the first of the riders came
loping in to camp.

The first riders happened to be Pink and Big Medicine. They were met
by a tearful, contrite Jakie--a Jakie who seemed much inclined to
weeping upon their shirt-fronts and to confessing all his sins,
particularly the sin of trying to carve Happy Jack. That perturbed
gentleman made his irate appearance as soon as he found that
reinforcements had arrived.

Big Medicine disengaged himself from the clinging arms of the chef,
sniffed suspiciously and wiped away the tears from his vest. "Well,
say," he bellowed in his usual manner of trying to make all Chouteau
County hear what he had to say, "I ain't t' blame if he got away on
yuh. Yuh hadn't ought to uh done it--or else yuh oughta made a clean
job of it sos't we could hang yuh proper. Supper ready?"

"It is that the supply of eggs is inadequate," wept Jakie, steadying
himself against the tent-pole while he wiped his eyes upon his apron.
"Because of it I could not prepare the floating island--and without
the dessert I have not the heart to prepare the dinner, yes? It is
that I am breaking of the heart that I assail the good friend of me.
Oh, Mr. Happy, it is that I crave pardon!"

Happy Jack came near taking to his heels again when he saw Jakie start
for him; he did back up hastily, and his evident reluctance to embrace
and forgive started afresh the tears of remorse. Jakie wailed volubly
and, catching Pink unaware, he wept upon his bosom.

Others came riding in, saw the huddle before the mess-tent and came up
to investigate. With every fresh arrival Jakie began anew his
confession that he had attempted to murder his good friend, Mr. Happy,
and with every confession he wept more copiously than before.

The Happy Family tacitly owned itself helpless. A warlike cook they
could deal with. A lazy cook they could kick into industry. A weeping,
wailing, conscience-stricken cook, a cook who steadfastly refused to
be comforted, was an absolutely new experience. They told him to buck
up, found that he only broke out anew, threatened, cajoled and argued.
Jakie clung to whoever happened to be within reach and mixed the
English language unmercifully.

"Happy, you'll have to forgive him," said Weary at last. "Go tell him
yuh don't feel hard towards him. We want some supper."

"Aw, gwan. I _ain't_ forgive him, and I never will. I--"

Big Medicine stepped into the breach. With his face contorted into a
grin to crimple one's spine, with a voice to make one's knees buckle,
he went up to Happy Jack and thrust that horrible grin into Happy's
very face. "By cripes, you forgive Jakie, and you do it quick!" he
thundered. "Think you're going to ball up the eating uh the whole
outfit whilst you stand around acting haughty? Why, by cripes, I've
killed men in the Coconino County for _half_ what you're doing! You'll
wish, by cripes, that Jakie _had_ slit your hide; you'll consider that
woulda been an easy way out, before I git half through with yuh. You
walk right up and shake hands with him, and you tell him that yuh love
him to death and are his best friend and always will be! Yuh _hear_
me?"

Happy Jack heard. The Happy Family considerately moved aside and left
him a clear path, and they looked on without a word while he took
Jakie's limp hand, muttered tremulously, "Aw, fergit it, Jakie. I know
yuh didn't mean nothing by it, and I forgive yuh," and backed away
again.

Jakie wept, this time with gratitude. They got him inside a tent,
unrolled his bed and persuaded him to lie down upon it. They searched
the mess-box, found all that was left of a quart bottle of whisky,
took it outside and divided it gravely and appreciatively among
themselves. There was not much to divide.

Happy Jack took charge of the pots and pans, with the whole Happy
Family to help him hurry supper, while Jakie forgot his woes in sleep
and the sun set upon a quiet camp.

Next morning, Jakie was up and cooking breakfast at the appointed
time, and the camp felt that the incident of the evening before might
well be forgotten. The coffee was unusually good that morning, even
for Jakie. He was subdued, was Jakie, and his soft, brown eyes were
humble whenever they met the eyes of Happy Jack. His smile was
infrequent and fleeting, and his voice more deprecating than ever.
Aside from these minor changes everything seemed the same as before
the sheepmen had stopped at camp.

That afternoon, however, came an aftermath in the shape of Happy Jack
galloping wildly out to where the others were holding a herd and
"cutting out." He was due to come and help, so nobody paid any
attention to his haste, though it was his habit to take his time. He
shot recklessly by the outer fringes of the "cut" and yelled in a way
to stampede the whole bunch. "Jakie's _dying_," he shouted, wild-eyed.
"He's drunk up all the lemon extract and most uh the v'nilla before I
could stop him!"

Chip and Weary, riding in hot haste to the camp, found that it was
true as far as the drinking was concerned. Jakie was stretched upon
his back breathing unpleasantly, and beside him were two flat bottles
of half-pint size, one empty and the other very nearly so; the tent
and Jakie's breath reeked of lemon and vanilla. Chip sent back for
help.

For the second time the Flying U roundup was brought to an involuntary
pause because of its cook. There was but one thing to do, and Chip did
it. He broke camp, loaded Jakie into the bed-wagon, and headed at a
gallop for Dry Lake in an effort to catch the next train for Great
Falls. Whether he sent Jakie to the hospital or to the undertaker was
a question he did not attempt to answer; one thing was certain,
however, that he must send him to one of those places as soon as might
be.

That night, just before the train arrived, he sent another telegram to
Johnny Scott at rush rates. He said simply:

  "Send another cook immediately this one all in am returning him in
  baggage coach this train.

  "C. BENNETT."

Just after midnight he went to the station and received an answer,
which is worth repeating:

  "C. BENNETT, Dry Lake: Supply cooks running low am sending only
  available don't kill this one or may have to go without season on
  cooks closed fine attached to killing, running with dogs or
  keeping in captivity this one drunk look for him in Pullman have
  bribed porter. J.G. SCOTT."

It was sent collect, which accounts perhaps for the facetious remarks
which it contained.

It was morning when that train arrived, because it was behind time for
some reason, but Chip, Weary, Pink and Big Medicine were at the depot
to meet it. The new cook having been reported drunk, they wanted to
make sure of getting him off the train in case he proved unruly. They
were wise in the ways of intoxicated cooks. They ran to the steps of
the only Pullman on the train and were met by the grinning porter.

"Yas sah, he's in dah--but Ah cyan't git 'im off, sah, to save mah
soul," he explained toothily. "Ah put 'im next de front end, sah, but
he's went to sleep and Ah cyan't wake 'em up, an' Ah cyan't tote 'em
out nohow. Seems lak he weighs a ton!"

"By cripes, _we'll_ tote him out," declared Big Medicine, pushing
ahead of Chip in his enthusiasm. "You hold the train, and we'll git
'im. Show us the bunk."

The porter pointed out the number and retreated to the steps that he
might signal the conductor. The four pushed up through the vestibule
and laid hold upon the berth curtains.

"Mamma!" ejaculated Weary in a stunned tone. "Look what's in here,
boys!"

They thrust forward their heads and peered in at the recumbent form.

"Honest to grandma--it's old Patsy!" The voice of Big Medicine brought
heads out all along down the car.

"Come out uh that!" Four voices made up the chorus, and Patsy opened
his eyes reluctantly.

"Py cosh, I not cook chuck for you fellers ven I'm sick," he mumbled
dazedly.

"Come out uh that, you damned Dutch belly-robber!" bawled Big Medicine
joyously, and somewhere behind a curtain a feminine shriek was heard
at the shocking sentence.

Four pairs of welcoming hands laid hold upon Patsy; four pairs of
strong arms dragged him out of the berth and through the narrow aisle
to the platform. The conductor, the head brakeman and the porter were
chafing there, and they pulled while the others pushed. So Patsy was
deposited upon the platform, grumbling and only half sober.

"Anyway, we've got him back," Weary remarked with much satisfaction
the next day when they were once more started toward the range land.
"When Irish blows in again, we'll be all right."

"By cripes, yuh just give me a sight uh that Irish once, and he'll
_come_, if I have to rope and drag 'im!" Big Medicine took his own way
of intimating that he held no grudge. "Did yuh hear what Patsy said,
by cripes, when he was loading up the chuck-wagon at the store? He
turned in all that oil and them olives and _anchovies_, yuh know, and
he told Tom t' throw in about six cases uh blueberries. I was standin'
right handy by, and he turns around and scowls at me and says: 'Py
cosh, der vay dese fellers eats pie mit derselves, I have to fill oop
der wagon mit pie fruit alreatty!' And then the old devil turns around
with his back to me, but yuh can skin me for a coyote if I didn't
ketch a grin on 'is face!"

They turned and looked back to where Patsy, seated high upon the
mess-wagon, was cracking his long whip like pistol shots and swearing
in Dutch at his four horses as he came bouncing along behind them.

"Well, there's worse fellers than old Patsy," Slim admitted
ponderously. "I don't want no more Jakie in mine, by golly."

"I betche Jakie cashes in, with all that lemon in him," prophesied
Happy Jack with relish. "Dirty little Dago--it'd serve him right.
Patsy wouldn't uh acted like that in a thousand years."

They glanced once more behind them, as if they would make sure that
the presence of Patsy was a reality. Then, with content in their
hearts, they galloped blithely out of the lane and into the grassy
hills.


THE END.

       *       *       *       *       *




_WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF_

CHIP OF THE FLYING U.

BY M. BOWER.

       *       *       *       *       *

"'Chip' is all right. Better than 'The Virginian.'"

--_Brooklyn Eagle_.


"The name of B.M. Bower will stand for something readable in the
estimation of every man, and most every woman, who reads this fine new
story of Montana ranch and its dwellers."--_Publisher & Retailer_.


"Its qualities and merit can be summed up in the brief but sufficient
statement that it is thoroughly delightful."

--_Albany Times-Union_.


"For strength of interest, vivid description, clever and convincing
character, drawing and literary merit it is the surprise of the year."

--_Walden's Stationer and Printer_.


"It is an appealing story told in an active style which fairly
sparkles in reproducing the atmosphere of the wild and woolly West. It
is consistently forceful and contains a quantity of refreshing
comedy."

--_Philadelphia Press_.


"Bound to stand among the famous novels of the year."

--_Baltimore American_.


"'The Virginian' has found many imitators, but few authors have come
as near duplicating Owen Wister's magnetic hero as has B.M. Bower,
'Chip of the Flying U.'"--_Philadelphia Item_.


"B.M. Bower has portrayed but few characters, but these he has
pictured with the strong and yet delicate stroke of a true master. The
atmosphere of the West is perfect; one sees and feels the vibrant,
vital life of the ranch activities all through the telling of the
story."

--_Cincinnati Times-Star_.


"It brims over with humor showing the bright and laughing side of
ranch life. It is a story which will delightfully entertain the
reader."

--_Portland Journal_.


"The story contains strength of interest, vivid descriptions, clever
and convincing character drawing and literary merits, and the author
lays on the colors with a master's touch."--_Albany Evening Journal_.


12MO, CLOTH BOUND, COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS, $.25

G.W. DILLINGHAM CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

       *       *       *       *       *




WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF

THE RANGE DWELLERS.

BY B.M. BOWER.


"A clever and humorous story, delightfully clean and wholesome, and
possessing enough of the dramatic and dangerous element to keep the
imagination excited to the end."--_The Nashville American_.


"A bright, jolly, entertaining yarn without a dull page."--_The
Chicago Inter-Ocean_.


"One of the most charming and appealing of all Western novels. There
is action and vivacity at all times, and the reader's interest never
sways for an instant. The story is admirably written and runs along
smoothly at all times."--_Philadelphia Press_.


"Here are every day, genuine cowboys, just as they really exist,
spirited action, a range feud between two families, and a Romeo and
Juliet courtship in the Far West which make easy reading. Mr. Bower
knows his wild west intimately and writes of it entertainingly."--_Des
Moines Register and Leader_.


"Told with a good deal of humor and a lot of unusual spirit. A very
clever book--one that has more atmosphere than usual, and which can be
picked up at any time to fill a long felt want for excitement."
--_Philadelphia Inquirer_.


"A tale to set the blood tingling. It is a story of the West, with the
scene laid on a Montana cattle ranch. A story well told and a story
worth reading."--_St. Louis Republic_.


"Mr. Bower has portrayed but few characters, but these he has pictured
with the strong and yet delicate stroke of a true master. The
atmosphere of the West is perfect; one sees and feels the vibrant
vital life of the ranch activities all through the telling of the
story."--_Pittsburgh Dispatch_.


"Has many stirring situations and exciting incidents illustrative of
existence in the open."--_Boston Budget-Beacon_.


"The book is vigorous, with the bracing open air of the Far
West."--_Rochester Herald_.


_12mo, Cloth Bound_

_Beautiful Color Illustrations by Charles M. Russell, $1.25_

G.W. DILLINGHAM CO., Publishers, NEW YORK

       *       *       *       *       *




RAW GOLD

BY BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR

       *       *       *       *       *

"This is a stirring story of the Canadian Northwest and the Northwest
Mounted Police. The unwritten history of this wonderful and intrepid
body of men must be a long way from the dry-as-dust histories on the
shelves. It is an open question if people do not get more real history
in a clear, clean-cut tale of this kind, with its strong character
portrayal and its vivid local coloring, than could be obtained in any
other way."

--_St. Louis Times_.


"Action enough to thrill the dullest sort of reader."

--_Albany Times-Union_.


"The delineation of characters in this tale of the Northwest Mounted
Police is splendidly portrayed. They are flesh-and-blood
personalities. There is something of mystery, bits of sharp action,
color, description, life. A well-told story."

--_Pittsburg Dispatch_.


"The story is sensational, but is full of animation. Scenes shift
rapidly and the actors play the game of life fearlessly and like men.
The love theme runs through it all and pleasantly."

--_Chicago Tribune_.


"It is strong, virile, captivating and well told."

--_Denver Republican_.


"A rattling good story. There is sentiment of the kind that fits with
the open sky and life in the saddle, and the whole story moves with a
swing and reality that are refreshing in the extreme."--_New York
Times_.


"Wild, indeed, is the West pictured by Mr. Sinclair."

--_Boston Transcript_.


"The tale, rapid in action and clearly told, is one of the best
written on the Canadian West."--_Louisville Courier-Journal_.


_12mo, Cloth bound, Illustrated, $1.50._

       *       *       *       *       *

G.W. DILLINGHAM CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

       *       *       *       *       *




WYOMING

_A STORY OF THE OUTDOOR WEST_

BY

WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

_Author of "Ridgeway of Montana," "A Daughter of Raasay," Etc._

       *       *       *       *       *

In this vivid story the author has captured the breezy charm of
"Cattleland," and brings to us the turbid life of the frontier with
all its engaging dash and vigor. It is the kind of book one reads at a
sitting far into the night.

A young woman, fresh from the conventional East, drives her motor car
into an absorbing adventure which is the first of a series of dramatic
events that tread upon each other's heels and grow more intense and
thrilling from page to page.

The gallant vagabond, Ned Bannister, who enthralls the heroine's
fancy, against her will, is reputed to be a lawless desperado of the
worst type. Yet the reader joins with the wholly delightful young
heroine in yielding him full sympathy. How the mystery is solved to
the satisfaction of all is one of the pleasures that must be reserved
for a reading.

The characters each and all are drawn with masterly vigor and help
forward the swift movement of the plot.


_12mo. Illustrated. Cloth bound, $1.50._

       *       *       *       *       *

G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

       *       *       *       *       *




WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

       *       *       *       *       *

"To-day I had it out with 'Ridgway.' I opened the book and I did not
lay it down till I had raced eagerly through it. I find it a story
with many elements of power in its treatment of plot and personality.
The men are all well-marked types. The women are all possible and
pleasant beings. The story gives dramatically the inner life of a
mining camp. The atmosphere of wild nature and primeval human passion
is well sustained. The exuberance of detail and suggestion, the easy
drawing of character, the fine massing of effects, all show a strength
and fire in the author which ought to give us a line of good books
from his pen in the coming days."

--EDWIN MARKHAM, in _The New York American_.


"Whatever else the reader of this novel may say, he certainly will be
forced to admit that it is highly interesting. Mr. Raine is not only
skillful in devising incidents which compel unwearied attention; he
also has the rarer and finer craftsmanship which enables him to create
characters that have a high degree of personal charm."--_Boston
Transcript_.


"A story engrossing all the way through."--_New York World_.


"It is a real pleasure to pick up a book like this one. To use an old
phrase, the story is one which can hardly be put down."

--_Minneapolis Tribune_.


"The action starts with the first line, and there is no suspension
until the last word is written. It is a story of thrilling situations,
busy people and stirring times. Once started to read it there is no
quitting the book."--_Denver Republican_.


"Full of action and written with remarkable vigor."

--_Charleston News and Courier_.


"Mr. Raine's experience as a newspaper man has stood him in good
stead. He knows the corrupt workings of politicians, the venality of
biased courts, the weakness of the human heart when tempted by gold.
More, he knows the details by which all these are made manifest in
unjust laws, unfair verdicts and treachery to one's best friends."

--_Denver Post_.


"The political contest, the love scenes, and the character drawing
give this story of life in the mining country great strength and
charm."--_Pittsburg Dispatch_.


"Western stories are always in demand, and of these William MacLeod
Raine is the most popular and successful writer. This is an
exceptionally entertaining book."--_Albany Times-Union_.


_12mo. Cloth bound. Illustrated, $1.50_

       *       *       *       *       *

G.W. DILLINGHAM CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK







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