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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14542 ***
+
+THE LONESOME TRAIL AND OTHER STORIES
+
+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 Happy Family_, _The Long Shadow_, etc.
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   THE LONESOME TRAIL
+
+   FIRST AID TO CUPID
+
+   WHEN THE COOK FELL ILL
+
+   THE LAMB
+
+   THE SPIRIT OF THE RANGE
+
+   THE REVELER
+
+   THE UNHEAVENLY TWINS
+
+
+
+
+THE LONESOME TRAIL
+
+PART ONE
+
+A man is very much like a horse.  Once thoroughly frightened by
+something he meets on the road, he will invariably shy at the same
+place afterwards, until a wisely firm master leads him perforce to the
+spot and proves beyond all doubt that the danger is of his own
+imagining; after which he will throw up his head and deny that he ever
+was afraid--and be quite amusingly sincere in the denial.
+
+It is true of every man with high-keyed nature, a decent opinion of
+himself and a healthy pride of power.  It was true of Will Davidson, of
+the Flying U--commonly known among his associates, particularly the
+Happy Family, as "Weary."  As to the cause of his shying at a certain
+object, that happened long ago.  Many miles east of the Bear Paws, in
+the town where Weary had minced painfully along the streets on pink,
+protesting, bare soles before the frost was half out of the ground; had
+yelled himself hoarse and run himself lame in the redoubtable base-ball
+nine which was to make that town some day famous--the nine where they
+often played with seven "men" because the other two had to "bug"
+potatoes or do some other menial task and where the umpire frequently
+engaged in throwing lumps of dried mud at refractory players,--there
+had lived a Girl.
+
+She might have lived there a century and Weary been none the worse, had
+he not acquired the unfortunate habit of growing up.  Even then he
+might have escaped injury had he not persisted in growing up and up, a
+straight six-feet-two of lovable good looks, with the sunniest of
+tempers and blue eyes that reflected the warm sweetness of that nature,
+and a smile to tell what the eyes left unsaid.
+
+Such being the tempting length of him, the Girl saw that he was worth
+an effort; she took to smoking the chimney of her bedroom lamp, heating
+curling irons, wearing her best hat and best ribbons on a weekday, and
+insisting upon crowding number four-and-a-half feet into number
+three-and-a-half shoes and managing to look as if she were perfectly
+comfortable.  When a girl does all those things, and when she has a
+good complexion and hair vividly red and long, heavy-lidded blue eyes
+that have a fashion of looking side-long at a man, it were well for
+that man to travel--if he would keep the lightness of his heart and the
+sunny look in his eyes and his smile.
+
+Weary traveled, but the trouble was that he did not go soon enough.
+When he did go, his eyes were somber instead of sunny, and he smiled
+not at all.  And in his heart he carried a deep-rooted impulse to shy
+always at women--and so came to resemble a horse.
+
+He shied at long, blue eyes and turned his own uncompromisingly away.
+He never would dance with a woman who had red hair, except in
+quadrilles where he could not help himself; and then his hand-clasp was
+brief and perfunctory when it came to "Grand right-and-left."  If
+commanded to "Balance-_swing_" the red-haired woman was swung airily by
+the finger-tips--; which was not the way in which Weary swung the
+others.
+
+And then came the schoolma'am.  The schoolma'am's hair was the darkest
+brown and had a shine to it where the light struck at the proper angle,
+and her eyes were large and came near being round, and they were a
+velvety brown and also had a shine in them.
+
+Still Weary shied consistently and systematically.
+
+At the leap-year ball, given on New Year's night, when the ladies were
+invited to "choose your pardners for the hull dance, regardless of who
+brought yuh," the schoolma'am had forsaken Joe Meeker, with whose
+parents she boarded, and had deliberately chosen Weary.  The Happy
+Family had, with one accord, grinned at him in a way that promised many
+things and, up to the coming of the Fourth of July, every promise had
+been conscientiously fulfilled.
+
+They brought him many friendly messages from the schoolma'am, to which
+he returned unfriendly answers.  When he accused them openly of trying
+to "load" him; they were shocked and grieved.  They told him the
+schoolma'am said she felt drawn to him--he looked so like her darling
+brother who had spilled his precious blood on San Juan Hill.  Cal
+Emmett was exceedingly proud of this invention, since it seemed to "go
+down" with Weary better than most of the lies they told.
+
+It was the coming of the Fourth and the celebration of that day which
+provoked further effort to tease Weary.
+
+"Who are _you_ going to take, Weary?" Cal Emmett lowered his left
+eyelid very gently, for the benefit of the others, and drew a match
+sharply along the wall just over his head.
+
+"Myself," answered Weary sweetly, though it was becoming a sore subject.
+
+"You're sure going in bum company, then," retorted Cal.
+
+"Who's going to pilot the schoolma'am?" blurted Happy Jack, who was
+never consciously ambiguous.
+
+"You can search me," said Weary, in a you-make-me-tired tone.  "She
+sure isn't going with Yours Truly."
+
+"Ain't she asked yuh yet?" fleered Cal.  "That's funny.  She told me
+the other day she was going to take advantage of woman's privilege,
+this year, and choose her own escort for the dance.  Then she asked me
+if I knew whether you were spoke for, and when I told her yuh wasn't,
+she wanted to know if I'd bring a note over.  But I was in a dickens of
+a hurry, and couldn't wait for it; anyhow, I was headed the other way."
+
+"Not toward Len Adams, were you?" asked Weary sympathetically.
+
+"Aw, she'll give you an invite, all right," Happy Jack declared.
+"Little Willie ain't going to be forgot, yuh can gamble on that.  He's
+too much like Darling Brother--"
+
+At this point, Happy Jack ducked precipitately and a flapping,
+four-buckled overshoe, a relic of the winter gone, hurtled past his
+head and landed with considerable force upon the unsuspecting stomach
+of Cal, stretched luxuriously upon his bunk.  Cal doubled like a
+threatened caterpillar and groaned, and Weary, feeling that justice had
+not been defeated even though he had aimed at another culprit, grinned
+complacently.
+
+"What horse are you going to take?" asked Chip, to turn the subject.
+
+"Glory.  I'm thinking of putting him up against Bert Rogers' Flopper.
+Bert's getting altogether too nifty over that cayuse of his.  He needs
+to be walked away from, once; Glory's the little horse that can learn
+'em things about running, if--"
+
+"Yeah--_if_!"  This from Cal, who had recovered speech.  "Have yuh got
+a written guarantee from Glory, that he'll run?"
+
+"Aw," croaked Happy Jack, "if he runs at all, it'll likely be
+backwards--if it ain't a dancing-bear stunt on his hind feet.  You can
+gamble it'll be what yuh don't expect and ain't got any money on; that
+there's Glory, from the ground up."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," Weary drawled placidly.  "I'm not setting him
+before the public as a twin to Mary's little lamb, but I'm willing to
+risk him.  He's a good little horse--when he feels that way--and he can
+run.  And darn him, he's _got_ to run!"
+
+Shorty quit snoring and rolled over.  "Betche ten dollars, two to one,
+he won't run," he said, digging his fists into his eyes like a baby.
+
+Weary, dead game, took him up, though he knew what desperate chances he
+was taking.
+
+"Betche five dollars, even up, he runs backwards," grinned Happy Jack,
+and Weary accepted that wager also.
+
+The rest of the afternoon was filled with Glory--so to speak--and much
+coin was hazarded upon his doing every unseemly thing that a horse can
+possibly do at a race, except the one thing which he did do; which goes
+to prove that Glory was not an ordinary cayuse, and that he had a
+reputation to maintain.  To the day of his death, it may be said, he
+maintained it.
+
+Dry Lake was nothing if not patriotic.  Every legal holiday was
+observed in true Dry Lake manner, to the tune of violins and the
+swish-swish of slippered feet upon a more-or-less polished floor.  The
+Glorious Fourth, however, was celebrated with more elaborate
+amusements.  On that day men met, organized and played a matched game
+of ball with much shouting and great gusto, and with an umpire who
+aimed to please.
+
+After that they arranged their horseraces over the bar of the saloon,
+and rode, ran or walked to the quarter-mile stretch of level trail
+beyond the stockyards to witness the running; when they would hurry
+back to settle their bets over the bar where they had drunk to the
+preliminaries.
+
+Bert Rogers came early, riding Flopper.  Men hurried from the saloon to
+gather round the horse that held the record of beating a "real
+race-horse" the summer before.  They felt his legs sagely and wondered
+that anyone should seem anxious to question his ability to beat
+anything in the country in a straightaway quarter-mile dash.
+
+When the Flying U boys clattered into town in a bunch, they were
+greeted enthusiastically; for old Jim Whitmore's "Happy Family" was
+liked to a man.  The enthusiasm did not extend to Glory, however.  He
+was eyed askance by those who knew him or who had heard of his
+exploits.  If the Happy Family had not backed him loyally to a man, he
+would not have had a dollar risked upon him; and this not because he
+could not run.
+
+Glory was an alien, one of a carload of horses shipped in from Arizona
+the summer before.  He was a bright sorrel, with the silvery mane and
+tan and white feet which one so seldom sees--a beauty, none could deny.
+His temper was not so beautiful.
+
+Sometimes for days he was lamblike in his obedience, touching in his
+muzzling affection till Weary was lulled into unwatchful love for the
+horse.  Then things would happen.
+
+Once, Weary walked with a cane for two weeks.  Another time he walked
+ten miles in the rain.  Once he did not walk at all, but sat on a rock
+and smoked cigarettes till his tobacco sack ran empty, waiting for
+Glory to quit sulking, flat on his side, and get up and carry him home.
+
+Any man but Weary would have ruined the horse with harshness, but Weary
+was really proud of his deviltry and would laugh till the tears came
+while he told of some new and undreamed bit of cussedness in his pet.
+
+On this day, Glory was behaving beautifully.  True, he had nearly
+squeezed the life out of Weary that morning when he went to saddle him
+in the stall, and he had afterwards snatched Cal Emmet's hat off with
+his teeth, and had dropped it to the ground and had stood upon it; but
+on the whole, the Happy Family regarded those trifles as a good sign.
+
+When Bert Rogers and Weary ambled away down the dusty trail to the
+starting point, accompanied by most of the Flying U boys and two or
+three from Bert's outfit, the crowd in the grand-stand (which was the
+top rail of the stockyard fence) hushed expectantly.
+
+When a pistol cracked, far down the road, and a faint yell came
+shrilling through the quiet sunshine, they craned necks till their
+muscles ached.  Like a summer sand-storm they came, and behind them
+clattered their friends, the dust concealing horse and rider alike.
+Whooping encouraging words at random, they waited till a black nose
+shot out from the rushing cloud.  That was Flopper.  Beside it a white
+streak, a flying, silvery mane--Glory was running!  Happy Jack gave a
+raucous yell.
+
+Lifting reluctantly, the dust gave hazy glimpses of a long, black body
+hugging jealously close to earth, its rider lying low upon the
+straining neck--that was Flopper and Bert.
+
+Close beside, a sheeny glimmer of red, a tossing fringe of white, a
+leaning, wiry, exultant form above--that was Glory and Weary.
+
+There were groans as well as shouting when the whirlwind had swept past
+and on down the hill toward town, and the reason thereof was plain.
+Glory had won by a good length of him.
+
+Bert Rogers said something savage and set his weight upon the bit till
+Flopper, snorting and disgusted--for a horse knows when he is
+beaten--took shorter leaps, stiffened his front legs and stopped,
+digging furrows with his feet.
+
+Glory sailed on down the trail, scattering Mrs. Jenson's chickens and
+jumping clean over a lumbering, protesting sow.  "Come on--he's going
+to set up the drinks!" yelled someone, and the crowd leaped from the
+fence and followed.
+
+But Glory did not stop.  He whipped around the saloon, whirled past the
+blacksmith shop and was headed for the mouth of the lane before anyone
+understood.  Then Chip, suddenly grasping the situation, dug deep with
+his spurs and yelled.
+
+"He's broken the bit--it's a runaway!"
+
+Thus began the second race, a free-for-all dash up the lane.  At the
+very start they knew it was hopeless to attempt overtaking that red
+streak, but they galloped a mile for good manners' sake; Cal then
+pulled up.
+
+"No use," he said.  "Glory's headed for home and we ain't got the
+papers to stop him.  He can't hurt Weary--and the dance opens up at
+six, and I've got a girl in town."
+
+"Same here," grinned Bert.  "It's after four, now."
+
+Chip, who at that time hadn't a girl--and didn't want one--let Silver
+out for another long gallop, seeing it was Weary.  Then he, too, gave
+up the chase and turned back.
+
+Glory settled to a long lope and kept steadily on, gleefully rattling
+the broken bit which dangled beneath his jaws.  Weary, helpless and
+amused and triumphant because the race was his, sat unconcernedly in
+the saddle and laid imaginary bets with himself on the outcome.
+Without doubt, Glory was headed for home.  Weary figured that, barring
+accidents, he could catch up Blazes, in the little pasture, and ride
+back to Dry Lake by the time the dance was in full swing--for the
+dancing before dark would be desultory and without much spirit.
+
+But the gate into the big field was closed and tied securely with a
+rope.  Glory comprehended the fact with one roll of his knowing eyes,
+turned away to the left and took the trail which wound like a snake
+into the foothills.  Clinging warily to the level where choice was
+given him, trotting where the way was rough, mile after mile he covered
+till even Weary's patience showed signs of weakening.
+
+Just then Glory turned, where a wire gate lay flat upon the ground,
+crossed a pebbly creek and galloped stiffly up to the very steps of a
+squat, vine-covered ranch-house where, like the Discontented Pendulum
+in the fable, he suddenly stopped.
+
+"Damn you, Glory--I could kill yuh for this!" gritted Weary, and slid
+reluctantly from the saddle.  For while the place seemed deserted, it
+was not.  There was a girl.
+
+She lay in a hammock; sprawled would come nearer describing her
+position.  She had some magazines scattered around upon the porch, and
+her hair hung down to the floor in a thick, dark braid.  She was
+dressed in a dark skirt and what, to Weary's untrained, masculine eyes,
+looked like a pink gunny sack.  In reality it was a kimono.  She
+appeared to be asleep.
+
+Weary saw a chance of leading Glory quietly to the corral before she
+woke.  There he could borrow a bridle and ride back whence he came, and
+he could explain about the bridle to Joe Meeker in town.  Joe was
+always good about lending things, anyway.  He gathered the fragments of
+the bit in one hand and clucked under his breath, in an agony lest his
+spurs should jingle.
+
+Glory turned upon him his beautiful, brown eyes, reproachfully
+questioning.
+
+Weary pulled steadily.  Glory stretched neck and nose obediently, but
+as to feet, they were down to stay.
+
+Weary glanced anxiously toward the hammock and perspired, then stood
+back and whispered language it would be a sin to repeat.  Glory,
+listening with unruffled calm, stood perfectly still, like a red statue
+in the sunshine.
+
+The face of the girl was hidden under one round, loose-sleeved arm.
+She did not move.  A faint breeze, freshening in spasmodic puffs,
+seized upon the hammock, and set it swaying gently.
+
+"Oh, damn you, Glory!" whispered Weary through his teeth.  But Glory,
+accustomed to being damned since he was a yearling, displayed
+absolutely no interest.  Indeed, he seemed inclined to doze there in
+the sun.
+
+Taking his hat--his best hat--from his head, he belabored Glory
+viciously over the jaws with it; silently except for the soft thud and
+slap of felt on flesh.  And the mood of him was as near murder as Weary
+could come.  Glory had been belabored with worse things than hats
+during his eventful career; he laid back his ears, shut his eyes tight
+and took it meekly.
+
+There came a gasping gurgle from the hammock, and Weary's hand stopped
+in mid-air.  The girl's head was burrowed in a pillow and her slippers
+tapped the floor while she laughed and laughed.
+
+Weary delivered a parting whack, put on his hat and looked at her
+uncertainly; grinned sheepishly when the humor of the thing came to him
+slowly, and finally sat down upon the porch steps and laughed with her.
+
+"Oh, gee!  It was too funny," gasped the girl, sitting up and wiping
+her eyes.
+
+Weary gasped also, though it was a small matter--a common little word
+of three letters.  In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, it
+was the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated him
+most and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too prim
+to be quite human.  The Happy Family had felt all along that they were
+artists in that line, and they knew that the precise sentences ever
+carried conviction of their truth.  Weary mopped his perspiring face
+upon a white silk handkerchief and meditated wonderingly.
+
+"You aren't a train-robber or a horsethief, or--anything, are you?" she
+asked him presently.  "You seemed quite upset at seeing the place
+wasn't deserted; but I'm sure, if you are a robber running away from a
+sheriff, I'd never dream of stopping you.  Please don't mind me; just
+make yourself at home."
+
+Weary turned his head and looked straight up at her.  "I'm afraid I'll
+have to disappoint yuh, Miss Satterly," he said blandly.  "I'm just an
+ordinary human, and my name is Davidson--better known as Weary.  You
+don't appear to remember me.  We've met before."
+
+She eyed him attentively.  "Perhaps we have--it you say so.  I'm
+wretched about remembering strange names and faces.  Was it at a dance?
+I meet so many fellows at dances--"  She waved a brown little hand and
+smiled deprecatingly.
+
+"Yes," said Weary laconically, still looking into her face.  "It was."
+
+She stared down at him, her brows puckered.  "I know, now.  It was at
+the Saint Patrick's dance in Dry Lake!  How silly of me to forget."
+
+Weary turned his gaze to the hill beyond the creek, and fanned his hot
+face with his hat.  "It was not.  It wasn't at that dance, at all."
+Funny she didn't remember him!  He suspected her of trying to fool him,
+now that he was actually in her presence, and he refused absolutely to
+be fooled.
+
+He could see that she threw out her hand helplessly.  "Well, I may as
+well 'fess up.  I don't remember you at all.  It's horrid of me, when
+you rode up in that lovely, unconventional way.  But you see, at dances
+one doesn't think of the men as individuals; they're just good or bad
+partners.  It resolves itself, you see, into a question of feet.  If I
+should dance with you again,--_did_ I dance with you?"
+
+Weary shot a quick, eloquent glance in her direction.  He did not say
+anything.
+
+Miss Satterly blushed.  "I was going to say, if I danced with you again
+I should no doubt remember you perfectly."
+
+Weary was betrayed into a smile.  "If I could dance in these boots, I'd
+take off my spurs and try and identify myself.  But I guess I'll have
+to ask yuh to take my word for it that we're acquainted."
+
+"Oh, I will.  I meant to, all along.  Why aren't you in town,
+celebrating?  I thought I was the only unpatriotic person in the
+country."
+
+"I just came from town," Weary told her, choosing, his words carefully
+while yet striving to be truthful.  No man likes confessing to a woman
+that he has been run away with.  "I--er--broke my bridle-bit, back a
+few miles" (it was fifteen, if it were a rod) "and so I rode in here to
+get one of Joe's.  I didn't want to bother anybody, but Glory seemed to
+think this was where the trail ended."
+
+Miss Satterly laughed again.  "It certainly was funny--you trying to
+get him away, and being so still about it.  I _heard_ you whispering
+swear-words, and I wanted to scream!  I just couldn't keep still any
+longer.  Is he balky?"
+
+"I don't know what he is--now," said Weary plaintively.  "He was, at
+that time.  He's generally what happens to be the most dev--mean under
+the circumstances."
+
+"Well, maybe he'll consent to being led to the stable; he looks as if
+he had a most unmerciful master!"  (Weary, being perfectly innocent,
+blushed guiltily)  "But I'll forgive you riding him like that, and make
+for you a pitcher of lemonade and give you some cake while he rests.
+You certainly must not ride back with him so tired."
+
+Fresh lemonade sounded tempting, after that ride.  And being lectured
+was not at all what he had expected from the schoolma'am--and who can
+fathom the mind of a man?  Weary gave her one complex glance, laid his
+hand upon the bridle and discovered that Glory, having done what
+mischief he could, was disposed to be very meek.  At the corral gate
+Weary looked back.
+
+"At dances," he mused aloud, "one doesn't consider men as
+individuals--it's merely a question of feet.  She took me for a train
+robber; and I danced with her about forty times, that night, and took
+her over to supper and we whacked up on our chicken salad because there
+was only one dish for the two of us--oh, mamma!"
+
+He pulled off the saddle with a preoccupied air and rubbed Glory down
+mechanically.  After that he went over and sat down on the oats' box
+and smoked two cigarettes while he pondered many things.
+
+He stood up and thoughtfully surveyed himself, brushed sundry bright
+sorrel hairs from his coat sleeves, stooped and tried to pinch creases
+into the knees of his trousers, which showed symptoms of "bagging."  He
+took off his hat and polished it with his sleeve he had just brushed so
+carefully, pinched four big dimples in the crown, turned it around
+three times for critical inspection, placed it upon his head at a
+studiously unstudied angle, felt anxiously at his neck-gear and slapped
+Glory affectionately upon the rump--and came near getting kicked into
+eternity.  Then he swung off up the path, softly whistling "In the
+good, old summer-time."  An old hen, hovering her chicks in the shade
+of the hay-rack, eyed him distrustfully and cried "k-r-_r-r-r_" in a
+shocked tone that sent her chickens burrowing deeper under her feathers.
+
+Miss Satterly had changed her pink kimono for a white shirt-waist and
+had fluffed her hair into a smooth coil on the top of her head.  Weary
+thought she looked very nice.  She could make excellent lemonade, he
+discovered, and she proved herself altogether different from what the
+messages she sent him had led him to expect.  Weary wondered, until he
+became too interested to think about it.
+
+Presently, without quite knowing how it came about, he was telling her
+all about the race.  Miss Satterly helped him reckon his
+winnings--which was not easy to do, since he had been offered all sorts
+of odds and had accepted them all with a recklessness that was
+appalling.  While her dark head was bent above the piece of paper, and
+her pencil was setting down figures with precise little jabs, he
+watched her.  He quite forgot the messages he had received from her
+through the medium of the Happy Family, and he quite forgot that women
+could hurt a man.
+
+"Mr. Davidson," she announced severely, when the figures had all been
+dabbed upon the paper, "You ought to have lost.  It would be a lesson
+to you.  I haven't quite figured all your winnings, these six-to-ones
+and ten-to-ones and--and all that, take time to unravel.  But you,
+yourself, stood to lose just three hundred and sixty-five dollars.
+Gee! but you cowboys are reckless."
+
+There was more that she said, but Weary did not mind.  He had
+discovered that he liked to look at the schoolma'am.  After that,
+nothing else was of much importance.  He began to wish he might prolong
+his opportunity for looking.
+
+"Say," he said suddenly, "Come on and let's go to the dance."
+
+The schoolma'am bit at her pencil and looked at him.  "It's late--"
+
+"Oh, there's time enough," urged Weary.
+
+"Maybe--but--"
+
+"Do yuh think we aren't well enough acquainted?"
+
+"Well we're not exactly old friends," she laughed.
+
+"We're going to be, so it's all the same," Weary surprised himself by
+declaring with much emphasis.  "You'd go, wouldn't you, if I was--well,
+say your brother?"
+
+Miss Satterly rested her chin in her palms and regarded him
+measuringly.  "I don't know.  I never had one--except three or four
+that I--er--adopted, at one time or another.  I suppose one could go,
+though--with a brother."
+
+Weary made a rapid, mental note for the benefit of the Happy
+Family--and particularly Cal Emmett.  "Darling Brother" was a myth,
+then; he ought to have known it, all along.  And if that were a myth,
+so probably were all those messages and things that he had hated.  She
+didn't care anything about him--and suddenly that struck him
+unpleasantly, instead of being a relief, as it consistently should have
+been.
+
+"I wish you'd adopt me, just for to-night, and go;" he said, and his
+eyes backed the wish.  "You see," he added artfully, "it's a sin to
+waste all that good music--a real, honest-to-God stringed orchestra
+from Great Falls, and--"
+
+"Meekers have taken both rigs," objected she, weakly.
+
+"I noticed a side saddle hanging in the stable," he wheedled, "and I'll
+gamble I can rustle something to put it on.  I--"
+
+"I should think you'd gambled enough for one day," she quelled.  "But
+that chunky little gray in the pasture is the horse I always ride.  I
+expect," she sighed, "my new dancing dress would be a sight to behold
+when I got there--and it won't wash.  But what does a mere man care--"
+
+"Wrap it up in something, and I'll carry it for yuh," Weary advised
+eagerly.  "You can change at the hotel.  It's dead easy."  He picked up
+his hat from the floor, rose and stood looking anxiously down at her.
+"About how soon," he insinuated, "can you be ready?"
+
+The schoolma'am looked up at him irresolutely, drew a long breath and
+then laughed.  "Oh, ten minutes will do," she surrendered.  "I shall
+put my new dress in a box, and go just as I am.  Do you _always_ get
+your own way, Mr. Davidson?"
+
+"Always," he lied convincingly over his shoulder, and jumped off the
+porch without bothering to use the steps.
+
+She was waiting when he led the little gray up to the house, and she
+came down the steps with a large, flat, pasteboard box in her arms.
+
+"Don't get off," she commanded.  "I can mount alone--and you'll have to
+carry the box.  It's going to be awkward, but you _would_ have me go."
+
+Weary took the box and prudently remained in the saddle.  Glory, having
+the man he did for master, was unused to the flutter of women's skirts
+so close, and rolled his eyes till the whites showed all round.
+Moreover, he was not satisfied with that big, white thing in Weary's
+arms.
+
+He stood quite still, however, until the schoolma'am was settled to her
+liking in the saddle, and had tucked her skirt down over the toe of her
+right foot.  He watched the proceeding with much interest--as did
+Weary--and then walked sedately from the yard, through the pebbly creek
+and up the slope beyond.  He heard Weary give a sigh of relief at his
+docility, and straightway thrust his nose between his white front feet,
+and proceeded to carry out certain little plans of his own.  Weary,
+taken by surprise and encumbered by the box, could not argue the point;
+he could only, in range parlance, "hang and rattle."
+
+"Oh," cried Miss Satterly, "if he's going to act like that, give me the
+box."
+
+Weary would like to have done so, but already he was half way to the
+gate, and his coat was standing straight out behind to prove the speed
+of his flight.  He could not even look back.  He just hung tight to the
+box and rode.
+
+The little gray was no racer, but his wind was good; and with urging he
+kept the fleeing Glory in sight for a mile or so.  Then, horse and
+rider were briefly silhouetted against the sunset as they topped a
+distant hill, and after that the schoolma'am rode by faith.
+
+At the gate which led into the big Flying U field she overtook them.
+Glory, placid as a sheep, was nibbling a frayed end of the rope which
+held the gate shut, and Weary, the big box balanced in front of him
+across the saddle, was smoking a cigarette.
+
+"Well," greeted Miss Satterly breathlessly, and rather tartly, "only
+for you having my dress, I'd have gone straight back home.  Do brothers
+always act like this?"
+
+"Search me," said Weary, shaking his head.  "Anyway, yuh better talk to
+Glory about it.  He appears to be running this show.  When I rode out
+to your place, I didn't have any bit in his mouth at all.  Coming back,
+I've got one of Joe Meeker's teething rings, that wouldn't hold a pet
+turkey.  But we're going to the dance, Miss Satterly.  Don't you worry
+none about that."
+
+Miss Satterly laughed and rode ahead of them.  "I'm going," she
+announced firmly.  "It's leap year, and I think I can rustle a partner
+if you decide to sit and look through that gate all night."
+
+"You'll need your pretty dress.  Glory ain't much used to escorting
+young ladies, but he's a gentleman; we're coming, all right."
+
+It was strange, perhaps, that Glory should miss the chance of proving
+his master a liar, but he nevertheless ambled decorously to Dry Lake
+and did nothing more unseemly than nipping occasionally at the neck of
+the little gray.
+
+That is how Weary learned that large, brown eyes do not look sidelong
+at a man after the manner of long, heavy-lidded blue ones; and that,
+also, is how he came to throw up his head and deny to himself and his
+world that he ever was shy of women.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+Weary rode stealthily around the corner of the little, frame
+school-house and was not disappointed.  The schoolma'am was sitting
+unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her
+face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to
+approach the place.  Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the
+shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing
+fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they
+were caressing so wantonly.  She was humming a tune softly to herself.
+Weary caught the words, sung absently, under her breath:
+
+  "Didn't make no blunder--yuh couldn't confuse him.
+  A perfect wonder, yuh had to choose him!"
+
+The schoolma'am was addicted to coon songs of the period.
+
+She seemed to be very busy about something and Weary, craning his neck
+to see over her shoulder, wondered what.  Also, he wished he knew what
+she was thinking about, and he hoped her thoughts were not remote from
+himself.  Just then Glory showed unmistakable and malicious intentions
+of sneezing, and Weary, catching a glimpse of something in Miss
+Satterly's hand, hastened to make his presence known.
+
+"I hope yuh aren't limbering up that weapon of destruction on my
+account, Schoolma'am," he observed mildly.
+
+The schoolma'am jumped and slid something out of sight under her
+ruffled, white apron.  "Weary Davidson, how long have you been standing
+there?  I believe you'd come straight down from the sky or straight up
+from the ground, if you could manage it.  You seem capable of doing
+everything except coming by the trail like a sensible man."  This with
+severity.
+
+Weary swung a long leg over Glory's back and came lightly to earth,
+immediately taking possession of the vacant half of doorstep.  The
+schoolma'am obligingly drew skirts aside to make room for him--an
+inconsistent movement not at all in harmony with her eyebrows, which
+were disapproving.
+
+"Yuh don't like ordinary men.  Yuh said so, once when I said I was just
+a plain, ordinary man.  I've sworn off being ordinary since yuh gave me
+that tip," he said cheerfully.  "Let's have a look at that cannon
+you're hiding under your apron.  Where did yuh resurrect it?  Out of
+some old Indian grave?
+
+"Mamma!  It won't go off sudden and unexpected, will it?  What kind uh
+shells--oh, mamma!"  He pushed his hat back off his forehead with a
+gesture not left behind with his boyhood, held the object the length of
+his long arm away and regarded it gravely.
+
+It was an old, old "bull-dog" revolver, freckled with rust until it
+bore a strong resemblance to certain noses which Miss Satterly looked
+down upon daily.  The cylinder was plugged with rolls of drab cotton
+cloth, supposedly in imitation of real bullets.  It was obviously
+during the plugging process that Miss Satterly had been interrupted,
+for a drab string hung limply from one hole.  On the whole, the thing
+did not look particularly formidable, and Weary's lips twitched.
+
+"A tramp stopped here the other day, and--I was frightened a little,"
+she was explaining, pink-cheeked.  "So aunt Meeker found this up in the
+loft and she thought it would do to--to bluff with."
+
+Weary aimed carefully at a venturesome and highly inquisitive gopher
+and pulled, with some effort, the rusted trigger.  The gopher stood
+upon his hind feet and chipped derisively.
+
+"You see, it just insults him.  Yuh could'nt scare a blind man with
+it--  Look here!  If yuh go pouting up your lips like that again,
+something's going to happen 'em.  There's a limit to what a man can
+stand."
+
+Miss Satterly hastily drew her mouth into a thin, untempting, red
+streak, for she had not seen Weary Davidson, on an average, twice a
+week for the last four months for nothing.  He was not the man to bluff.
+
+"Of course," she said resentfully, "you can make fun of it--but all the
+same, it's better than nothing.  It answers the purpose."
+
+Weary turned his head till he could look straight into her eyes--a
+thing he seemed rather fond of doing, lately.  "What purpose?  It sure
+isn't ornamental; it's a little the hardest looker I ever saw in the
+shape of a gun.  And it won't scare anything.  If you want a gun, why,
+take one that can make good.  You can have mine; just watch what a
+different effect it has."
+
+He reached backward and drew a shining thing from his pocket, flipped
+it downward--and the effect was unmistakably different.  The gopher
+leaped and rolled backward and then lay still, and Miss Satterly gave a
+little, startled scream and jumped quite off the doorstep.
+
+"Don't yuh see?  You couldn't raise any such a dust with yours.  If yuh
+pack a gun, you always want to pack one that's ready and willing to do
+business on short notice.  I'll let yuh have this, if you're sure it's
+safe with yuh.  I'd hate to have you shooting yourself accidental."
+
+Weary raised innocent eyes to her face and polished the gun caressingly
+with his handkerchief.  "Try it once," he urged.
+
+The schoolma'am was fond of boasting that she never screamed at
+anything.  She had screamed just now, over a foolish little thing, and
+it goes without saying she was angry with the cause.  She did not sit
+down again beside him, and she did not take the gun he was holding up
+invitingly to her.  She put her hands behind her and stood accusingly
+before him with the look upon her face which never failed to make
+sundry small Beckmans and Pilgreens squirm on their benches when she
+assumed it in school.
+
+"Mr. Davidson"--not Weary Davidson, as she was wont to call him--"you
+have killed my pet gopher.  All summer I have fed him, and he would eat
+out of my hand."
+
+Weary cast a jealous eye upon the limp, little animal, searched his
+heart for remorse and found none.  Ornery little brute, to get familiar
+with _his_ schoolma'am!
+
+"I did not think you could be so wantonly cruel, and I am astonished
+and--and deeply pained to discover that fatal flaw in your character."
+
+Weary began to squirm, after the manner of delinquent Beckmans and
+Pilgreens.  One thing he had learned: When the schoolma'am rose to
+irreproachable English, there was trouble a-brew.  It was a sign he had
+never known to fail.
+
+"I cannot understand the depraved instinct which prompts a man brutally
+to destroy a life he cannot restore, and which in no way menaces his
+own--or even interferes with his comfort.  You may apologize to me; you
+may even be sincerely repentant"--the schoolma'am's tone at this point
+implied considerable doubt--"but you are powerless to return the life
+you have so heedlessly taken.  You have revealed a low, brutal trait
+which I had hoped your nature could not harbor, and I am--am deeply
+shocked and--and grieved."
+
+Just here a tiny, dry-weather whirlwind swept around the corner, caught
+ruffled, white apron and blue skirt in its gyrations and, pushing them
+wickedly aside, gave Weary a brief, delicious glimpse of two small,
+slippered feet and two distracting ankles.  The schoolma'am blushed and
+retreated to the doorstep, but she did not sit down.  She still stood
+straight and displeased beside him.  Evidently she was still shocked
+and grieved.
+
+Weary tipped his head to one side so that be might look up at her from
+under his hat-brim.  "I'll get yuh another gopher; six, if yuh say so,"
+he soothed, "The woods is full of 'em."
+
+The angry, brown eyes of Miss Satterly swept the barren hills
+contemptuously.  She would not even look at him.  "Pray do not
+inconvenience yourself, Mr. Davidson.  It is not the gopher that I care
+for so much--it is the principle."
+
+Weary sighed and slid the gun back into his pocket.  It seemed to him
+that Miss Satterly, adorable as she always was, was also rather
+unreasonable at times.  "All right, I'll get yuh another principle,
+then."
+
+"Mr. Davidson," she said sternly, "you are perfectly odious!"
+
+"Is that something nice, Girlie?"  Weary smiled trustfully up at her.
+
+"Odious," explained the schoolma'am haughtily, "is not something nice.
+I'm sorry your education has been so neglected.  Odious, Mr. Davidson,
+is a synonym for hateful, obnoxious, repulsive, disagreeable,
+despicable--"
+
+"I never did like cinnamon, anyhow," put in Weary, cheerfully.
+
+"I did not mention cinnamon.  I said--"
+
+"Say, yuh look out uh sight with your hair fixed that way.  I wish
+you'd wear it like that all the time," he observed irrelevantly,
+looking up at her with his sunniest smile.
+
+"I wish to goodness I were really out of sight," snapped the
+schoolma'am.  "You make me exceedingly weary."
+
+"_Mrs._ Weary," corrected he, complacently.  "That's what I'm sure
+aiming at."
+
+"You aim wide of the mark, then," she retorted valiantly, though
+confusion waved a red flag in either cheek.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  A minute ago you were roasting me because my aim
+was too good," he contended mildly, glancing involuntarily toward the
+gopher stretched upon its little, yellow back, its four small feet
+turned pitifully up to the blue.
+
+"If you had an atom of decency you'd be ashamed to mention that tribute
+to your diabolical marksmanship."
+
+"Oh, mamma!" ejaculated Weary under his breath, and began to make
+himself a smoke.  His guardian angel was exhorting him to silence, but
+it preached, as usual, to unsentient ears.
+
+"_I_ never mentioned all those things," he denied meekly.  "It's you
+that keeps on mentioning.  I wish yuh wouldn't.  I like to hear you
+talk, all right, and flop all those big words easy as roping a calf;
+but I wish you'd let me choose your subject for yuh.  I could easy name
+one where you could use words just as high and wide and handsome, and a
+heap more pleasant than the brand you've got corralled.  Try admiration
+and felicitation and exhilarating, ecstatic osculation--"  He stopped
+to run the edge of paper along his tongue, and perhaps it was as well
+he did; there was no need of making her any angrier.  Miss Satterly
+hated to feel that she was worsted, and it was quite clear that Weary
+had all along been "guying" her.
+
+"If you came here to make me _hate_ you, you have accomplished your
+errand admirably; it would be advisable now for you to hike."
+
+Weary, struck by that incongruous last word, did an unforgivable thing.
+He laughed and laughed, while the match he had just lighted flared,
+sent up a blue thread of brimstone smoke, licked along the white wood
+and scorched his fingers painfully before he remembered his cigarette.
+
+Miss Satterly turned abruptly and went into the house, put on her hat
+and took up the little, tin lard-pail in which her aunt Meeker always
+packed her lunch.  She was back, had the key turned in the lock and was
+slowly pulling on her gloves by the time Weary recovered from his mirth.
+
+"Since you will not leave the place, I shall do so.  I want to say
+first, however, that I not only think you odious, but all the synonyms
+I mentioned besides.  You need not come for me to go to the Labor Day
+dance, because I will not go with you.  I shall go with Joe."
+
+Weary gave her a startled glance and almost dropped his cigarette.
+This seemed going rather far, he thought--but of course she didn't
+really mean it; the schoolma'am, he heartened himself with thinking,
+was an awful, little bluffer.
+
+"Don't go off mad, Girlie.  I'm sorry I killed your gopher--on the
+dead, I am.  I just didn't think, That's a habit I've got--not thinking.
+
+"Say!  You stay, and we'll have a funeral.  It isn't every common,
+scrub gopher that can have a real funeral with mourners and music when
+he goes over the Big Divide.  He--he'll appreciate the honor; I would,
+I know, if it was me."
+
+The schoolma'am took a few steps and stopped, evidently in some
+difficulty with her glove.  From the look of her, no human being was
+within a mile of her; she certainly did not seem to hear anything Weary
+was saying.
+
+"Say!  I'll sing a song over him, if you'll wait a minute.  I know two
+whole verses of 'Bill Bailey,' and the chorus to 'Good Old Summertime.'
+I can shuffle the two together and make a full deck.  I believe they'd
+go fine together.
+
+"Say, you never heard me sing, did yuh?  It's worth waiting for--only
+yuh want to hang tight to something when I start.  Come on--I'll let
+you be the mourner."
+
+Since Miss Satterly had been taking steps quite regularly while Weary
+was speaking, she was now several rods away--and she had, more than
+ever, the appearance of not hearing him and of not wanting to hear.
+
+"Say, Tee-e-cher!"
+
+The schoolma'am refused to stop, or to turn her head a fraction of an
+inch, and Weary's face sobered a little.  It was the first time that
+inimitable "Tee-e-cher" of his had failed to bring the smile back into
+the eyes of Miss Satterly.  He looked after her dubiously.  Her
+shoulders were thrown well back and her feet pressed their imprint
+firmly into the yellow dust of the trail.  In a minute she would be
+quite out of hearing.
+
+Weary got up, took a step and grasped Glory's trailing bridle-rein and
+hurried after her much faster than Glory liked and which he reproved
+with stiffened knees and a general pulling back on the reins.
+
+"Say!  You wouldn't get mad at a little thing like that, would yuh?"
+expostulated Weary, when he overtook her.  "You know I didn't mean
+anything, Girlie."
+
+"I do not consider it a little thing," said the schoolma'am, icily.
+
+Thus rebuffed, Weary walked silently beside her up the hill--silently,
+that is, save for the subdued jingling of his spurs.  He was beginning
+to realize that there was an uncomfortable, heavy feeling in his chest,
+on the side where his heart was.  Still, he was of a hopeful nature and
+presently tried again.
+
+"How many times must I say I'm sorry, Schoolma'am?  You don't look so
+pretty when you're mad; you've got dimples, remember, and yuh ought to
+give 'em a chance.  Let's sit down on this rock while I square myself.
+Come on."  His tone was wheedling in the extreme.
+
+Miss Satterly, not replying a word, kept straight on up the hill; and
+Weary, sighing heavily, followed.
+
+"Don't you want to ride Glory a ways?  He's real good, to-day.  He put
+in the whole of yesterday working out all the cussedness that's been
+accumulating in his system for a week, so he's dead gentle.  I'll lead
+him, for yuh."
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Satterly.  "I prefer to walk."
+
+Weary sighed again, but clung to his general hopefulness, as was his
+nature.  It took a great deal to rouse Weary; perhaps the schoolma'am
+was trying to find just how much.
+
+"Say, you'd a died laughing if you'd seen old Glory yesterday; he liked
+to scared Slim plumb to death.  We were working in the big corral and
+Slim got down on one knee to fix his spur.  Glory saw him kneel down,
+and gave a running jump and went clear over Slim's head.  Slim hit for
+the closest fence, and he never looked back till he was clean over on
+the other side.  Mamma!  I was sure amused.  I thought Glory had done
+about everything there was to do--but I tell yuh, that horse has got an
+imagination that will make him famous some day."
+
+For the first time since the day of his spectacular introduction to
+her, Miss Satterly displayed absolutely no interest in the
+eccentricities of Glory.  Slowly it began to dawn upon Weary that she
+did not intend to thaw that evening.  He glanced at her sidelong, and
+his eyes had a certain gleam that was not there five minutes before.
+He swung along beside her till they reached the top of the hill, fell
+behind without a word and mounted Glory.
+
+When he overtook Miss Satterly, he lifted his hat to her nonchalantly,
+touched up Glory with his spurs, and clattered away down the coulee,
+leaving the schoolma'am in a haze of yellow dust and bewilderment far
+in the rear.
+
+The next morning Miss Satterly went very early to the school-house--for
+what purpose she did not say.  A meadow-lark on the doorstep greeted
+her with his short, sweet ripple of sound and then flew to a nearby
+sage bush and watched her curiously.  She looked about her half
+expectant, half disappointed.
+
+A little, fresh mound marked the spot where the dead gopher had been,
+and a narrow strip of shingle stood upright at the end.  Someone had
+scratched the words with a knife:
+
+  GONE BUT NOT FORGOT.
+
+Probably the last word would have been given its full complement of
+syllables, had the shingle been wider; as it was, the "forgot" was
+cramped until it was barely intelligible.
+
+Miss Satterly, observing the mark of high-heeled boots in the immediate
+vicinity of the grave, caught herself wondering if the remains had been
+laid away to the tune of "Bill Bailey," with the chorus of "Good Old
+Summertime" shuffled in to make a full deck.  She started to laugh and
+found that laughter was quite impossible.
+
+Suddenly the schoolma'am did a strange thing.  She glanced about to
+make sure no one was in sight, knelt and patted the tiny mound very
+tenderly; then, stooping quickly, she pressed her lips impulsively upon
+the rude lettering of the shingle.  When she sprang up her cheeks were
+very red, her eyes dewy and lovely, and the little laugh she gave at
+herself was all atremble.  If lovers could be summoned as opportunely
+in real life as they are in stories, hearts would not ache so often and
+life would be quite monotonously serene.
+
+Weary was at that moment twenty miles away, busily engaged in
+chastising Glory, that had refused point-blank to cross a certain
+washout.  His mind being wholly absorbed in the argument, he was not
+susceptible to telepathic messages from the Meeker school-house--which
+was a  pity.
+
+Also, it was a pity he could not know that Miss Satterly lingered late
+at the school-house that night, doing nothing but watch the trail where
+it lay, brown and distinct and utterly deserted, on the top of the bill
+a quarter of a mile away.  It is true she had artfully scattered a
+profusion of papers over her desk and would undoubtedly have been
+discovered hard at work upon them and very much astonished at beholding
+him--if he had come.  It is probable that Weary would have found her
+quite unapproachable, intrenched behind a bulwark of dignity and
+correct English.
+
+When the shadow of the schoolhouse stretched somberly away to the very
+edge of the coulee.  Miss Satterly gathered up the studied confusion on
+her desk, bundled the papers inside, and turned the key with a snap,
+jabbed three hatpins viciously through her hat and her hair and went
+home--and perhaps it were well that Weary was not there at that time.
+
+The next night, papers strewed the desk as before, and the schoolma'am
+stood by the window, her elbows planted on the unpainted sill, and
+watched the trail listlessly.  Her eyes were big and wistful, like a
+hurt child's, and her cheeks were not red as usual, nor even pink.  But
+the trail lay again brown, and silent, and lonesome, with no quick
+hoof-beats to send the dust swirling up in a cloud.
+
+The shadows flowed into the coulee until it was full to the brim and
+threatening the golden hilltop with a brown veil of shade before Miss
+Satterly locked her door and went home.  When she reached her aunt
+Meeker's she did not want any supper and she said her head ached.  But
+that was not quite true; it was not her head that ached so much; it was
+her heart.
+
+The third day, the schoolma'am fussed a long time with her hair, which
+she did in four different styles.  The last style was the one which
+Weary had pronounced "out uh sight"--only she added a white chiffon bow
+which she had before kept sacred to dances and which Weary always
+admired.  At noon she encouraged the children to gather wild flowers
+from the coulee, and she filled several tin cans with water from the
+spring and arranged the bouquets with much care.  Weary loved flowers.
+Nearly every time he came he had a little bunch stuck under his
+hat-band.  A few she put in her hair, along with the chiffon bow.  She
+urged the children through their work and dismissed them at eleven
+minutes to four and told them to go straight home.
+
+After she had swept the floor and dusted everything that could be
+dusted so that the school-room had the peculiar, immaculate emptiness
+and forlornness, like a church on a week day, and had taken a few of
+the brightest flowers and pinned them upon her white shirt-waist.  Miss
+Satterly tuned her guitar in minor and went out and sat upon the shady
+doorstep and waited frankly, strumming plaintive little airs while she
+watched the trail.  To-morrow was Labor Day, and so he would certainly
+ride over to-night to see if she had really meant it (Miss Satterly did
+not explain to herself what "it" was; surely, there was no need).
+
+At half-past five--Miss Satterly had looked at her watch seventeen
+times during the interval--a tiny cloud of dust rose over the brow of
+the hill, and her heart danced in her chest until she could scarce
+breathe.
+
+The cloud grew and grew and began drifting down the trail, and behind
+it a black something rose over the hilltop and followed it, so
+proclaiming itself a horseman galloping swiftly towards her.  The color
+spread from the schoolma'am's cheeks to her brow and throat.  Her
+fingers forgot their cunning and plucked harrowing discords from the
+strings, but her lips were parted and smiling tremulously.  It was
+late--she had almost given up looking--but he was coming!  She knew be
+would come.  Coming at a breakneck pace--he must be pretty anxious,
+too.  The schoolma'am recovered a bit of control and revolved in her
+mind several pert forms of greeting.  She would not be too ready to
+forgive him--it would do him good to keep him anxious and uncertain for
+a while before she gave in.
+
+Now he was near the place where he would turn off the main road and
+gallop straight to her.  Glory always made that turn of his own accord,
+lately.  Weary had told her, last Sunday, how he could never get Glory
+past that turn, any more, without a fight, no matter what might be the
+day or the hour.
+
+Now he would swing into the school-house trail.  Miss Satterly raised
+both hands with a very feminine gesture and patted her hair
+tentatively, tucking in a stray lock here and there.
+
+Her hands dropped heavily to her lap, just as the blood dropped away
+from her cheeks and the happy glow dulled in her eyes.  It was not
+Weary.  It was the Swede who worked for Jim Adams and who rode a sorrel
+horse which, at a distance, resembled Glory.
+
+Mechanically she watched him go on down the trail and out of sight;
+picked up her guitar which had grown suddenly heavy, crept inside and
+closed the door and locked it She looked around the clean, eerily
+silent schoolroom, walked with echoing steps to the desk and laid her
+head down among the cans of sweet-smelling, prairie flowers and cried
+softly, in a tired, heartbreaking fashion that made her throat ache,
+and her head.
+
+The shadows had flowed over the coulee-rim and the hilltops were
+smothered in gloom when Miss Satterly went home that night, and her
+aunt Meeker sent her straight to bed and dosed her with horrible home
+remedies.
+
+By morning she had recovered her spirit--her revengeful spirit, which
+she kept as the hours wore on and Weary did not come.  She would teach
+him a lesson, she told herself often.  By evening, however, her mood
+softened.  There were many things that could have kept him away against
+his will; he was not his own master, and it was shipping time.
+Probably he had been out with the roundup, or something.  She decided
+that petty revenge is unwomanly besides giving evidence of a narrow
+mind and shallow, and if Weary could show a good and sufficient reason
+for staying away like that when there were matters to be settled
+between them, she would not be petty and mean about it; she would be
+divine--and forgive.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+Weary was standing pensively by the door, debating with himself the
+advisability of going boldly over and claiming the first waltz with the
+schoolma'am--and taking a chance on being refused--when Cal Emmett gave
+him a vicious poke in the ribs by way of securing his attention.
+
+"Do yuh see that bunch uh red loco over there by the organ?" he wanted
+to know.  "That's Bert Rogers' cousin from Iowa."
+
+Weary looked and wilted against the wall.  "Oh, Mamma!" he gasped.
+
+"Ain't she a peach?  There'll be more than one pair uh hands go into
+the air to-night.  It's a good thing Len got the drop on me first or
+I'd be making seven kinds of a fool uh myself, chances is.  Bert says
+she's bad medicine--a man-killer from away back.
+
+"Say, she's giving us the bad-eye.  Don't rubber like that, Weary; it
+ain't good manners, and besides; the schoolma'am's getting fighty, if
+I'm any judge."
+
+Weary pulled himself together and tried to look away, but a pair of
+long blue eyes with heavy white lids drew him hypnotically across the
+room.  He did not want to go; he did not mean to go, but the first he
+knew he was standing before her and she was smiling up at him just as
+she used to do.  And an evil spell seemed to fall upon Weary, so that
+he thought one set of thoughts while his lips uttered sentences quite
+apart from his wishes.  He was telling her, for instance, that he was
+glad to see her; and he was not glad.  He was wishing the train which
+brought her to Montana had jumped the track and gone over a high
+cut-bank, somewhere.
+
+She continued to smile up at him, and she called him Will and held out
+her hand.  When, squirming inward protest, he took it, she laid her
+left hand upon his and somehow made him feel as if he were in a trap.
+Her left hand was soft and plump and cool, and it was covered with
+rings that gave flashes and sparkles of light when she moved, and her
+nails were manicured to a degree not often seen in Dry Lake.  She drew
+her fingers caressingly over his hand and spoke to him in _italics_, in
+the way that had made many a man lose his head and say things extremely
+foolish.  Her name was Myrtle Forsyth, as Weary had cause to remember.
+
+"How strange to see you away out here," she murmured, and glanced to
+where the musicians were beginning to play little preparatory strains.
+"Have you forgotten how to _waltz_, Will?  You used to dance so _well_!"
+
+What could a man do after a hint as broad as that one?  Weary held out
+his arm meekly, while mentally he was gnashing his teeth, and muttered
+something about her giving him a trial.  And she slipped her hand under
+his elbow with a proprietary air that was not lost upon a certain
+brown-eyed young woman across the hall.
+
+Weary had said some hard things to Myrtle Forsyth when he talked with
+her last, away back in Iowa; he had hoped to heaven he never would see
+her again.  Now, she observed that he had not lost his good looks in
+grieving over her.  She decided that he was even better looking; there
+was an air of strength and a self poise that was very becoming to his
+broad shoulders and the six feet two inches of his height.  She
+thought, before the waltz was over, that she had made a mistake when
+she threw him over--a mistake which she ought to rectify at once.
+
+Weary never knew how she managed it--in truth, he was not aware that
+she did it at all--but he seemed to dance a great many times with her
+of the long eyes and the bright auburn hair.  The schoolma'am seemed
+always to be at the farther end of the room, and she appeared to be
+enjoying herself very much and to dance incessantly.
+
+Once he broke away from Miss Forsyth and went and asked Miss Satterly
+for the next waltz; but she opened her big eyes at him and assured him
+politely that she was engaged.  He tried for a quadrille, a two-step, a
+schottische--even for a polka, which she knew he hated; but the
+schoolma'am was, apparently, the most engaged young woman in Dry Lake
+that night.
+
+So Weary owned himself beaten and went back to Miss Forsyth, who had
+been watching and learning many things and making certain plans.  Weary
+danced with her once and took a fit of sulking, when he stood over by
+the door and smoked cigarettes and watched moodily the whirling
+couples.  Miss Forsyth drifted to other acquaintances, which was
+natural; what was not so natural, to Weary's mind, was to see her
+sitting out a quadrille with the schoolma'am.
+
+That did not look good to Weary, and he came near going over and
+demanding to know what they were talking about.  He was ready to bet
+that Myrt Forsyte, with that smile, was up to some deviltry--and he
+wished he knew what.  She reminded him somewhat of Glory when Glory was
+cloyed with peaceful living.  He even told himself viciously that Myrt
+Forsyth had hair the exact shade of Glory's, and it came near giving
+him a dislike of the horse.
+
+The conversation in the corner, after certain conventional subjects had
+been exhausted, came to Miss Forsyth's desire something like this: She
+said how she loved to waltz,--with the right partner, that is.  Apropos
+the right partner, she glanced slyly from the end of her long eyes and
+remarked:
+
+"Will--Mr. Davidson--is an _ideal_ partner, don't you think?  Are
+you--but of _course_ you must be _acquainted_ with him, living in the
+same _neighborhood_?"  Her inflection made a question of the
+declaration.
+
+"Certainly I am acquainted with Mr. Davidson," said Miss Satterly with
+just the right shade of indifference.  "He does dance very well, though
+there are others I like better."  That, of course, was a prevarication.
+"You knew him before tonight?"
+
+Miss Forsyth laughed that sort of laugh which may mean anything you
+like.  "_Knew_ him?  Why, we were en--that is, we grew _up_ in the same
+_town_.  I was so perfectly _amazed_ to find him _here_, poor fellow."
+
+"Why poor fellow?" asked Miss Satterly, the direct.  "Because you found
+him? or because he is here?"
+
+The long eyes regarded her curiously.  "Why, don't you _know_?
+Hasn't--hasn't it _followed_ him?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," said the schoolma'am, calmly facing the
+stare.  "If you mean a dog, he doesn't own one, I believe.  Cowboys
+don't seem to take to dogs; they're afraid they might be mistaken for
+sheep-herders, perhaps--and that would be a disgrace."
+
+Miss Forsyth leaned back and her eyes, half closed as they were, saw
+Weary away down by the door.  "No, I didn't mean a _dog_.  I'm _glad_
+if he has gotten _quite away_ from--he's such a _dear_ fellow!  Even if
+he _did_--but I never believed it, you know.  If only he had _trusted_
+me, and _stayed_ to face--  But he went without telling me _goodbye_,
+even, and we--  But he was _afraid_, you see--"
+
+Miss Satterly also glanced across to where Weary stood gloomily alone,
+his hands thrust into his pockets.  "I really can't imagine Mr.
+Davidson as being afraid," she remarked defensively.
+
+"Oh, but you don't understand!  Will is _physically_ brave--and he was
+afraid I--  but I _believed_ in him, _always_--even when--"  She broke
+off suddenly and became prettily diffident.  "I wonder _why_ I am
+talking to _you_ like this.  But there is something so _sympathetic_ in
+your very _atmosphere_--and seeing _him_ so _unexpectedly_ brought it
+all _back_--and it seemed as if I _must_ talk to _someone_, or I should
+_shriek_."  (Myrtle Forsyth was often just upon the point of
+"shrieking") "And he was _so_ glad to see me--and when I _told_ him I
+never _believed_ a _word_--  But you see, _leaving_ the way he _did_--"
+
+"Well," said Miss Satterly rather unsympathetically, "and how did he
+leave, then?"
+
+Miss Forsyth twisted her watch chain and hesitated.  "I really ought
+_not_ to say a _word_--if you really don't _know_--what he _did_--"
+
+"If it's to his discredit," said the schoolma'am, looking straight at
+her, "I certainly don't know.  It must have been something awful,
+judging from your tone.  Did he"--she spoke solemnly--"did he
+_mur-r_der ten people, old men and children, and throw their bodies
+into--a _well_?"
+
+It is saying much for Miss Forsyth that she did not look as
+disconcerted as she felt.  She did, however, show a rather catty look
+in her eyes, and her voice was tinged faintly with malice.  "There are
+_other_ crimes--beside--_murder_," she reminded.  "I won't tell _what_
+it was--but--but _Will_ found it necessary to _leave in the night_!  He
+did not even come to tell _me_ goodbye, and I have--but now we have met
+by _chance_, and I could _explain_--and so," she smiled tremulously at
+the schoolma'am, "I _know_ you can _understand_--and you will not
+_mention_ to _anyone_ what I have told you.  I'm too _impulsive_--and I
+felt _drawn_ to you, somehow.  I--I would _die_ if I thought any _harm_
+could come to Will because of my _confiding_ in you.  A woman," she
+added pensively, "has so _much_ to bear--and this has been very
+_hard_--because it was not a thing I could _talk over_--not even with
+my own _mother_!"  Miss Forsyth had the knack of saying very little
+that was definite, and implying a great deal.  This method saved her
+the unpleasantness of retraction, and had quite as deep an effect is if
+she came out plainly.  She smiled confidingly down at the schoolma'am
+and went off to waltz with Bert Rogers, apparently quite satisfied with
+what she had accomplished.
+
+Miss Satterly sat very still, scarce thinking consciously.  She stared
+at Weary and tried to imagine him a fugitive from his native town, and
+in spite of herself wondered what it was he had done.  It must be
+something very bad, and she shrank from the thought.  Then Cal Emmett
+came up to ask her for a dance, and she went with him thankfully and
+tried to forget the things she had heard.
+
+Weary, after dancing with every woman but the one he wanted, and
+finding himself beside Myrtle Forsyth with a frequency that puzzled
+him, felt an unutterable disgust for the whole thing.  After a waltz
+quadrille, during which he seemed to get her out of his arms only to
+find her swinging into them again, and smiling up at him in a way he
+knew of old, he made desperately for the door; snatched up the first
+gray hat he came to--which happened to belong to Chip--and went out
+into the dewy darkness.
+
+It was half an hour before he could draw the hostler of the Dry Lake
+stable away from a crap game, and it was another half hour before he
+succeeded in overcoming Glory's disinclination for a gallop over the
+prairie alone.
+
+But it was two hours before Miss Forsythe gave over watching furtively
+the door, and it was daylight before Chip Emmett found a gray hat under
+the water bench--a hat which he finally recognized as Weary's and so
+appropriated to his own use.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOUR
+
+Weary clattered up to the school-house door to find it erupting divers
+specimens of young America--by adoption, some of them.  He greeted each
+one cheerfully by name and waited upon his horse in the shade.
+
+Close behind the last sun-bonnet came Miss Satterly, key in hand.
+Evidently she had no intention of lingering, that night; Weary smiled
+down upon her tentatively and made a hasty guess as to her state of
+mind--a very important factor in view of what he had come to say.
+
+"It's awful hot, Schoolma'am; if I were you I'd wait a while--till the
+sun lets up a little."
+
+To his unbounded surprise, Miss Satterly calmly sat down upon the
+doorstep.  Weary promptly slid out of the saddle and sat down beside
+her, thankful that the step was not a wide one.  "You've been
+unmercifully hard to locate since the dance," he complained.  "I like
+to lost my job, chasing over this way, when I was supposed to be headed
+another direction.  I came by here last night at five minutes after
+four, and you weren't in sight anywhere; was yesterday a holiday?"
+
+"You probably didn't look in the window," said the schoolma'am.  "I was
+writing letters here till after five."
+
+"With the door shut and locked?"
+
+"The wind blew so," explained Miss Satterly, lamely.  "And that lock--"
+
+"First I knew of the wind blowing yesterday.  It was as hot as the hubs
+uh he--as blue blazes when I came by.  There weren't any windows up,
+even--I hope you was real comfortable."
+
+"Perfectly," she assured him.
+
+"I'll gamble yuh were!  Well, and where were yuh cached last Sunday?"
+
+"Nowhere.  I went with Bert and Miss Forsyth up in the mountains.  We
+took our lunch and had a perfectly lovely time."
+
+"I'm glad somebody had a good time.  I got away at nine o'clock and
+came over to Meeker's--and you weren't there; so I rode the rim-rocks
+till sundown, trying to locate yuh.  It's easier hunting strays in the
+Bad Lands."
+
+Miss Satterly seemed about to speak, but she changed her mind and gazed
+at the coulee-rim.
+
+"It's hard to get away, these days," Weary went on explaining.  "I
+wanted to come before the dance, but we were gathering some stuff out
+the other way, and I couldn't.  The Old Man is shipping, yuh see; we're
+holding a bunch right now, waiting for cars.  I got Happy Jack to stand
+herd in my place, is how I got here."
+
+The schoolma'am yawned apologetically into her palm.  Evidently she was
+not greatly interested in the comings and goings of Weary Davidson.
+
+"How did yuh like the dance?" he asked, coming to the subject that he
+knew was the vital point.
+
+"Lovely," said the schoolma'am briefly, but with fervor.
+
+"Different here," asserted Weary.  "I drifted, right before supper."
+
+"_Did_ you?"  Miss Satterly accented the first word in a way she taught
+her pupils indicated surprise.  "I don't reckon you noticed it.  You
+were pretty busy, about then."
+
+Miss Satterly laughed languid assent.
+
+"I never knew before that Bert Rogers was any relation of Myrt
+Forsyth," observed Weary, edging still nearer the vital point.  "They
+sure aren't much alike."
+
+"You used to know her?" asked Miss Satterly, politely.
+
+"Well, I should say yes.  I used to go to school with Myrt.  How do you
+like her?"
+
+"Lovely," said Miss Satterly, this time without fervor.
+
+Weary began digging a trench with his spurs.  He wished the schoolma'am
+would not limit herself so rigidly to that one adjective.  It became
+unmeaning with much use, so that it left a fellow completely in the
+dark.
+
+"Just about everybody says that about her--at first," he remarked.
+
+"Did you?" she asked him, still politely.
+
+"I did a heap worse than that," said Weary, grimly determined.  "I had
+a bad case of calf-love and made a fool uh myself generally."
+
+"What fun!" chirped the schoolma'am with an unconvincing little laugh.
+
+"Not for me, it wasn't.  Whilst I had it I used to pack a lock uh that
+red hair in my breast pocket and heave sighs over it that near lifted
+me out uh my boots.  Oh, I was sure earnest!  But she did me the
+biggest favor she could; a slick-haired piano-tuner come to town and
+she turned me down for him.  I was plumb certain my heart was busted
+wide open, at the time, though."  Weary laughed reminiscently.
+
+"She said--I think you misunderstood her.  She appears to--" Miss
+Satterly, though she felt that she was being very generous, did not
+quite know how to finish.
+
+"Not on your life!  It was the first time I ever did understand Myrt.
+When I left there I wasn't doing any guessing."
+
+"You shouldn't have left," she told him suddenly; gripping her courage
+at this bold mention of his flight.  How she wished she knew why he
+left.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  It was about the only thing I could do, at the
+time--the only thing, that is, that I wanted to do.  It seemed like I
+couldn't get away fast enough."  It was brazen of him, she thought, to
+treat it all so coolly.  "And out here," he added thoughtfully, "I
+could get the proper focus on Myrt--which I couldn't do back there."
+
+"Distance lends--"
+
+"Not in this case," he interrupted.  "It's when you're right with Myrt
+that she kinda hypnotizes yuh into thinking what she wants yuh to
+think."  He was remembering resentfully the dance.
+
+"But to sneak away--"
+
+"That's a word I don't remember was ever shot at me before," said
+Weary, the blood showing through the skin on his cheeks.  "If that
+damned Myrt has been telling yuh--"
+
+"I didn't think you would speak like that about a woman, Mr. Davidson,"
+said the schoolma'am with disapproval in her tone; and the disapproval
+not going very deep, there was the more of it upon the surface.
+
+"I suppose it gives evidence of a low, brutal trait in my nature, that
+you hoped I couldn't harbor," acceded Weary meekly.
+
+"It does," snapped the schoolma'am, her cheeks hot.  If she had
+repented her flare of temper over the gopher, she certainly did not
+intend letting him know it too soon.  She seemed inclined to discipline
+him a bit.
+
+Weary smoked silently and raked up the sun-baked soil with his spurs.
+"How long is Myrt going to stay?" he ventured at last.
+
+"I never asked her," she retorted.  "You ought to know--you probably
+have seen her last."  The schoolma'am blundered, there.
+
+Weary drew a sigh of relief; if she were jealous, it must mean that she
+cared.  "That's right.  I saw her last night," he stated calmly.
+
+Miss Satterly sat more erect, if that were possible.  She had not known
+of this last meeting, and she had merely shot at random, anyway.
+
+"At least," he amended, watching her from the corner of his eye, "I saw
+a woman and a man ride over the hill back of Denson's, last night.  The
+man was Bert, and the woman had red hair; I took it to be Myrt."
+
+"You surely should be a good judge," remarked Miss Satterly, irritated
+because she knew he was teasing.
+
+Weary was quick to read the signs.  "What did you mean, a while back,
+about me sneaking away from Chadville?  And how did yuh happen to have
+your dances booked forty-in-advance, the other night?  And what makes
+yuh so mean to me, lately?  And will yuh take a jaunt over Eagle Butte
+way with me next Sunday--if I can get off?"
+
+The schoolma'am, again feeling herself mistress of the situation,
+proceeded with her disciplining.  She smiled, raised one hand and
+checked off the questions upon her fingers.  You never would guess how
+oddly her heart was behaving--she looked such a self-possessed young
+woman.
+
+"I'll begin at the last one and work backward," she said, calmly.  "And
+I must hurry, for aunt Meeker hates to keep supper waiting.  No, I will
+_not_ go for a jaunt over Eagle Butte way next Sunday.  I have other
+plans; if I _hadn't_ other plans I still would not go.  I hope this is
+quite plain to you?"
+
+"Oh, it's good and plain," responded Weary.  "But for the Lord's sake
+don't take up that talking in italics like Myrt does.  I can't stand
+this bearing down hard on every other word.  It sets my teeth all on
+edge."
+
+The schoolma'am opened her eyes wider.  Was it possible Weary was
+acquiring an irritable temper?  "_Second_," she went on deliberately,
+"I do not _consider_ that I have been _mean_ to you; and if I _have_ it
+is because I _choose_ to be so."
+
+Weary, observing a most flagrant accent, shut his lips rather tightly
+together.
+
+"Third--let me see.  Oh, that about the _dances_; I can only say that
+we _women_, as a means of _self-defence_, claim the privilege of
+_effacing_ undesirable, would-be partners by a certain _form_ of
+rejection, which _eliminates_ the necessity of going into unpleasant
+_details_, and--er--lets the fellow down easy."  The schoolma'am's
+emphasis and English seemed to collapse together, but Weary did not
+notice that.
+
+"I'm sure grateful to be let down easy," he said softly, without
+looking up; his head was bent so that his hat quite concealed from the
+schoolma'am his face, but if she had known him longer, perhaps she
+would have gone carefully after that.
+
+"As to your sneaking away from--wherever it was--surely, you ought to
+know about that better than I do.  One must go far to outdistance
+dishonor, for a man's misdeeds are sure to follow him, soon or late.  I
+will not go into details--but you understand what I mean."
+
+"No," said Weary, still with bent head, "I'll be darned if I do.  And
+if I did, I know about where to locate the source of all the
+information you've loaded up on.  Things were going smooth as silk till
+Myrt Forsyth drifted out here--the red-headed little devil!"
+
+"Mr. Davidson!" cried the schoolma'am, truly shocked.
+
+"Oh, I'm revealing some more low, brutal instincts, I expect I'm liable
+to reveal a lot more if I hang around much longer."  He stopped, as if
+there was more he wanted to say, and was doubtful of the wisdom of
+saying it.
+
+"I came over to say something--something particular--but I've changed
+my mind.  I guess yuh haven't much time to listen, and I don't believe
+it would interest yuh as much as I thought it would--a while back.  You
+just go ahead and make a bosom friend uh Myrt Forsyth, Schoolma'am, and
+believe every blamed lie she tells yuh.  I won't be here to argue the
+point.  Looks to me like I'm about due to drift."
+
+Miss Satterly, dumb with fear of what his words might mean, sat stiffly
+while Weary got up and mounted Glory in a business like manner that was
+extremely disquieting.
+
+"I wish you could a cared, Girlie," he said with a droop of his
+unsmiling mouth and a gloom in his eyes when he looked at her.  "I was
+a chump, I reckon, to ever imagine yuh could.  Good-bye--and be good
+to--yourself."  He leaned to one side, swung backward his feet and
+Glory, obeying the signal, wheeled and bounded away.
+
+Miss Satterly watched him gallop up the long slope and the pluckety
+pluckety of Glory's fleeing feet struck heavy, numbing blows upon her
+heart.  She wondered why she had refused to ride with him, when she did
+want to go--she did.  And why had she been so utterly hateful, after
+waiting and watching, night after night, for him to come?
+
+And just how much did he mean by being due to drift?  He couldn't be
+really angry--and what was he going to say--the thing he changed his
+mind about.  Was it--Well, he would come again in a few days, and then--
+
+
+
+
+PART FIVE
+
+Weary did not go back.  When the hurry of shipping was over he went to
+Shorty and asked for his time, much to the foreman's astonishment and
+disgust.  The Happy Family was incensed and wasted profanity and
+argument trying to make him give up the crazy notion of quitting.
+
+It seemed to Weary that he warded off their curiosity and answered
+their arguments very adroitly.  He was sick of punching cows, he said,
+and he wasn't hankering for a chance to shovel hay another winter to an
+ungrateful bunch of bawling calves.  He was going to drift, for a
+change--but he didn't know where.  It didn't much matter, so long as he
+got a change uh scenery.  He just merely wanted to knock around and get
+the alkali dust out of his lungs and see something grow besides calves
+and cactus.  His eyes plumb ached for sight of an apple tree with real,
+live apples on it--that weren't wrapped up in a paper napkin.
+
+When was he coming back?  Well, now, that was a question; he hadn't got
+started yet, man.  What he was figuring on wasn't the coming back part,
+but the getting started.
+
+The schoolma'am?  Oh, he guessed she could get along without him, all
+right.  Seeing they mentioned her, would some of them tell her hello
+for him--and so long?
+
+This last was at the station, where they had ridden in a body to see
+him off.  Weary waved his hat as long as the town was in sight, and the
+Happy Family ran their horses to keep pace with the train when it
+pulled out, emptied their six-shooters into the air and yelled parting
+words till the Pullman windows were filled with shocked, Eastern faces,
+eager to see a real, wild cowboy on his native soil.
+
+Then Weary went into the smoker, sought a place where he could stretch
+the long legs of him over two seats, made him a cigarette and forgot to
+smoke it while he watched the gray plains slide away behind him; till
+something went wrong with his eyes.  It was just four o'clock, and
+school was out.  The schoolma'am was looking down the trail, maybe--
+At any rate she was a good many miles away from him now--so many that
+even if he got off and had Glory right there and ran him every foot of
+the way, he could not possibly get to her--and the way the train was
+galloping over the rails, she was every minute getting farther off,
+and--  What a damn fool a man can make of himself, rushing off like
+that when, maybe--
+
+After that, a fellow who traveled for a San Francisco wine house spoke
+to him pleasantly and Weary thrust vain longings from him and was
+himself again.
+
+For two months he wandered aimlessly and, then, not quite at the point
+of going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out,
+one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work.  He was in
+Portland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off a
+north-bound train the night before.
+
+People hurried past without a glance in his direction, and even after
+two months this made him lonesome, coming as he did from a place where
+every man hailed him jovially by his adopted name.
+
+There was little that he could do--or would do.  He tried digging
+ditches for the city, along with a motley collection of the sons of all
+nations but his, seemingly.
+
+The first day be blistered both hands and got a "crick" in his back.
+
+The second day, he quit.
+
+On the third day, he brought up at the door of a livery stable.  A man
+with a slate-colored, silk waistcoat was standing aggressively in the
+doorway, one hand deep in his pocket and the other energetically
+punctuating the remarks he was making to a droop-shouldered hostler.
+Some of the remarks were interesting in the extreme and Weary,
+listening, drew a deep sigh of thankfulness that they were not directed
+at himself, because his back was still lame and his hands sore, and in
+Portland law-abiding citizens are not supposed to "pack" a gun.
+
+The droop-shouldered man waited humbly for the climax--which reached so
+high a tension that the speaker rose upon his toes to deliver it, and
+drew his right hand from his pocket to aid in the punctuation--when he
+pulled his hat down on his head and slunk away.
+
+It was while the orator was gazing contemptuously after him that he
+heard Weary cheerfully asking for work.  For Weary was a straight
+guesser; he knew when he stood in the presence of the Great and Only.
+The man wheeled and measured Weary slowly with his eyes--and there
+being a good deal of Weary if you measured lengthwise, he consumed
+several seconds doing it.
+
+"Humph!" when the survey was over.  "What do _you_ know about horses?"
+His tone was colored still by the oration he had just delivered, and it
+was not encouraging.
+
+Weary looked down upon him and smiled indulgence of the tone.  "If you
+aren't busy right now, I'll start in and tell yuh.  Yuh better sit down
+on that bucket whilst I'm doing it--if I'm thorough it'll take time."
+
+"Humph!" said the man again and carefully pared the end of a fat, black
+cigar.  "You seem to think you know it all.  What's your trade?"
+
+"Punching cows--in Northern Montana," answered Weary, mildly.
+
+The man took the trouble to look at him again, this time more
+critically--and more favorably, perhaps.  "Bronco-buster?" he demanded,
+briefly.
+
+"Some," grinned Weary, his thoughts whirling back to the dust and
+uproar in the Flying U corrals--and to Glory.
+
+The man seemed to read what was in his eyes.  "You ought to know better
+than to founder a three-hundred-dollar trotter, then," he remarked,
+with some of the growl smoothed out of his voice.
+
+"I sure had," agreed Weary, sympathetically.
+
+"That's why I fired that four-or-five-kinds-of idiot just now,"
+confided the other, rising to the sympathy in Weary's tone.  "I need
+men that know a little something about horses--the foreman can't always
+be at a man's elbow.  You can start right in--pay's good.  Go tell the
+foreman I've hired you; that's him back there in the office."
+
+Then came the rain.  Week after week of drab clouds and drizzle, and no
+sun to hearten a man for his work.  Week after week of bobbing
+umbrellas, muddy crossings, sloppy pavements and dripping eaves--and a
+cold that chilled the marrow in his bones.
+
+Weary, after a week of poking along in the rain of an evening when his
+work was done, threw up his hands, figuratively, and bought him an
+umbrella, hoping devoutly they would never get to hear of it in Dry
+Lake.  He stood for two minutes in the deep doorway of the store before
+he found nerve to open the awkward thing, and when he did so he glanced
+sheepishly around him as if it were a weak thing to do and a
+disgraceful.
+
+Fog and rain and mud and mist, day after day through long months.
+Feeding hungry horses their breakfast at five o'clock in the morning;
+brushing, currying, combing till they shone satin-smooth.  Harnessing,
+unharnessing; washing mud from rigs that would be splashed and
+plastered again before night.  Driving to houses that were known by the
+number over the door, giving the reins over to somebody and walking
+back in the rain.  Piling mangers with hay, strewing the stalls deep
+with straw.  Patting this horse as he passed, commanding the next to
+move over, stopping to whisper caressing words into the ear of a
+favorite.  Sitting listlessly in the balcony of some theatre in the
+evening while a mimic world lived its joys and sorrows below and an
+orchestra played soft accompaniment to his vagrant thoughts.  All this
+was Weary's life in Portland.
+
+Not exactly hilarious, that life.  Not a homelike one to a man fresh
+from eating, sleeping, working, reveling with fellows who would
+cheerfully give him the coat upon their straight backs if he needed it;
+fight for him, laugh at him, or laugh with him, tease him, bully him,
+love him like a brother--in short, fresh from Jim Whitmore's Happy
+Family.
+
+No one hailed him as Weary; his fellow hostlers called him simply Bill.
+No one knew the life he knew or loved the things he loved.  His stories
+of wild rides and hard drives must be explained as he went along and
+fell even then upon barren soil; so he gave up telling them.  Even his
+speech, colored as it was with the West which lies East of the
+Cascades, sounded strange in their ears and set him apart.  They
+referred to him as "the cowboy".
+
+Sometimes, when the skies were leaden and the dead atmosphere pressed
+his very soul to the dank earth, Weary would hoist his umbrella and
+walk and walk and walk, till the streets grew empty around him and his
+footsteps sounded hollow on the pavements.  One Sunday when it was not
+actually raining he hired a horse and rode into the country--and he
+came back draggled and unhappy from plodding through the mud, and he
+never repeated the experiment.
+
+Sometimes he would sit all the evening in his damp-walled room and
+smoke cigarettes and wonder what the boys were doing, down in the
+bunk-house at home.  He wondered if they kept Glory up--or if he was
+rustling on the range, his sorrel back humped to the storms and the
+deviltry gone out of him with the grim battle for mere life.
+
+Perhaps there was a dance somewhere; it was a cinch they would all be
+there--and Happy Jack would wear the same red necktie and the same
+painful smile of embarrassment, and there would be a squabble over the
+piece of bar mirror to shave by.  And the schoolma'am--  But here
+Weary's thoughts would shy and stop abruptly, and if it were not too
+late he would put on his hat and go to a show; one of those ten-cent
+continuous-performance places, where the Swede and the Dutchman
+flourish and the Boneless Man ties himself in knots.
+
+A man will grow accustomed to anything, give him time enough.  When
+four months had passed in this fashion, Weary began insensibly to turn
+more to the present and less often, to the past.  His work was not
+hard, the pay was good and he learned the ways of the town and got more
+in touch with his acquaintances.  They came to fill his life, so that
+he thought less often of Chip and Cal and Happy Jack and Slim.  Others
+were gradually taking their places.
+
+No one had as yet come to lift Miss Satterly's brown eyes from the deep
+places of his heart, because he again shied at women; but he was able
+to draw a veil before them so that they did not haunt him so much.  He
+began to whistle once more, as he went about his work; but he never
+whistled "Good Old Summertime."  There were other foolish songs become
+popular; he rather fancied "Navajo" these days.
+
+It was past April Fool's day, and Weary was singing "Nava, Nava, my
+Navajo," melodiously while he spread the straw bedding with his fork.
+It was a beastly day, even for that climate, but he was glad of it.  He
+had only to fill a dozen mangers and his morning's work was done, with
+the prospect of an idle forenoon; for no one would want to drive,
+today, unless it was absolutely necessary.
+
+  "I have a love for-r you that will grow-ow;
+  If you'll have a coon for a beau--"
+
+trilled Weary, and snapped the wires off a bale of hay and tore it
+open, in a hurry to finish.
+
+A familiar, pungent odor smote his nostrils and he straightened.  For a
+minute he stood perfectly still; then his fingers groped tremblingly in
+the hay, closed upon something, and every nerve in him quivered.  He
+held it fast in his shaking hands and sat down weakly upon the torn
+bale.
+
+It was a branch off a sage bush--dry, shapeless, bruised in the press,
+but it carried its message bravely.  Holding it close to his face,
+drinking in the smell of it greedily, he closed his eyes involuntarily.
+
+Great, gray plains closed in upon him--dear, familial plains, scarred
+and broken with sharp-nosed hills and deep, water-worn coulees gleaming
+barren and yellow in the sun.  The blue, blue sky was bending down to
+meet the hills, with feathery, white clouds trailing lazily across.
+His cheeks felt the cool winds which flapped his hat-brim and tingled
+his blood.  His knees pressed the throb and life, the splendid, working
+muscles of a galloping horse.
+
+Weary's head went down upon his hands, with the bit of sage pressed
+hard against his cheek.
+
+Now he was racing over the springy sod which sent a sweet, grassy smell
+up to meet him.  Wild range cattle lumbered out of his way, ran a few
+paces and stopped to gaze after him with big, curious eyes.  Before him
+stood the white-tented camp of the round-up, and the rope corral was
+filled with circling horses half hidden by the veil of dust thrown
+upward by their restless, trampling hoofs.  Now he was in the midst of
+them, a coil of rope in his left hand; his right swung the loop
+circling over his head.  And the choking dust was in his eyes and
+throat, and in his nostrils the rank odor of many horses.  Men were
+shouting to one another above the confusion.  Oaths were hurled after a
+horse which warily dodged the rope.  Saddles strewed the ground, bits
+clanked, spurs jingled, care-free laughs brightened the clamor.
+
+The scene shifted.  He was sitting, helpless, in the saddle while Glory
+carried him wantonly over the hills, shaking his head to make the
+broken bridle rattle.  Now he was stopping in front of a vine-covered
+porch, where a girl lay sleeping in a hammock--a girl with soft, dark
+hair falling down to the floor in a heavy braid.  Again, he was sitting
+on the school-house steps, holding a smoking gun in his hand, and the
+schoolma'am was standing, flushed and reproving, before him.  The wind
+came and fluttered her skirts--
+
+"What's the matter, Bill?  Yuh sick?"
+
+Weary raised a white, haggard face.  The plains, the blue sky, the
+sunshine, the wind, the girl--were gone.  He was sitting upon a torn
+bale of hay in a livery stable in Portland.  Through the wide, open
+door he could see the muddy street.  Gray water-needles darted
+incessantly up from the pavement where the straight lines of rain
+struck.  On the roof the rain was drumming a monotone.  In his fingers
+was a crumpled bit of gray sage-brush.
+
+"Sick, Bill?" repeated the foreman, sympathetically.
+
+"Oh, go to hell!" said Weary, ungratefully.  He felt tired, and weak
+and old.  He wanted to be left alone.  He wanted--God, how he wanted
+the dream to come back to him, and to come back to him true!  To close
+about him and wrap him in its sunny folds; to steep his senses in the
+light and the life, the sound and the smell of the plains; to hear the
+wind rushing over the treeless hills; to see the wild range cattle
+nosing the crisp, prairie grass.
+
+He got unsteadily upon his legs and went slowly to his room; dropped
+wearily upon the bed, and buried his face in the pillow like a hurt
+child.  In his fingers he clutched a pungent, gray weed.
+
+
+
+
+PART SIX
+
+Late that night Weary, his belongings stuffed hurriedly into the
+suit-case he called his "war-bag," started home; so impatient he had a
+childish desire to ride upon the engine so that he might arrive the
+sooner, and failing that he spent much of his time lurching between
+smoking car and tourist sleeper, unable to sit quietly in any place for
+longer than ten minutes or so.  In his coat pocket, where his fingers
+touched it often, was a crumpled bit of sage-brush.  Dry it was, and the
+gray leaves were crumbling under the touch of his homesick fingers, but
+the smell of it, aromatic and fresh and strong, breathed of the plains he
+loved.
+
+At Kalispell he went out on the platform and filled his lungs again and
+again with Montana air, that was clean of fog and had a nip to it.  The
+sun shone, the sky was blue and the clouds reminded him of a band of
+new-washed sheep scattered and feeding quietly.  The wind blew keen in
+his face and set his blood a-dance, his blood, which for long months had
+moved sluggishly in his veins.
+
+At Shelby, a half-dozen cowboys galloped briefly into view as the train
+whizzed by down the valley, and Weary raised the car window and leaned
+far out to gaze after them with hungry eyes.  He wanted to swing his hat
+and give a whoop that would get the last wisps of fog and gray murk out
+of his system--but there were other passengers already shivering and
+eyeing him in unfriendly fashion because of the open window.  He wanted
+to get out and run and run bareheaded, over the bleak, brown hills; but
+he closed the window and behaved as well as he could.
+
+The stars came out and winked at him just as they used to do when he sat
+on Meeker's front porch and listened to the schoolma'am singing softly in
+the hammock, her guitar tinkling a mellow undertone.  It was too early
+now for the hammock to be swinging in the porch.  School must be started
+again, though, and seeing the schoolma'am lived right there with her aunt
+Meeker, they weren't likely to hire another teacher.
+
+He hoped Myrt Forsyth had gone back to Chadville where she belonged.  He
+wished now that he had written to some of the boys and kept posted on
+what was happening.  He had never sent back so much as a picture postal,
+and he had consequently not heard a word.  But Weary's nature was ever
+hopeful except when he was extremely angry, and then he did not care much
+about anything.  So now, he took it for granted things had gone along
+smoothly and that nothing would be changed.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Miss Satterly had just finished listlessly hearing the last spelling
+class recite, when she glanced through the window and saw Glory, bearing
+a familiar figure, race down the hill and whip into the school-house
+path.  Her heart gave a flop, so that she caught at the desk to steady
+her and she felt the color go out of her face.  Then her presence of mind
+returned so that she said "School's dismissed"--without going through the
+form of "Attention, turn, stand, pass."
+
+The children eyed her curiously, hesitated and then rushed noisily out,
+and she sank down upon a bench and covered her face with her hands.  It
+was queer that she could not seem to get hold of herself and be calm; it
+was disgraceful that she should tremble so.  Outside she could hear them
+shouting, "Hello, Weary!" in a dozen different keys, and each time her
+blood jumped.  Her eyes had not tricked her, then--though it was not the
+first time she had trembled to see a sorrel horse gallop down that hill,
+and then turned numb when came disillusionment.  Would those children
+never start home?  By degrees their shrill voices sounded further away,
+and the place grew still.  But the schoolma'am kept her face covered.
+
+Spurred heels clanked on the threshold, stopped there, and the door shut
+with a slam.  But she did not look up; she did not dare.
+
+Steps came down the room toward her--long, hurrying steps, determined
+steps.  Close beside her they stopped, and for a space that seemed to her
+long minutes there was no sound.
+
+"Say hello to me--won't you, Girlie?" said a wistful voice that thrilled
+to the tips of the schoolma'am's shaking fingers.  She dropped her hands
+then, reluctantly.  Her lips quivered as Weary had never before seen them
+do.
+
+"Hello," she obeyed, faintly.
+
+He stood for a moment, studying her face.
+
+"Look up here, Schoolma'am," he commanded at last.  "I hate to have my
+feet get so much attention.  I've come back to fight it out--to a finish,
+this time.  Yuh can't stampede me again--look up here.  I've been plumb
+sick for a sight of those big eyes of yours."
+
+Miss Satterly persisted in gazing at the boots of Weary.
+
+"Well, are yuh going to?"  There was a new, masterful note in Weary's
+voice, that the schoolma'am felt but did not quite understand--then.  She
+did not, perhaps, realize how plainly her whole attitude spoke surrender.
+
+Weary waited what seemed to him a reasonable time, but her lashes drooped
+lower, if anything.  Then he made one of the quick, unlooked-for moves
+which made him a master of horses.  Before she quite knew what was
+occurring, the schoolma'am was upon her feet and snuggled close in
+Weary's eager arms.  More, he had a hand under her chin, her face was
+tilted back and he was smiling down into her wide, startled eyes.
+
+"I didn't burn a streak a thousand miles long in the atmosphere, getting
+back here, to be scared out now by a little woman like you," he remarked,
+and tucked a stray, brown lock solicitously behind her ear.  Then he bent
+and kissed her deliberately upon the mouth.
+
+"Now, say you're my little schoolma'am.  Quick, before I do it again." He
+threatened with his lips, and he looked as if he were quite anxious to
+carry out his threat.
+
+"I'm your--" the schoolma'am hid her face from him.  "Oh, Will!  Whatever
+made you go off like that, and I--I nearly died wanting to see you--"
+
+Weary laid his cheek very tenderly against hers, and held her close.  No
+words came to either, just then.
+
+"What if I'd kept on being a fool--and hadn't come back at all, Girlie?"
+he asked softly, after a while.
+
+The schoolma'am shuddered eloquently in his arms.
+
+"It was sure lonesome--it was _hell_ out there alone," he observed,
+reminiscently.
+
+"It was sure--h-hell back here alone, too," murmured a smothered voice
+which did not sound much like the clear, self-assertive tones of Miss
+Satterly.
+
+"Well, it come near serving you right," Weary told her, relishfully
+grinning over the word she used.
+
+"What made yuh chase me off?"
+
+"I--don't know; I--"
+
+"I guess yuh don't, all right," agreed Weary, giving a little squeeze by
+way of making quite sure he had her there.  "Say, what was that yarn Myrt
+Forsyth told yuh about me?"
+
+"I--I don't know.  She--she hinted a lot--"
+
+"I expect she did--that's Myrt, every rattle uh the box," Weary cut in
+dryly.
+
+"And she--she said you had to leave home--in the night--"
+
+"Oh, she did, eh?  Well, Girlie, if the time-table hasn't changed, Miss
+Myrt Forsyth sneaked off the same way.  The train west leaves--or did
+leave--Chadville along about midnight, so--Say, it feels good to be back,
+little schoolma'am.  You don't know how good--"
+
+"I guess I do," cried the schoolma'am very emphatically.  "I just guess I
+know something about that, myself.  Oh you dear, great, tall--"
+
+Something happened just then to the schoolma'am's lips, so that she could
+not finish the sentence.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST AID TO CUPID
+
+The floor manager had just called out that it was "ladies' choice," and
+Happy Jack, his eyes glued in rapturous apprehension upon the thin,
+expressionless face of Annie Pilgreen, backed diffidently into a
+corner.  He hoped and he feared that she would discover him and lead
+him out to dance; she had done that once, at the Labor Day ball, and he
+had not slept soundly for several nights after.
+
+Someone laid proprietary hand upon his cinnamon-brown coat sleeve, and
+he jumped and blushed; it was only the schoolma'am, however, smiling up
+at him ingratiatingly in a manner wholly bewildering to a simple minded
+fellow like Happy Jack.  She led him into another corner, plumped
+gracefully and with much decision down upon a bench, drew her skirts
+aside to make room for him and announced that she was tired and wanted
+a nice long talk with him.  Happy Jack, sending a troubled glance after
+Annie, who was leading Joe Meeker out to dance, sighed a bit and sat
+down obediently--and thereby walked straight into the loop which the
+schoolma'am had spread for his unwary feet.
+
+The schoolma'am was sitting out an astonishing number of dances--for a
+girl who could dance from dark to dawn and never turn a hair--and the
+women were wondering why.  If she had sat them out with Weary Davidson
+they would have smiled knowingly and thought no more of it; but she did
+not.  For every dance she had a different companion, and in every case
+it ended in that particular young man looking rather scared and
+unhappy.  After five minutes of low-toned monologue on the part of the
+schoolma'am, Happy Jack went the way of his predecessors and also
+became scared and unhappy.
+
+"Aw, say!  Miss Satterly, _I_ can't act," he protested in a panic.
+
+"Oh, yes, you could," declared the schoolma'am, with sweet assurance,
+"if you only thought so."
+
+"Aw, I couldn't get up before a crowd and say a piece, not if--"
+
+"I'm not sure I want you to.  There are other things to an
+entertainment besides reciting things.  I only want you to promise that
+you will help me out.  You will, won't you?"  The schoolma'am's eyes,
+besides being pretty, were often disconcertingly direct in their gaze.
+
+Happy Jack wriggled and looked toward the door, which suddenly seemed a
+very long way off.  "I--I've got to go up to the Falls, along about
+Christmas," he stuttered feebly, avoiding her eyes.  "I--I can't get
+off any other time, and I've--I've got a tooth--"
+
+"You're the fifth Flying-U man who has 'a tooth,'" the schoolma'am
+interrupted impatiently.  "A dentist ought to locate in Dry Lake; from
+what I have heard confidentially to-night, there's a fortune to be made
+off the teeth of the Happy Family alone."
+
+Every drop of blood in Happy's body seemed to stand then in his face.
+"I--I'll pull the curtain for yuh," he volunteered, meekly.
+
+"You're the seventh applicant for that place."  The schoolma'am was
+crushingly calm.  "Every fellow I've spoken to has evinced a morbid
+craving for curtain-pulling."
+
+Happy Jack crumpled under her sarcasm and perspired, and tried to think
+of something, with his brain quite paralyzed and useless.
+
+The schoolma'am continued inexorably; plainly, _her_ brain was not
+paralyzed.  "I've promised the neighborhood that I would give a
+Christmas tree and entertainment--and when a school-teacher promises
+anything to a neighborhood, nothing short of death or smallpox will be
+accepted as an excuse for failing to keep the promise; and I've seven
+tongue-tied kids to work with!"  (The schoolma'am was only
+spasmodically given to irreproachable English.)  "Of course, I relied
+upon my friends to help me out.  But when I come to calling the roll,
+I--I don't seem to _have_ any friends."  The schoolma'am was twirling
+the Montana sapphire ring which Weary had given her last spring, and
+her voice was trembly and made Happy Jack feel vaguely that he was a
+low-down cur and ought to be killed.
+
+He swallowed twice.  "Aw, yuh don't want to go and feel bad about it; I
+never meant--I'll do anything yuh ask me to."
+
+"Thank you.  I knew I could count upon you, Jack."
+
+The schoolma'am recovered her spirits with a promptness that was
+suspicious; patted his arm and called him an awfully good fellow, which
+reduced Happy Jack to a state just this side imbecility.  Also, she
+drew a little memorandum book from somewhere, and wrote Happy Jack's
+name in clear, convincing characters that made him shiver.  He saw
+other names above his own on the page; quite a lot of them; seven in
+fact.  Miss Satterly, evidently, was not quite as destitute of friends
+as her voice, awhile back, would lead one to believe.  Happy Jack
+wondered.
+
+"I haven't quite decided what we will have," she remarked briskly.
+"When I do, we'll all meet some evening in the school-house and talk it
+over.  There's lots of fun getting up an entertainment; you'll like it,
+once you get started."
+
+Happy did not agree with her, but he did not tell her so; he managed to
+contort his face into something resembling a grin, and retreated to the
+hotel, where he swallowed two glasses of whiskey to start his blood
+moving again, and then sat down and played poker disasterously until
+daylight made the lamps grow a sickly yellow and the air of the room
+seem suddenly stale and dead.  But Happy never thought of blaming the
+schoolma'am for the eighteen dollars he lost.
+
+Neither did he blame her for the nightmares which tormented his sleep
+during the week that followed or the vague uneasiness that filled his
+waking hour, even when he was not thinking directly of the ghost that
+dogged him.  For wherever he went, or whatever he did, Happy Jack was
+conscious of the fact that his name was down on the schoolma'am's list
+and he was definitely committed to do anything she asked him to do,
+even to "speaking a piece"--which was in his eyes the acme of mental
+torture.
+
+When Cal Emmett, probably thinking of Miss Satterly's little book,
+pensively warbled in his ear:
+
+  Is your name written there,
+  On the page white and fair?
+
+Happy Jack made no reply, though he suddenly felt chilly along the
+spinal column.  It was.
+
+"Schoolma'am wants us all to go over to the schoolhouse
+tonight--seven-thirty, sharp--to help make medicine over this Santa
+Claus round-up.  Slim, she says you've got to be Santy and come down
+the stovepipe and give the kids fits and popcorn strung on a string.
+She says you've got the figure."  Weary splashed into the wash basin
+like a startled muskrat.
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another distressfully.
+
+"By golly," Slim gulped, "you can just tell the schoolma'am to go
+plumb--" (Weary faced him suddenly, his brown hair running rivulets)
+"and ask the Old Man," finished Slim hurriedly.  "He's fifteen pounds
+fatter'n I be."
+
+"Go tell her yourself," said Weary, appeased.  "I promised her you'd
+all be there on time, if I had to hog-tie the whole bunch and haul yuh
+over in the hayrack."  He dried his face and hands leisurely and
+regarded the solemn group.  "Oh, mamma! you're sure a nervy-looking
+bunch uh dogies.  Yuh look like--"
+
+"Maybe you'll hog-tie the whole bunch," Jack Bates observed irritably,
+"but if yuh do, you'll sure be late to meeting, sonny!"
+
+The Happy Family laughed feeble acquiescence.
+
+"I won't need to," Weary told them blandly.  "You all gave the
+schoolma'am leave to put down your names, and its up to you to make
+good.  If yuh haven't got nerve enough to stay in the game till the
+deck's shuffled yuh hadn't any right to buy a stack uh chips."
+
+"Yeah--that's right," Cal Emmett admitted frankly, because shyness and
+Cal were strangers.  "The Happy Family sure ought to put this thing
+through a-whirling.  We'll give 'em vaudeville till their eyes water
+and their hands are plumb blistered applauding the show.  Happy, you're
+it.  You've got to do a toe dance."
+
+Happy Jack grinned in sickly fashion and sought out his red necktie.
+
+"Say, Weary," spoke up Jack Bates, "ain't there going to be any female
+girls in this opera troupe?"
+
+"Sure.  The Little Doctor's going to help run the thing, and Rena
+Jackson and Lea Adams are in it--and Annie Pilgreen.  Her and Happy are
+down on the program for 'Under the Mistletoe', a tableau--the red fire,
+kiss-me-quick brand."
+
+"Aw gwan!" cried Happy Jack, much distressed and not observing Weary's
+lowered eyelid.
+
+His perturbed face and manner gave the Happy Family an idea.  An idea,
+when entertained by the Happy Family, was a synonym for great mental
+agony on the part of the object of the thought, and great enjoyment on
+the part of the Family.
+
+"That's right," Weary assured him sweetly, urged to further deceit by
+the manifest approval of his friends.  "Annie's ready and willing to do
+her part, but she's afraid you haven't got the nerve to go through with
+it; but the schoolma'am says you'll have to anyhow, because your name's
+down and you told her distinct you'd do anything she asked yuh to.
+Annie likes yuh a heap, Happy; she said so.  Only she don't like the
+way yuh hang back on the halter.  She told me, private, that she wished
+yuh wasn't so bashful."
+
+"Aw, gwan!" adjured Happy Jack again, because that was his only form of
+repartee.
+
+"If I had a girl like Annie--"
+
+"Aw, I never said I had a girl!"
+
+"It wouldn't take me more than two minutes to convince her I wasn't as
+scared as I looked.  You can gamble I'd go through with that living
+picture, and I'd sure kiss--"
+
+"Aw, gwan!  I ain't stampeding clear to salt water 'cause she said
+'Boo!' at me--and I don't need no cayuse t' show me the trail to a
+girl's house--"
+
+At this point, Weary succeeded in getting a strangle-hold and the
+discussion ended rather abruptly--as they had a way of doing in the
+Flying U bunk-house.
+
+Over at the school-house that night, when Miss Satterly's little, gold
+watch told her it was seven-thirty, she came out of the corner where
+she had been whispering with the Little Doctor and faced a select,
+anxious-eyed audience.  Even Weary was not as much at ease as he would
+have one believe, and for the others--they were limp and miserable.
+
+She went straight at her subject.  They all knew what they were there
+for, she told them, and her audience looked her unwinkingly in the eye.
+They did _not_ know what they were there for, but they felt that they
+were prepared for the worst.  Cal Emmett went mentally over the only
+"piece" he knew, which he thought he might be called upon to speak.  It
+was the one beginning, according to Cal's version:
+
+  Twinkle, Twinkle little star,
+  What in thunder are you at?
+
+There were thirteen verses, and it was not particularly adapted to a
+Christmas entertainment.
+
+The schoolma'am went on explaining.  There would be tableaux, she said
+(whereat Happy Jack came near swallowing his tongue) and the Jarley
+Wax-works.
+
+"What're them?" Slim, leaning awkwardly forward and blinking up at her,
+interrupted stolidly.  Everyone took advantage of the break and
+breathed deeply.
+
+The schoolma'am told them what were the Jarley Wax-works, and even
+reverted to Dickens and gave a vivid sketch of the original _Mrs.
+Jarley_.  The audience finally understood that they would represent wax
+figures of noted characters, would stand still and let _Mrs. Jarley_
+talk about them--without the satisfaction of talking back--and that
+they would be wound up at the psychological moment, when they would be
+expected to go through a certain set of motions alleged to portray the
+last conscious acts of the characters they represented.
+
+The schoolma'am sat down sidewise upon a desk, swung a neat little foot
+unconventionally and grew confidential, and the Happy Family knew they
+were in for it.
+
+"Will Davidson" (which was Weary) "is the tallest fellow in the lot, so
+he must be the Japanese Dwarf and eat poisoned rice out of a chopping
+bowl, with a wooden spoon--the biggest we can find," she announced
+authoritatively, and they grinned at Weary.
+
+"Mr. Bennett," (which was Chip) "you can assume a most murderous
+expression, so we'll allow you to be Captain Kidd and threaten to slay
+your Little Doctor with a wooden sword--if we can't get hold of a real
+one."
+
+"Thanks," said Chip, with doubtful gratitude.
+
+"Mr. Emmett, we'll ask you to be _Mrs. Jarley_ and deliver the
+lectures."
+
+When they heard that the Happy Family howled derision at Cal, who got
+red in the face in spite of himself.  The worst was over.  The victims
+scented fun in the thing and perked up, and the schoolma'am breathed
+relief, for she knew the crowd.  Things would go with a swing, after
+this, and success was, barring accidents, a foregone conclusion.
+
+Through all the clatter and cross-fire of jibes Happy Jack sat, nervous
+and distrait, in the seat nearest the door and farthest from Annie
+Pilgreen.  The pot-bellied stove yawned red-mouthed at him, a scant
+three feet away.  Someone coming in chilled with the nipping night air
+had shoveled in coal with lavish hand, so that the stove door had to be
+thrown open as the readiest method of keeping the stove from melting
+where it stood.  Its body, swelling out corpulently below the iron
+belt, glowed red; and Happy Jack's wolf-skin overcoat was beginning to
+exhale a rank, animal odor.  It never occurred to him that he might
+change his seat; he unbuttoned the coat absently and perspired.
+
+He was waiting to see if the schoolma'am said anything about "Under the
+Mistletoe" with red fire--and Annie Pilgreen.  If she did, Happy Jack
+meant to get out of the house with the least possible delay, for he
+knew well that no man might face the schoolma'am's direct gaze and
+refuse to do her bidding,
+
+So far the Jarley Wax-works held the undivided attention of all save
+Happy Jack; to him there were other things more important.  Even when
+he was informed that he must be the Chinese Giant and stand upon a
+coal-oil box for added height, arrayed in one of the big-flowered
+calico curtains which Annie Pilgreen said she could bring, he was
+apathetic.  He would be required to swing his head slowly from side to
+side when wound up--very well, it looked easy enough.  He would not
+have to say a word, and he supposed he might shut his eyes if he felt
+like it.
+
+"As for the tableaux"--Happy Jack felt a prickling of the scalp and
+measured mentally the distance to the door--"We can arrange them later,
+for they will not require any rehearsing.  The Wax-works we must get to
+work on as soon as possible.  How often can you come and rehearse?"
+
+"Every night and all day Sundays," Weary drawled.
+
+Miss Satterly frowned him into good behavior and said twice a week
+would do.
+
+Happy Jack slipped out and went home feeling like a reprieved criminal;
+he even tried to argue himself into the belief that Weary was only
+loading him and didn't mean a word he said.  Still, the schoolma'am had
+said there would be tableaux, and it was a cinch she would tell Weary
+all about it--seeing they were engaged.  Weary was the kind that found
+out things, anyway.
+
+What worried Happy Jack most was trying to discover how the dickens
+Weary found out he liked Annie Pilgreen; that was a secret which Happy
+Jack had almost succeeded in keeping from himself, even.  He would have
+bet money no one else suspected it--and yet here was Weary grinning and
+telling him he and Annie were cut out for a tableau together.  Happy
+Jack pondered till he got a headache, and he did not come to any
+satisfactory conclusion with himself, even then.
+
+The rest of the Happy Family stayed late at the school-house, and Weary
+and Chip discussed something enthusiastically in a corner with the
+Little Doctor and the schoolma'am.  The Little Doctor said that
+something was a shame, and that it was mean, to tease a fellow as
+bashful as Happy Jack.
+
+Weary urged that sometimes Cupid needed a helping hand, and that it
+would really be doing Happy a big favor, even if he didn't appreciate
+it at the time.  So in the end the girls agreed and the thing was
+settled.
+
+The Happy Family rode home in the crisp starlight gurgling and leaning
+over their saddle-horns in spasmodic fits of laughter.  But when they
+trooped into the bunk-house they might have been deacons returning from
+prayer meeting so far as their decorous behavior was concerned.  Happy
+Jack was in bed, covered to his ears and he had his face to the wall.
+They cast covert glances at his carroty top-knot and went silently to
+bed--which was contrary to habit.
+
+At the third rehearsal, just as the Chinese Giant stepped off the
+coal-oil box--thereby robbing himself miraculously of two feet of
+stature--the schoolma'am approached him with a look in her big eyes
+that set him shivering.  When she laid a finger mysteriously upon his
+arm and drew him into the corner sacred to secret consultations, the
+forehead of Happy Jack resembled the outside of a stone water-jar in
+hot weather.  He knew beforehand just about what she would say.  It was
+the tableau that had tormented his sleep and made his days a misery for
+the last ten days--the tableau with red fire and Annie Pilgreen.
+
+Miss Satterly told him that she had already spoken to Annie, and that
+Annie was willing if Happy Jack had no objections.  Happy Jack had, but
+he could not bring himself to mention the fact.
+
+The schoolma'am had not quoted Annie's reply verbatim, but that was
+mere detail.  When she had asked Annie if she would take part in a
+tableau with Happy Jack, Annie had dropped her pale eyelids and said:
+"Yes, ma'am."  Still it was as much as the schoolma'am, knowing Annie,
+could justly expect.
+
+Annie Pilgreen was an anaemic sort of creature with pale eyes,
+ash-colored hair that clung damply to her head, and a colorless
+complexion; her conversational powers were limited to "Yes, sir" and
+"No, sir" (or Ma'am if sex demanded and Annie remembered in time).  But
+Happy Jack loved her; and when a woman loves and is loved, her
+existence surely is justified for all time.
+
+Happy Jack sent a despairing glance of appeal at the Happy Family; but
+the Family was very much engaged, down by the stove.  Cal Emmett was
+fanning himself with _Mrs. Jarley's_ poppy-loaded bonnet and refreshing
+his halting memory of the lecture with sundry promptings from Len Adams
+who held the book.  Chip Bennett was whittling his sword into shape and
+Weary was drumming a tattoo in the great wooden bowl with the spoon he
+used to devour poisoned rice upon the stage.  The others were variously
+engaged; not one of them appeared conscious of the fact that Happy Jack
+was facing the tragedy of his bashful life.
+
+Before he realized it, Miss Satterly had somehow managed to worm from
+him a promise, and after that nothing mattered.  The Wax-works, the
+tree, the whole entertainment dissolved into a blurred background,
+against which he was to stand with Annie Pilgreen, for the amusement of
+his neighbors, who would stamp their feet and shout derisive things at
+him.  Very likely he would be subjected to the agony of an encore, and
+he knew, beyond all doubt, that he would never be permitted to forget
+the figure he should cut; for Happy Jack knew he was as unbeautiful as
+a hippopotamus and as awkward.  He wondered why he, of all the fellows
+who were to take part, should be chosen for that tableau; it seemed to
+him they ought to pick out someone who was at least passably
+good-looking and hadn't such big, red hands and such immense feet.  His
+plodding brain revolved the mystery slowly and persistently.
+
+When he remounted his wooden pedestal, thereby transforming himself
+into a Chinese Giant of wax, he looked the part.  Where the other
+statues broke into giggles, to the detriment of their mechanical
+perfection, or squirmed visibly when the broken alarm clock whirred its
+signal against the small of their backs, Happy Jack stood immovably
+upright, a gigantic figure with features inhumanly stolid.  The
+schoolma'am pointed him out as an example to the others, and pronounced
+him enthusiastically the best actor in the lot.
+
+"Happy's swallowed his medicine--that's what ails him," the Japanese
+Dwarf whispered to Captain Kidd, and grinned.
+
+The Captain turned his head and studied the brooding features of the
+giant.  "He's doing some thinking," he decided.  "When he gets the
+thing figured out, in six months or a year, and savvies it was a put-up
+job from the start, somebody'll have it coming."
+
+"He can't pulverize the whole bunch, and he'll never wise up to who's
+the real sinner," Weary comforted himself.
+
+"Don't you believe it.  Happy doesn't think very often; when he does
+though, he can ring the bell--give him time enough."
+
+"Here, you statues over there want to let up on the chin-whacking or
+I'll hand yuh a few with this," commanded _Mrs. Jarley_, and shook the
+stove-poker threateningly.
+
+The Japanese Dwarf returned to his poisoned rice and Captain Kidd
+apologized to his victim, who was frowning reproof at him, and the
+rehearsal proceeded haltingly.
+
+That night, Weary rode home beside Happy Jack and tried to lift him out
+of the slough of despond.  But Happy refused to budge, mentally, an
+inch.  He rode humped in the saddle like a calf in its first blizzard,
+and he was discouragingly unresponsive; except once, when Weary
+reminded him that the tableau would need no rehearsing and that it
+would only last a minute, anyway, and wouldn't hurt.  Whereupon Happy
+Jack straightened and eyed him meditatively and finally growled, "Aw
+gwan; I betche you put her up to it, yuh darned chump."
+
+After that Weary galloped ahead and overtook the others and told them
+Happy Jack was thinking and mustn't be disturbed, and that he thought
+it would not be fatal to anyone, though it was kinda hard on Happy.
+
+From that night till Christmas eve, Happy Jack continued to think.  It
+was not, however, till the night of the entertainment, when he was
+riding gloomily alone on his way to the school-house, that Happy Jack
+really felt that his brain had struck pay dirt.  He took off his hat,
+slapped his horse affectionately over the ears with it and grinned for
+the first time since the Thanksgiving dance.  "Yes sir," he said
+emphatically aloud, "I betche that's how it is, all right and I
+betche--"
+
+The schoolma'am, her cheeks becomingly pink from excitement, fluttered
+behind the curtain for a last, flurried survey of stage properties and
+actors.  "Isn't Johnny here, yet?" she asked of Annie Pilgreen who had
+just come and still bore about her a whiff of frosty, night air.
+Johnny was first upon the program, with a ready-made address beginning,
+"Kind friends, we bid you welcome on this gladsome day," and the time
+for its delivery was overdue.
+
+Out beyond the curtain the Kind Friends were waxing impatient and the
+juvenile contingent was showing violent symptoms of descending
+prematurely upon the glittering little fir tree which stood in a corner
+next the stage.  Back near the door, feet were scuffling audibly upon
+the bare floor and a suppressed whistle occasionally cut into the hum
+of subdued voices.  Miss Satterly was growing nervous at the delay, and
+she repeated her question impatiently to Annie, who was staring at
+nothing very intently, as she had a fashion of doing.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," she answered absently.  Then, as an afterthought, "He's
+outside, talking to Happy Jack."
+
+Annie was mistaken; Happy Jack was talking to Johnny.  The schoolma'am
+tried to look through a frosted window.
+
+"I do wish they'd hurry in; it's getting late, and everybody's here and
+waiting."  She looked at her watch.  The suppressed whistle back near
+the door was gaining volume and insistence.
+
+"Can't we turn her loose, Girlie?"  Weary came up and laid a hand
+caressingly upon her shoulder.
+
+"Johnny isn't here, yet, and he's to give the address of welcome.
+_Why_ must people whistle and make a fuss like that, Will?"
+
+"They're just mad because they aren't in the show," said Weary.  "Say,
+can't we cut out the welcome and sail in anyway?  I'm getting kinda
+shaky, dreading it."
+
+The schoolma'am shook her head.  It would not do to leave out
+Johnny--and besides, country entertainments demanded the usual Address
+of Welcome.  It is never pleasant to trifle with an unwritten law like
+that.  She looked again at her watch and waited; the audience, being
+perfectly helpless, waited also.
+
+Weary, listening to the whistling and the shuffling of feet, felt a
+queer, qualmy feeling in the region of his diaphragm, and he yielded to
+a hunger for consolation and company in his misery.  He edged over to
+where Chip and Cal were amusing themselves by peeping at the audience
+from behind the tree.
+
+"Say, how do yuh stack up, Cal?" he whispered, forlornly.
+
+"Pretty lucky," Cal told him inattentively, and the cheerfulness of his
+whole aspect grieved Weary sorely.  But then, he explained to himself,
+Cal always did have the nerve of a mule.
+
+Weary sighed and wondered what in thunder ailed him, anyway; he was
+uncertain whether he was sick, or just plain scared.  "Feel all right,
+Chip?" he pursued; anxiously.
+
+"Sure," said Chip, with characteristic brevity.  "I wonder who those
+silver-mounted spurs are for, there on the tree?  They've been put on
+since this afternoon--can't yuh stretch your neck enough to read the
+name, Cal?  They're the real thing, all right."
+
+Weary's dejection became more pronounced.  "Oh, mamma! am I the only
+knock-kneed son-of-a-gun in this crowd?" he murmured, and turned
+disconsolately away.  His spine was creepy cold with stage fright; he
+listened to the sounds beyond the shielding curtain and shivered.
+
+Just then Johnny and Happy Jack appeared looking rather red and guilty,
+and Johnny was thrust unceremoniously forward to welcome his kind
+friends and still the rising clamor.
+
+Things went smoothly after that.  It is true that Weary, as the
+Japanese Dwarf, halted the Wax-works and glared glassily at the faces
+staring back at him while the alarm clock buzzed unheeded against his
+spine.  _Mrs. Jarley_, however, was equal to the emergency.  She
+proceeded calmly to wind him up the second time, gave Weary an
+admonitory kick and whispered, "Come alive, yuh chump," and turned to
+the audience.
+
+"This here Japanese Dwarf I got second-handed at a bargain sale for
+three-forty-nine, marked down for one week only," she explained
+blandly.  "I got cheated like h--like I always do at them bargain
+sales, for it's about wore out.  I guess I can make the thing work well
+enough to show yuh what it's meant to represent, though."  She gave
+Weary another kick, commanded him again to "Come out of it and get
+busy," and the Dwarf obediently ate its allotted portion of poison.
+And every one applauded Weary more enthusiastically than they had the
+others, for they thought it was all his part.  So much for justice.
+
+"Our last selection will be a tableau entitled, 'Under the Mistletoe,'"
+announced the schoolma'am's clear tones.  Then she took up her guitar
+and went down from the stage to where the Little Doctor waited with her
+mandolin.  While the tableau was being arranged they meant to play
+together in lieu of a regular orchestra.  The schoolma'am's brow was
+smooth, for the entertainment had been a success so far; and the
+tableau would be all right, she was sure--for Weary had charge of that.
+She hoped that Happy Jack would not hate it so very much, and that it
+would help to break the ice between him and Annie Pilgreen.  So she
+plucked the guitar strings tentatively and began to play.
+
+Behind the curtain, Annie Pilgreen stood simpering in her place and
+Happy Jack went reluctantly forward, resigned and deplorably
+inefficient.  Weary, himself again now that his torment was over, posed
+him cheerfully.  But Happy Jack did not get the idea.  He stood, as
+Weary told him disgustedly, looking like a hitching-post.  Weary
+labored with him desperately, his ear strained to keep in touch with
+the music which would, at the proper time, die to a murmur which would
+be a signal for the red fire and the tableau.  Already the lamps were
+being turned low, out there beyond the curtain.
+
+Though it was primarily a scheme of torture for Happy Jack, Weary was
+anxious that it should be technically perfect.  He became impatient.
+"Say, _don't_ stand there like a kink-necked horse, Happy!" he implored
+under his breath.  "Ain't there any joints in your arms?"
+
+"I ain't never practised it," Happy Jack protested in a hoarse whisper.
+"I never even seen a tableau in my life, even.  If somebody'd show me
+once, so's I could get the hang of it--"
+
+"Oh, mamma! you're a peach, all right.  Here, give me that sage brush!
+Now, watch.  We haven't got all night to make medicine over it.  See?
+Yuh want to hold it over her head and kinda bend down, like yuh were
+daring yourself to kiss--"
+
+Happy Jack backed off to get the effect; incidentally, he took the
+curtain back with him; also incidentally--, Johnny dropped a match into
+the red fire, which glowed beautifully.  Weary caught his breath, but
+he was game and never moved any eyelash.
+
+The red glow faded and left an abominable smell behind it, and some
+merciful hand drew the curtain--but it was not the hand of Happy Jack.
+He had gone out through the window and was crouching beneath it
+drinking in greedily the hand-clapping and the stamping of feet and the
+whistling, with occasional shouts of mirth which he recognized as
+coming from the rest of the Happy Family.  It all sounded very sweet to
+the great, red ears of Happy Jack.
+
+When the clatter showed signs of abatement he stole away to where his
+horse was tied, his sorrel coat gleaming with frost sparkles in the
+moonlight.  "It's you and me to hit the trail, Spider," he croaked to
+the horse, and with his bare hand scraped the frost from the saddle.
+
+A tall figure crept up from behind and grappled with him.  Spider
+danced away as far as the rope would permit and snorted, and two
+struggling forms squirmed away from his untrustworthy heels.
+
+"Aw, leggo!" cried Happy Jack when he could breathe again.
+
+"I won't.  You've got to come back and square yourself with Annie.  How
+do yuh reckon she's feeling at the trick yuh played on her, yuh
+lop-eared--"
+
+Happy Jack jerked loose and stood grinning in the moonlight.  "Aw,
+gwan.  Annie knowed I was goin' to do it," he retorted, loftily.
+"Annie and me's engaged."  He got into the saddle and rode off,
+shouting back taunts.
+
+Weary stood bareheaded in the cold and stared after him blankly.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE COOK FELL ILL
+
+It was four o'clock, and there was consternation in the round-up camp
+of the Flying U; when one eats breakfast before dawn--July dawn at
+that--covers thirty miles of rough country before eleven o'clock dinner
+and as many more after, supper seems, for the time being, the most
+important thing in the life of a cowboy.
+
+Men stood about in various dejected attitudes, their thumbs tucked
+inside their chap-belts, blank helplessness writ large upon their
+perturbed countenances--they were the aliens, hired but to make a full
+crew during round-up.  Long-legged fellows with spurs a-jingle hurried
+in and out of the cook-tent, colliding often, shouting futile
+questions, commands and maledictions--they were the Happy Family:
+loyal, first and last to the Flying U, feeling a certain degree of
+proprietorship and a good deal of responsibility.
+
+Happy Jack was fanning an incipient blaze in the sheet-iron stove with
+his hat, his face red and gloomy at the prospect of having to satisfy
+fifteen outdoor appetites with his amateur attempts at cooking.  Behind
+the stove, writhing bulkily upon a hastily unrolled bed, lay Patsy,
+groaning most pitiably.
+
+"What the devil's the matter with that hot water?" Cal Emmett yelled at
+Happy Jack from the bedside, where he was kneeling sympathetically.
+
+Happy Jack removed his somber gaze from the licking tongue of flame
+which showed in the stove-front.  "Fire ain't going good, yet," he said
+in a matter-of-fact tone which contrasted sharply with Cal's
+excitement.  "Teakettle's dry, too.  I sent a man to the crick for a
+bucket uh water; he'll be back in a minute."
+
+"Well, _move_!  If it was you tied in a knot with cramp, yuh wouldn't
+take it so serene."
+
+"Aw, gwan.  I got troubles enough, cooking chuck for this here layout.
+I got to have some help--and lots of it.  Patsy ain't got enough stuff
+cooked up to feed a jack-rabbit.  Somebody's got to mosey in here and
+peel the spuds."
+
+"That's your funeral," said Cal, unfeelingly.
+
+Chip stuck his head under the lifted tent-flap.  "Say, I can't find
+that cussed Three-H bottle," he complained.  "What went with it, Cal?"
+
+"Ask Slim; he had it last.  Ain't Shorty here, yet?" Cal turned again
+to Patsy, whose outcries were not nice to listen to,  "Stay with it,
+old-timer; we'll have something hot to pour down yuh in a minute."
+
+Patsy replied, but pain made him incoherent.  Cal caught the word
+"poison", and then "corn"; the rest of the sentence was merely a
+succession of groans.
+
+The face of Cal lengthened perceptibly.  He got up and went out to
+where the others were wrangling with Slim over the missing bottle of
+liniment.
+
+"I guess the old boy's up against it good and plenty," he announced
+gravely.  "He says he's poisoned; he says it was the corn."
+
+"Well he had it coming to him," declared Jack Pates.  "He's stuck that
+darned canned corn under our noses every meal since round-up started.
+He--"
+
+"Oh, shut up," snarled Cal.  "I guess it won't be so funny if he cashes
+in on the strength of it.  I've known two or three fellows that was
+laid out cold with tin-can poison.  It's sure fierce."
+
+The Happy Family shifted uneasily before the impending tragedy, and
+their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads
+ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler.  One can kill a
+rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can
+tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned
+goods.  But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and
+away better than no vegetables at all, the Happy Family ate and took
+their chance--only they did not eat canned corn, and they had discussed
+the matter profanely and often with Patsy.
+
+Patsy was a slave of precedent.  Many seasons had he cooked beneath a
+round-up tent, and never had he stocked the mess-wagon for a long trip
+and left canned corn off the list.  It was good to his palate and it
+was easy to prepare, and no argument could wean him from imperturbably
+opening can after can, eating plentifully of it himself and throwing
+the rest to feed the gophers.
+
+"Ain't there anything to give him?" asked Jack, relenting.  "That
+Three-H would fix him up all right--"
+
+"Dig it up, then," snapped Cal.  "There's sure something got to be
+done, or we'll have a dead cook on our hands."
+
+"Not even a drop uh whisky in camp!" mourned Weary.  "Slim, you ought
+to be killed for getting away with that liniment."
+
+Slim was too downhearted to resent the tone.  "By golly, I can't think
+what I done with it after I used it on Banjo.  Seems like I stood it on
+that rock--"
+
+"Oh, hell!" snorted Cal.  "That's forty miles back."
+
+"Say, it's sure a fright!" sympathized Jack Bates as a muffled shriek
+came through the cloth wall of the tent.  "What's good for tincaneetis,
+I wonder?"
+
+"A rattling good doctor," retorted Chip, throwing things recklessly
+about, still searching.  "There goes the damn butter--pick it up, Cal."
+
+"If old Dock was sober, he could do something," suggested Weary.  "I
+guess I'd better go after him; what do yuh think?"
+
+"He could send out some stuff--if he was sober enough; he's sure wise
+on medicine."
+
+Weary made him a cigarette.  "Well, it's me for Dry Lake," he said,
+crisply.  "I reckon Patsy can hang on till I get back; can poison
+doesn't do the business inside several hours, and he hasn't been sick
+long.  He was all right when Happy Jack hit camp about two o'clock.
+I'll be back by dark--I'll ride Glory."  He swung up on the nearest
+horse, which happened to be Chip's and raced out to the saddle bunch a
+quarter of a mile away.  The Happy Family watched him go and called
+after him, urging him unnecessarily to speed.
+
+Weary did not waste time having the bunch corralled but rode in among
+the horses, his rope down and ready for business.  Glory stared
+curiously, tossed his crimpled, silver mane, dodged a second too late
+and found himself caught.
+
+It was unusual, this interruption just when he was busy cropping sweet
+grasses and taking his ease, but he supposed there was some good reason
+for it; at any rate he submitted quietly to being saddled and merely
+nipped Weary's shoulder once and struck out twice with an ivory-white,
+daintily rounded hoof--and Weary was grateful for the docile mood he
+showed.
+
+He mounted hurriedly without a word of praise or condemnation, and his
+silence was to Glory more unusual than being roped and saddled on the
+range.  He seemed to understand that the stress was great, and fairly
+bolted up the long, western slope of the creek bottom straight toward
+the slant of the sun.
+
+For two miles he kept the pace unbroken, though the way was not of the
+smoothest and there was no trail to follow.  Straight away to the west,
+with fifteen miles of hills and coulees between, lay Dry Lake; and in
+Dry Lake lived the one man in the country who might save Patsy.
+
+"Old Dock" was a land-mark among old-timers.  The oldest pioneer found
+Dock before him among the Indians and buffalo that ran riot over the
+wind-brushed prairie where now the nation's beef feeds quietly.  Why he
+was there no man could tell; he was a fresh-faced young Frenchman with
+much knowledge of medicine and many theories, and a reticence
+un-French.  From the Indians he learned to use strange herbs that
+healed almost magically the ills of man; from the rough out-croppings
+of civilization he learned to swallow vile whiskey in great gulps, and
+to thirst always for more.
+
+So he grew old while the West was yet young, until Dry Lake, which grew
+up around him, could not remember him as any but a white-bearded,
+stooped, shuffling old man who spoke a queer jargon and was always just
+getting drunk or sober.  When he was sober his medicines never failed
+to cure; when he was drunk he could not be induced to prescribe, so
+that men trusted his wisdom at all times and tolerated his infirmities,
+and looked upon him with amused proprietorship.
+
+When Weary galloped up the trail which, because a few habitations are
+strewn with fine contempt of regularity upon either side, is called by
+courtesy a street, his eyes sought impatiently for the familiar,
+patriarchal figure of Old Dock.  He felt that minutes were worth much
+and that if he would save Patsy he must cut out all superfluities, so
+he resolutely declined to remember that cold, foamy beer refreshes one
+amazingly after a long, hot ride in the dust and the wind.
+
+Upon the porch of Rusty Brown's place men were gathered, and it was
+evident even at a distance that they were mightily amused.  Weary
+headed for the spot and stopped beside the hitching pole.  Old Dock
+stood in the center of the group and his bent old figure was trembling
+with rage.  With both hands he waved aloft his coat, on which was
+plastered a sheet of "tangle-foot" fly-paper.
+
+"Das wass de mean treeck!" he was shouting.  "I don'd do de harm wis no
+mans.  I tend mine business, I buy me mine clothes.  De mans wass do
+dees treeck, he buy me new clothes--you bet you!  Dass wass de mean--"
+
+"Say, Dock," broke in Weary, towering over him, "you dig up some dope
+for tin-can poison, and do it quick.  Patsy's took bad."
+
+Old Dock looked up at him and shook his shaggy, white beard.  "Das wass
+de mean treeck," he repeated, waving the coat at Weary.  "You see dass?
+Mine coat, she ruint; dass was new coat!"
+
+"All right--I'll take your word for it, Dock.  Tell me what's good for
+tin--"
+
+"Aw, I knows you fellers.  You t'inke Ole Dock, she Dock, she don'd
+know nothings!  You t'ink--"
+
+Weary sighed and turned to the crowd.  "Which end of a jag is this?" he
+wanted to know.  "I've got to get some uh that dope-wisdom out uh him,
+somehow.  Patsy's a goner, sure, if I don't connect with some medicine."
+
+The men crowded close and asked questions which Weary felt bound to
+answer; everyone knew Patsy, who was almost as much a part of Dry Lake
+scenery as was Old Dock, and it was gratifying to a Flying-U man to see
+the sympathy in their faces.  But Patsy needed something more potent
+than sympathy, and the minutes were passing.
+
+Old Dock still discoursed whimperingly upon the subject of his ruined
+coat and the meanness of mankind, and there was no weaning his interest
+for a moment, try as Weary would.  And fifteen miles away in a
+picturesque creek-bottom a man lay dying in great pain for want of one
+little part of the wisdom stored uselessly away in the brain of this
+drunken, doddering old man.
+
+Weary's gloved hand dropped in despair from Old Dock's bent shoulder.
+"Damn a drunkard!" he said bitterly, and got into the saddle.  "Rusty,
+I'll want to borrow that calico cayuse uh yours.  Have him saddled up
+right away, will yuh?  I'll be back in a little bit."
+
+He jerked his hat down to his eyebrows and struck Glory with the quirt;
+but the trail he took was strange to Glory and he felt impelled to stop
+and argue--as only Glory could argue--with his master.  Minutes passed
+tumultuously, with nothing accomplished save some weird hoof-prints in
+the sod.  Eventually, however, Glory gave over trying to stand upon his
+head and his hind feet at one and the same instant, and permitted
+himself to be guided toward a certain tiny, low-eaved cabin in a meadow
+just over the hill from the town.
+
+Weary was not by nature given to burglary, but he wrenched open the
+door of the cabin and went in with not a whisper of conscience to say
+him nay.  It was close and ill-smelling and very dirty inside, but
+after the first whiff Weary did not notice it.  He went over and
+stopped before a little, old-fashioned chest; it was padlocked, so he
+left that as a last resort and searched elsewhere for what he
+wanted--medicine.  Under the bed he found a flat, black case, such as
+old-fashioned doctors carried.  He drew it out and examined if
+critically.  This, also, was locked, but he shook it tentatively and
+heard the faintest possible jingle inside.
+
+"Bottles," he said briefly, and grinned satisfaction.  Something
+brushed against his hat and he looked up into a very dusty bunch of
+herbs.  "You too," he told them, breaking the string with one yank.
+"For all I know, yuh might stand ace-high in this game.  Lord! if I
+could trade brains with the old devil, just for to-night!"
+
+He took a last look around, decided that he had found all he wanted,
+and went out and pulled the door shut.  Then he tied the black medicine
+case to the saddle in a way that would give it the least jar, stuffed
+the bunch of dried herbs into his pocket and mounted for the homeward
+race.  As he did so the sun threw a red beam into his eyes as though
+reminding him of the passing hours, and ducked behind the ridge which
+bounds Lonesome Prairie on the east.
+
+The afterglow filled sky and earth with a soft, departing radiance when
+he stopped again in front of the saloon.  Old Doc was still
+gesticulating wildly, and the sheet of fly-paper still clung to the
+back of his coat.  The crowd had thinned somewhat and displayed less
+interest; otherwise the situation had not changed, except that a pinto
+pony stood meekly, with head drooping, at the hitching-pole.
+
+"There's your horse," Rusty Brown called to Weary.  "Yours played out?"
+
+"Not on your life," Weary denied proudly.  "When yuh see Glory played
+out, you'll see him with four feet in the air."
+
+"I seen him that way half an hour ago, all right," bantered Bert Rogers.
+
+Weary passed over the joke.  "Mamma!  Has it been that long?" he cried
+uneasily.  "I've got to be moving some.  Here, Dock, you put on that
+coat--and never mind the label; it's got to go--and so have you."
+
+"Aw, he's no good to yuh, Weary," they protested.  "He's too drunk to
+tell chloroform from dried apricots."
+
+"That'll be all right," Weary assured them confidently.  "I guess he'll
+be some sober by the time we hit camp.  I went and dug up his dope-box,
+so he can get right to work when he arrives.  Send him out here."
+
+"Say, he can't never top off Powderface, Weary.  I thought yuh was
+going to ride him yourself.  It's plumb wicked to put that old
+centurion on him.  He wouldn't be able to stay with him a mile."
+
+"That's a heap farther than he could get with Glory," said Weary,
+unmoved.  "Yuh don't seem to realize that Patsy's just next thing to a
+dead man, and Dock has got the name of what'll cure him sloshing around
+amongst all that whiskey in his head.  I can't wait for him to sober
+up--I'm just plumb obliged to take him along, jag and all.  Come on,
+Dock; this is a lovely evening for a ride."
+
+Dock objected emphatically with head, arms, legs and much mixed
+dialect.  But Weary climbed down and, with the help of Bert Rogers,
+carried him bodily and lifted him into the saddle.  When the pinto
+began to offer some objections, strong hands seized his bridle and held
+him angrily submissive.
+
+"He'll tumble off, sure as yuh live," predicted Bert; but Weary never
+did things by halves; he shook his head and untied his coiled rope.
+
+"By the Lord!  I hate to see a man ride into town and pack off the only
+heirloom we got," complained Rusty Brown.  "Dock's been handed down
+from generation to Genesis, and there ain't hardly a scratch on him.
+If yuh don't bring him back in good order Weary Davidson, there'll be
+things doing."
+
+Weary looked up from taking the last half-hitch around the saddle horn.
+"Yuh needn't worry," he said.  "This medical monstrosity is more
+valuable to me than he is to you, right now.  I'll handle him careful."
+
+"Das wass de mean treeck!" cried Dock, for all the world like a parrot.
+
+"It sure is, old boy," assented Weary cheerfully, and tied the pinto's
+bridle-reins into a hard knot at the end.  With the reins in his hand
+he mounted Glory.  "Your pinto'll lead, won't he?" he asked Rusty then.
+It was like Weary to take a thing for granted first, and ask questions
+about it afterward.
+
+"Maybe he will--he never did, so far," grinned Rusty.  "It's plumb
+insulting to a self-respecting cow-pony to make a pack-horse out uh
+him.  I wouldn't be none surprised if yuh heard his views on the
+subjects before yuh git there."
+
+"It's an honor to pack heirlooms," retorted Weary.  "So-long, boys."
+
+Old Dock made a last, futile effort to free himself and then settled
+down in the saddle and eyed the world sullenly from under frost-white
+eyebrows heavy as a military mustache.  He did not at that time look
+particularly patriarchal; more nearly he resembled a humbled, entrapped
+Santa Claus.
+
+They started off quite tamely.  The pinto leaned far back upon the
+bridle-reins and trotted with stiff, reluctant legs that did not
+promise speed; but still h went, and Weary drew a relieved breath.  His
+arm was like to ache frightfully before they covered a quarter of the
+fifteen miles, but he did not mind that much; besides, he guessed
+shrewdly that the pinto would travel better once they were well out of
+town.
+
+The soft, warm dusk of a July evening crept over the land and a few
+stars winked at them facetiously.  Over by the reedy creek, frogs
+_cr-ek-ek-ekked_ in a tuneless medley and night-hawks flapped silently
+through the still air, swooping suddenly with a queer, whooing rush
+like wind blowing through a cavern.  Familiar sounds they were to
+Weary--so familiar that he scarce heard them; though he would have felt
+a vague, uneasy sense of something lost had they stilled unexpectedly.
+Out in the lane which leads to the open range-land between wide reaches
+of rank, blue-joint meadows, a new sound met them--the faint, insistent
+humming of millions of mosquitoes.  Weary dug Glory with his spurs and
+came near having his arm jerked from its socket before he could pull
+him in again.  He swore a little and swung round in the saddle.
+
+"Can't yuh dig a little speed into that cayuse with your heels, Dock?"
+he cried to the resentful heirloom.  "We're going to be naturally
+chewed up if we don't fan the breeze along here."
+
+"Ah don'd care--das wass de mean treeck!" growled Dock into his beard.
+
+Weary opened his mouth, came near swallowing a dozen mosquitoes alive,
+and closed it again.  What would it profit him to argue with a drunken
+man?  He slowed till the pinto, still moving with stiff, reluctant
+knees, came alongside, and struck him sharply with his quirt; the pinto
+sidled and Dock lurched over as far as Weary's rope would permit.
+
+"Come along, then!" admonished Weary, under his breath.
+
+The pinto snorted and ran backward until Weary wished he had been
+content with the pace of a snail.  Then the mosquitoes swooped down
+upon them in a cloud and Glory struck out, fighting and kicking
+viciously.  Presently Weary found himself with part of the pinto's
+bridle-rein in his hand, and the memory of a pale object disappearing
+into the darkness ahead.
+
+For the time being he was wholly occupied with his own horse; but when
+Glory was minded to go straight ahead instead of in a circle, he gave
+thought to his mission and thanked the Lord that Dock was headed in the
+right direction.  He gave chase joyfully; for every mile covered in
+that fleet fashion meant an added chance for Patsy's life.  Even the
+mosquitoes found themselves hopelessly out of the race and beat up
+harmlessly in the rear.  So he galloped steadily upon the homeward
+trail; and a new discomfort forced itself upon his consciousness--the
+discomfort of swift riding while a sharp-cornered medicine-case of
+generous proportions thumped regularly against his leg.  At first he
+did not mind it so much, but after ten minutes of riding so, the thing
+grew monotonously painful and disquieting to the nerves.
+
+Five miles from the town he sighted the pinto; it was just disappearing
+up a coulee which led nowhere--much less to camp.  Weary's
+self-congratulatory mood changed to impatience; he followed after.  Two
+miles, and he reached the unclimbable head of the coulee--and no pinto.
+He pulled up and gazed incredulously at the blank, sandstone walls;
+searched long for some hidden pathway to the top and gave it up.
+
+He rode back slowly under the stars, a much disheartened Weary.  He
+thought of Patsy's agony and gritted his teeth at his own impotence.
+After awhile he thought of Old Dock lashed to the pinto's saddle, and
+his conscience awoke and badgered him unmercifully for the thing he had
+done and the risk he had taken with one man's life that he might save
+the life of another.
+
+Down near the mouth of the coulee he came upon a cattle trail winding
+up toward the stars.  For the lack of a better clue he turned into it
+and urged Glory faster than was wise if he would save the strength of
+his horse; but Glory was game as long as he could stand, and took the
+hill at a lope with never a protest against the pace.
+
+Up on the top the prairie stretched mysteriously away to the sky-line,
+with no sound to mar the broody silence, and with never a movement to
+disturb the deep sleep of the grass-land.  All day had the hills been
+buffeted by a sweeping West wind; but the breeze had dropped with the
+sun, as though tired with roistering and slept without so much as a
+dream-puff to shake the dew from the grasses.
+
+Weary stopped to wind his horse and to listen, but not a hoof-beat came
+to guide him in his search.  He leaned and shifted the medicine case a
+bit to ease his bruised leg, and wished he might unlock the healing
+mysteries and the magic stored within.  It seemed to him a cruel world
+and unjust that knowledge must be gleaned slowly, laboriously, while
+men died miserably for want of it.  Worse, that men who had gleaned
+should be permitted to smother such precious knowledge in the
+stupefying fumes of whiskey.
+
+If he could only have appropriated Dock's brain along with his
+medicines, he might have been in camp by now, ministering to Patsy
+before it was too late to do anything.  Without a doubt the boys were
+scanning anxiously the ridge, confident that he would not fail them
+though impatient for his coming.  And here he sat helplessly upon a
+hilltop under the stars, many miles from camp, with much medicine just
+under his knee and a pocket crammed with an unknown, healing herb, as
+useless after all his effort as he had been in camp when they could not
+find the Three-H liniment.
+
+Glory turned his head and regarded him gravely out of eyes near human
+in their questioning, and Weary laid caressing hand upon his silvery
+mane, grateful for the sense of companionship which it gave.
+
+"You're sure a wise little nag." he said wistfully, and his voice
+sounded strange in the great silence.  "Maybe you can find 'em--and it
+you can, I'll sure be grateful; you can paw the stars out uh high
+heaven and I won't take my quirt off my saddle-horn; hope I may die if
+I do!"
+
+Glory stamped one white hoof and pointed both ears straight forward,
+threw up his head and whinnied a shrill question into the night.  Weary
+hopefully urged him with his knees.  Glory challenged once again and
+struck out eagerly, galloping lightly in spite of the miles he had
+covered.  Far back on the bench-land came faint answer to his call, and
+Weary laughed from sheer relief.  By the stars the night was yet young,
+and he grew hopeful--almost complacent.
+
+Glory planted both forefeet deep in the prairie sod and skidded on the
+brink of a deep cut-bank.  It was a close shave, such as comes often to
+those who ride the range by night.  Weary looked down into blackness
+and then across into gloom.  The place was too deep and sheer to ride
+into, and too wide to jump; clearly, they must go around it.
+
+Going around a gulley is not always the simple thing it sounds,
+especially when one is not sure as to the direction it takes.  To find
+the head under such conditions requires time.
+
+Weary thought he knew the place and turned north secure in the belief
+that the gulley ran south into the coulee he had that evening
+fruitlessly explored.  As a matter of fact it opened into a coulee
+north of them, and in that direction it grew always deeper and more
+impassable even by daylight.
+
+On a dark night, with only the stars to guide one and to accentuate the
+darkness, such a discovery brings with it confusion of locality.  Weary
+drew up when he could go no farther without plunging headlong into
+blackness, and mentally sketched a map of that particular portion of
+the globe and tried to find in it a place where the gulch might
+consistently lie.  After a minute he gave over the attempt and admitted
+to himself that, according to his mental map, it could not consistently
+lie anywhere at all.  Even Glory seemed to have lost interest in the
+quest and stood listlessly with his head down.  His attitude irritated
+Weary very much.
+
+"Yuh damn', taffy colored cayuse!" he said fretfully.  "This is as much
+your funeral as mine--seeing yuh started out all so brisk to find that
+pinto.  Do yah suppose yuh could find a horse if he was staked ten feet
+in front of your nose?  Chances are, yuh couldn't.  I reckon you'd have
+trouble finding your way around the little pasture at the ranch--unless
+the sun shone real bright and yuh had somebody to lead yuh!"
+
+This was manifestly unjust and it was not like Weary; but this night's
+mission was getting on his nerves.  He leaned and shifted the
+medicine-case again, and felt ruefully of his bruised leg.  That also
+was getting upon his nerves.
+
+"Oh, Mamma!" he muttered disgustedly.  "This is sure a sarcastic
+layout; dope enough here to cure all the sickness in Montana--if a
+fellow knew enough to use it--battering a hole in my leg you could
+throw a yearling calf into, and me wandering wild over the hills like a
+locoed sheepherder!  Glory, you get a move on yuh, you knock-kneed,
+buzzard-headed--"  He subsided into incoherent grumbling and rode back
+whence he came, up the gully's brim.
+
+When the night was far gone and the slant of the Great Dipper told him
+that day-dawn was near, he heard a horse nicker wistfully, away to the
+right.  Wheeling sharply, his spurs raking the roughened sides of
+Glory, he rode recklessly toward the sound, not daring to hope that it
+might be the pinto and yet holding his mind back from despair.
+
+When he was near the place--so near that he could see a dim, formless
+shape outlined against the sky-line,--Glory stumbled over a sunken rock
+and fell heavily upon his knees.  When he picked himself up he hobbled
+and Weary cursed him unpityingly.
+
+When, limping painfully, Glory came up with the object, the heart of
+Weary rose up and stuck in his throat; for the object was a pinto horse
+and above it bulked the squat figure of an irate old man.
+
+"Hello, Dock," greeted Weary.  "How do yuh stack up?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, Weary Davitson, I feex yous plandy.  What for do you dees
+t'ing?  I not do de harrm wis you.  I not got de mooney wort' all dees
+troubles what you makes.  Dees horse, she lak for keel me also.  She
+buck, en keeck, en roon--_mon Dieu_, I not like dees t'ing."
+
+"Sober, by thunder!" ejaculated Weary in an ecstatic half-whisper.
+"Dock, you've got a chance to make a record for yourself to-night--if
+we ain't too late," he added bodefully.  "Do yuh know where we're
+headed for?"
+
+"I t'ink for de devil," retorted Old Dock peevishly.
+
+"No sir, we aren't.  We're going straight to camp, and you're going to
+save old Patsy--you like Patsy, you know; many's the time you've tanked
+up together and then fell on each other's necks and wept because the
+good old times won't come again.  He got poisoned on canned corn; the
+Lord send he ain't too dead for you to cure him.  Come on--we better
+hit the breeze.  We've lost a heap uh time."
+
+"I not like dees rope; she not comforte.  I have ride de bad horse when
+you wass in cradle."
+
+Weary got down and went over to him.  "All right, I'll unwind yuh.
+When we started, yuh know, yuh couldn't uh rode a rocking chair.  I was
+plumb obliged to tie yuh on.  Think we'll be in time to help Patsy?  He
+was taken sick about four o'clock."
+
+Old Dock waited till he was untied and the remnant of bridle-rein was
+placed in his hand, before he answered ironically: "I not do de mageec,
+_mon cher_ Weary.  I mos' have de medicine or I can do nottings, I not
+wave de fingaire an' say de vord."
+
+"That's all right--I've got the whole works.  I broke into your shack
+and made a clean haul uh dope.  And I want to tell yuh that for a
+doctor you've got blame poor ventilation to your house.  But I found
+the medicine."
+
+"Mon Dieu!" was the astonished comment, and after that they rode in
+silence and such haste as Glory's lameness would permit.
+
+The first beams of the sun were touching redly the hilltops and the
+birds were singing from swaying weeds when they rode down the last
+slope into the valley where camped the Flying-U.
+
+The night-hawk had driven the horses into the rope-corral and men were
+inside watching, with spread loop, for a chance to throw.  Happy Jack,
+with the cook's apron tied tightly around his lank middle, stood
+despondently in the doorway of the mess-tent and said no word as they
+approached.  In his silence--in his very presence there--Weary read
+disaster.
+
+"I guess we're too late," he told Dock, in hushed tones; for the minute
+he hated the white-bearded old man whose drunkenness had cost the
+Flying-U so dear.  He slipped wearily from the saddle and let the reins
+drop to the ground.  Happy Jack still eyed them silently.
+
+"Well?" asked Weary, when his nerves would bear no more.
+
+"When I git sick," said Happy Jack, his voice heavy with reproach,
+"I'll send you for help--if I want to die."
+
+"Is he dead?" questioned Weary, in hopeless fashion.
+
+"Well," said Happy Jack deliberately, "no, he ain't dead yet--but it's
+no thanks to you.  Was it poker, or billiards? and who won?"
+
+Weary looked at him dully a moment before he comprehended.  He had not
+had any supper or any deep, and he had ridden many miles in the long
+hours he had been away.  He walked, with a pronounced limp on the leg
+which had been next the medicine-case, to where Dock stood leaning
+shakily against the pinto.
+
+"Maybe we're in time, after all," he said slowly.  "Here's some kind uh
+dried stuff I got off the ceiling; I thought maybe yuh might need
+it--you're great on Indian weeds."  He pulled a crumpled, faintly
+aromatic bundle of herbs from his pocket.
+
+Dock took it and sniffed disgustedly, and dropped the herbs
+contemptuously to the ground.  "Dat not wort' notting--she what you
+call--de--cat_neep_."  He smiled sourly.
+
+Weary cast a furtive glance at Happy Jack, and hoped he had not
+overheard.  Catnip!  Still, how could he be expected to know what the
+blamed stuff was?  He untied the black medicine-case and brought it and
+put it at the feet of Old Dock.  "Well, here's the joker, anyhow," he
+said.  "It like to wore a hole clear through my leg, but I was careful
+and I don't believe any uh the bottles are busted."
+
+Dock looked at it and sat heavily down upon a box.  He looked at the
+case queerly, then lifted his shaggy head to gaze up at Weary.  And
+behind the bleared gravity of his eyes was something very like a
+twinkle.  "Dis, she not cure seek mans, neider.  She--"  He pressed a
+tiny spring which Weary had not discovered and laid the case open upon
+the ground.  "You see?" he said plaintively.  "She not good for
+Patsy--she tree-dossen can-openaire."
+
+Weary stared blankly.  Happy Jack came up, looked and doubled
+convulsively.  Can-openers!  Three dozen of them.  Old Dock was
+explaining in his best English, and he was courteously refraining from
+the faintest smile.
+
+"Dey de new, bettaire kind.  I send for dem, I t'ink maybe I sell.  I
+put her in de grip--so--I carry dem all togedder.  My mediceen, she in
+de beeg ches'."
+
+Weary had sat down and his head was dropped dejectedly into his hands.
+He had bungled the whole thing, after all.  "Well," he said
+apathetically.  "The chest was locked; I never opened it."
+
+Old Dock nodded his head gravely.  "She lock," he assented, gently.
+"She mooch mediceen--she wort' mooch mooney.  De key, she in mine
+pocket--" "Oh, I don't give a damn where the key is--now," flared
+Weary.  "I guess Patsy'll have to cash in; that's all."
+
+"Aw, gwan!" cried Happy Jack.  "A sheepman come along just after you
+left, and he had a quart uh whisky.  We begged it off him and give
+Patsy a good bit jolt.  That eased him up some, and we give him
+another--and he got to hollerin' so loud for more uh the same, so we
+just set the bottle in easy reach and let him alone.  He's in there
+now, drunk as a biled owl--the lazy old devil.  I had to get supper and
+breakfast too--and looks like I'd have to cook dinner.  Poison--hell!
+I betche he never had nothing but a plain old belly-ache!"
+
+Weary got up and went to the mess-tent, lifted the flap and looked in
+upon Patsy lying on the flat of his back, snoring comfortably.  He
+regarded him silently a moment, then looked over his shoulder to where
+Old Dock huddled over the three dozen can-openers.
+
+"Oh, mamma!" he whispered, and poured himself a cup of coffee.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMB
+
+When came the famine in stock-cars on the Montana Central, and the
+Flying U herd had grazed for two days within five miles of Dry Lake,
+waiting for the promised train of empties, Chip Bennett, lately
+promoted foreman, felt that he had trouble a-plenty.  When,
+short-handed as he was, two of his cowboys went a-spreeing and
+a-leisuring in town, with their faces turned from honest toil and their
+hands manipulating pairs and flushes and face-cards, rather than good
+"grass" ropes, he was positive that his cup was dripping trouble all
+round the rim.
+
+The delinquents were not "top hands," it is true.  They--the Happy
+Family, of which Jim Whitmore was inordinately proud--would sooner
+forswear their country than the Flying U.  But even two transients of
+very ordinary ability are missed when they suddenly vanish in shipping
+time, and Chip, feeling keenly his responsibilities, rode disgustedly
+into town to reclaim the recreants or pay them off and hire others in
+their places.
+
+With his temper somewhat roughened by the agent's report that no cars
+were yet on the way, he clanked into Rusty Brown's place after his
+deserters.  One was laid blissfully out in the little back room,
+breathing loudly, dead to the world and the exigencies of life; him
+Chip passed up with a snort of disgust.  The other was sitting in a
+corner, with his hat balanced precariously over his left ear, gazing
+superciliously upon his fellows and, incidentally, winning everything
+in sight.  He leered up at Chip and fingered ostentatiously his three
+stacks of blues.
+
+"What'n thunder do I want to go t' camp for?" he demanded, in answer to
+Chip's suggestion.  "Forty dollars a month following your trail don't
+look good t' me no more.  I'm four hundred dollars t' the good sence
+last night, and takin' all comers.  Good money's just fallin' my way.
+I don't guess I hanker after any more night guardin', thank ye."
+
+"Suit yourself," said Chip coldly, and turned away.
+
+Argument was useless and never to his liking.  The problem now was to
+find two men who could take their places, and that was not so easily
+solved.  A golden-haired, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed young fellow in
+dainty silk negligee, gray trousers, and russet leather belt, with a
+panama hat and absurdly small tan shoes, followed him outside.
+
+"If you're looking for men," he announced musically, "I'm open for
+engagements."
+
+Chip looked down at him tolerantly.  "Much obliged, but I'm not getting
+up a garden-party," he informed him politely, and took a step.  He was
+not in the mood to find amusement in the situation.
+
+The immaculate one showed some dimples that would have been distracting
+in the face of a woman.  "And I ain't looking for a job leading cows to
+water," he retorted.  "Yuh shouldn't judge a man by his clothes,
+old-timer."
+
+"I don't--a man!" said Chip pointedly.  "Run away and play.  I'll tell
+you what, sonny, I'm not running a kindergarten.  Every man I hire has
+got man's work to do.  Wait till you're grown up; as it is, you'd last
+quick on round-up, and that's a fact."
+
+"Oh! it is, eh?  Say, did yuh ever hear uh old Eagle Creek Smith, of
+the Cross L, or Rowdy Vaughan, or a fellow up on Milk River they call
+Pink?"
+
+"I'd tell a man!" Chip turned toward him again.  "At least I've heard
+of Eagle Creek Smith, and of Pink--bronco-fighter, they say, and a
+little devil.  Why?"
+
+The immaculate one lifted his panama, ran his fingers through his
+curls, and smiled demurely.  "Nothing in particular--only, I'm Pink!"
+
+Chip stared frankly, and measured the slender figure from accurately
+dented hat-crown to tiny shoe-tips.  "Well, yuh sure don't look it," he
+said bluntly, at length.  "Why that elaborate disguise of
+respectability?"
+
+Pink sat him down on an empty beer case in the shade of the saloon and
+daintily rolled a cigarette.
+
+"Yuh see, it's like this," he began, in his soft voice.  "When the
+Cross L moved their stock across the line Rowdy Vaughan had charge uh
+the outfit; and, seeing we're pretty good friends, uh course I went
+along.  I hadn't been over there a month till I had occasion t' thump
+the daylights out uh one uh them bone-headed grangers that vitiates the
+atmosphere up there; and I put him all to the bad.  So a bunch uh them
+gaudy buck-policemen rose up and fogged me back across the line; a man
+has sure got t' turn the other cheek up there, or languish in _ga_-ol."
+
+Pink brought the last word out as if it did not taste good.
+
+"I hit for the home range, which is Upper Milk River.  But it was
+cussed lonesome with all the old bunch gone; so I sold my outfit and
+quit cow-punching for good.  I wonder if the puncher lives that didn't
+sell his saddle and bed, and reform at least once in his checkered
+career!
+
+"I had a fair-sized roll so I took the home trail back to Minnesota,
+and chewed on the fatted calf all last winter and this summer.  It
+wasn't bad, only the girls run in bunches and are dead anxious to tie
+up to some male human.  I dubbed around and dodged the loop long as I
+could stand it, and then I drifted.
+
+"I kinda got hungry for the feel of a good horse between m' legs once
+more.  It made me mad to see houses on every decent bed-ground, and
+fences so thick yuh couldn't get out and fan the breeze if yuh tried.
+I tell yuh straight, old-timer, last month I was home I plumb wore out
+mother's clothes-line roping the gate-post.  For the Lord's sake, stake
+me to a string! and I don't give a damn how rough a one it is!"
+
+Chip sat down on a neighboring case and regarded the dapper little
+figure curiously.  Such words, coming from those girlishly rosy lips,
+with the dimples dodging in and out of his pink cheeks, had an odd
+effect of unreality.  But Pink plainly was in earnest.  His eyes behind
+the dancing light of harmless deviltry, were pleading and wistful as a
+child.
+
+"You're it!" said Chip relievedly.  "You can go right to work.  Seems
+you're the man I've been looking for, only I will say I didn't
+recognize yuh on sight.  We've got a heap of work ahead, and only five
+decent men in the outfit.  It's the Flying U; and these five have
+worked for the outfit for years."
+
+"I sure savvy that bunch," Pink declared sweetly.  "I've heard uh the
+Happy Family before.  Ain't you one uh them?"
+
+Chip grinned reminiscently.  "I was," he admitted, a shade of regret in
+his voice.  "Maybe I am yet; only I went up a notch last spring.  Got
+married, and settled down.  I'm one of the firm now, so I had to reform
+and cut out the foolishness.  Folks have got to calling the rest the
+Frivolous Five.  They're a pretty nifty bunch, but you'll get on, all
+right, seeing you're not the pilgrim you look to be.  If you were, I'd
+say: 'The Lord help you!'  Got an outfit?"
+
+"Sure.  Bought one, brand new, in the Falls.  It's over at the hotel
+now, with a haughty, buckskin-colored suitcase that fair squeals with
+style and newness."  Pink pulled his silver belt-buckle straight and
+patted his pink-and-blue tie approvingly.
+
+"Well, if you're ready, I'll get the horses these two hoboes rode in,
+and we'll drift.  By the way, how shall I write you on the book?"
+
+Pink stooped and with his handkerchief carefully, wiped the last speck
+of Dry Lake dust from his shiny toes.  "Yuh won't crawfish on me, if I
+tell yuh?" he inquired anxiously, standing up and adjusting his belt
+again.
+
+"Of course not."  Chip looked his surprise at the question.
+
+"Well, it ain't _my_ fault, but my lawful, legal name is Percival
+Cadwallader Perkins."
+
+"Wha-at?"
+
+"Percival Cad-_wall_-ader Perkins.  Shall I get yuh something to take
+with it?"
+
+Chip, with his pencil poised in air, grinned sympathetically.  "It's
+sure a heavy load to carry," he observed solemnly.  "How do you spell
+that second shift?"
+
+Pink told him, spelling the word slowly, syllable by syllable.  "Ain't
+it fierce?" he wanted to know.  "My mother must have sure been
+frivolous and light-minded when I was born.  I'm the only boy she ever
+had, and there was two grandfathers that wanted a kid named after 'em;
+they sure make a hot combination.  Yuh know what Cadwallader means, in
+the dictionary?"
+
+"Lord, no!" said Chip, putting away his book.
+
+"Battle arranger," Pink told him sadly.  "Now, wouldn't that jostle
+yuh?  It's true, too; it has sure arranged a lot uh battles for me.  It
+caused me to lick about six kids a day, and to get licked by a dozen,
+when I went to school.  So, seeing the name was mine, and I couldn't
+chuck it, I went and throwed in with an ex-pugilist and learned the
+trade thorough.  Since then things come easier.  Folks don't open up
+the subject more'n a dozen times before they take the hint.  And this
+summer I fell in with a ju-jutsu sharp--a college-fed Jap that sure
+savvied things a white man never dreams except in nightmares.  I set at
+his feet all summer learning wisdom.  I ain't afraid now to wear my
+name on my hatband."
+
+"Still, I wouldn't," said Chip dryly.  "Hike over and get the haughty
+new war-bag, and we'll hit the sod.  I've got to be in camp by
+dinner-time."
+
+A mile out Pink looked down at his festal garments and smiled.  "I
+expect I'll be pickings for your Happy Family when they see me in these
+war-togs," he remarked.
+
+Chip turned and regarded him meditatively for a minute.  "I was just
+wondering," he said slowly, "if the Happy Family wouldn't be pickings
+for _you_."
+
+Pink dimpled wickedly and said nothing.
+
+The Happy Family were at dinner when Chip and Pink rode up and
+dismounted by the bed-tent.  Chip and Pink went over to where the
+others were sitting in various places and attitudes, and the Happy
+Family received them, not with the nudges and winks one might justly
+expect, but with decorous silence.
+
+Chip got plate, knife, fork, and spoon and started for the stove.
+
+"Help yourself to the tools, and then come over here and fill up," he
+invited Pink, over his shoulder.  "We don't stand on ceremony here.
+May look queer to you at first, but you'll get used to it."
+
+The Happy Family pricked up its ears and looked guardedly at one
+another.  This wasn't a chance visitor, then; he was going to work!
+
+Weary, sitting cross-legged in the shade of a wagon-wheel looked up at
+Pink, fumbling shyly among the knives and forks, and with deceitful
+innocence he whistled absently:
+
+  Oh, tell me, pretty maiden,
+  Are there any more at home like you?
+
+Pink glanced at him quickly, then at the solemn faces of the others,
+and retreated hastily inside the tent, where was Chip; and every man of
+them knew the stranger had caught Weary's meaning.  They smiled
+discreetly at their plates and said nothing.
+
+Pink came out with heaped plate and brimming cup, and retired
+diffidently to the farthest bit of shade he could find, which brought
+him close to Cal Emmett.  He sat down gingerly so as not to spill
+anything.
+
+"Going to work for the outfit?" asked Cal politely.
+
+"Yes, sir; the overseer gave me a position," answered Pink sweetly, in
+his soft treble.  "I just came to town this morning.  Is it very hard
+work?"
+
+"Yeah, it sure is," said Cal plaintively, between bites.  "What with
+taming wild broncos and trying to keep the cattle from stampeding, our
+shining hours are sure improved a lot.  It's a hard, hard life."  He
+sighed deeply and emptied his cup of coffee.
+
+"I--I thought I'd like it," ventured Pink wistfully.
+
+"It's dead safe to prognosticate yuh won't a little bit.  None of us
+like it.  I never saw a man with soul so vile that he did."
+
+"Why don't you give it up, then, and get a position at something else?"
+Pink's eyes looked wide and wistful over the rim of his cup.
+
+"Can't.  We're most of us escaped desperadoes with a price on our
+heads."  Cal shook his own lugubriously.  "We're safer here than we
+would be anywhere else.  If a posse showed up, or we got wind of one
+coming, there's plenty uh horses and saddles to make a getaway.  We'd
+just pick out a drifter and split the breeze.  We can keep on the dodge
+a long time, working on round-up, and earn a little money at the same
+time, so when we do have to fly we won't be dead broke."
+
+"Oh!"  Pink looked properly impressed.  "If it isn't too
+personal--er--is there a--that is, are you----"
+
+"An outlaw?" Cal assisted.  "I sure am--and then some.  I'm wanted for
+perjury in South Dakota, manslaughter in Texas, and bigamy in Utah.
+I'm all bad."
+
+"Oh, I hope not!" Pink looked distressed.  "I'm very sorry," he added
+simply, "and I hope the posses won't chase you."
+
+Cal shook his head very, very gravely.  "You can't most always tell,"
+he declared gloomily.  "I expect I'll have  an invite to a
+necktie-party some day."
+
+"I've been to necktie-parties myself."  Pink brightened visibly.  "I
+don't like them; you always get the wrong girl."
+
+"I don't like 'em, either," agreed Cal.  "I'm always afraid the wrong
+necktie will be mine.  Were you ever lynched?"
+
+Pink moved uneasily.  "I--I don't remember that I ever was," he
+answered guardedly.
+
+"I was.  My gang come along and cut me down just as I was about all in.
+I was leading a gang----"
+
+"Excuse me a minute," Pink interrupted hurriedly.  "I think the
+overseer is motioning for me."
+
+He hastened over to where Chip was standing alone, and asked if he
+should change his clothes and get ready to go to work.
+
+Chip told him it wouldn't be a bad idea, and Pink, carrying his haughty
+suit-case and another bulky bundle, disappeared precipitately into the
+bed-tent.
+
+"By golly!" spoke up Slim, "it looks good enough to eat."
+
+"Where did yuh pluck that modest flower, Chip?" Jack Bates wanted to
+know.
+
+Chip calmly sifted some tobacco in a paper.  "I picked it in town," he
+told them.  "I hired it to punch cows, and its name is--wait a minute."
+He put away the tobacco sack, got out his book, and turned the leaves.
+"Its name is Percival Cadwallader Perkins."
+
+"Oh, mamma!  Percival Cadwolloper--what?" Weary looked utterly at sea.
+
+"Perkins," supplied Chip.
+
+"Percival--Cad-wolloper--Perkins," Weary mused aloud.  "Yuh want to
+double the guard to-night, Chip; that name'll sure stampede the bunch."
+
+"He's sure a sweet young thing--mamma's precious lamb broke out uh the
+home corral!" said Jack Bates.  "I'll bet yuh a tall, yellow-haired
+mamma with flowing widow's weeds'll be out here hunting him up inside a
+week.  We got to be gentle with him, and not rub none uh the bloom uh
+innocence off his rosy cheek.  Mamma had a little lamb, his cheeks were
+red and rosy.  And everywhere that mamma went--er--everywhere--that
+mamma--went----"
+
+"The lamb was sure to mosey," supplied Weary.
+
+"By golly!  yuh got that backward," Slim objected.  "It ought uh be:
+Everywhere the lambie went; his mamma was sure to mosey."
+
+The reappearance of Pink cut short the discussion.  Pink as he had
+looked before was pretty as a poster.  Pink as he reappeared would have
+driven a matinee crowd wild with enthusiasm.  On the stage he would be
+in danger of being Hobsonized; in the Flying U camp the Happy Family
+looked at him and drew a long breath.  When his back was turned, they
+shaded their eyes ostentatiously from the blaze of his splendor.
+
+He still wore his panama, and the dainty pink-and-white striped silk
+shirt, the gray trousers, and russet-leather belt with silver buckle.
+But around his neck, nestling under his rounded chin, was a gorgeous
+rose-pink silk handkerchief, of the hue that he always wore, and that
+had given him the nickname of "Pink."
+
+His white hands were hidden in a pair of wonderful silk-embroidered
+buckskin gauntlets.  His gray trousers were tucked into number four tan
+riding-boots, high as to heel--so high that they looked two sizes
+smaller--and gorgeous as to silk-stitched tops.  A shiny, new pair of
+silver-mounted spurs jingled from his heels.
+
+He smiled trustfully at Chip, and leaned, with the studiously graceful
+pose of the stage, against a hind wheel of the mess-wagon.  Then he got
+papers and tobacco from a pocket of the silk shirt and began to roll a
+cigarette.  Inwardly he hoped that the act would not give him away to
+the Happy Family, whom he felt in honor bound to deceive, and bewailed
+the smoke-hunger that drove him to take the risk.
+
+The Happy Family, however, was unsuspicious.  His pink-and-white
+prettiness, his clothes, and the baby innocence of his dimples and his
+long-lashed blue eyes branded him unequivocally in their eyes as the
+tenderest sort of tenderfoot.
+
+"Get onto the way he rolls 'em--backward!" murmured Weary into Cal's
+ear.
+
+"If there's anything I hate," Cal remarked irrelevantly to the crowd,
+"it's to see a girl chewing a tutti-frutti cud--or smoking a cigarette!"
+
+Pink looked up from under his thick lashes and opened his lips to
+speak, then thought better of it.  The jingling of the cavvy coming in
+cut short the incipient banter, and Pink turned and watched intently
+the corralling process.  To him the jangling bells were sweetest music,
+for which ears and heart had hungered long, and which had come to him
+often in dreams.  His blood tingled as might a lover's when his
+sweetheart approaches.
+
+"Weary, you and Cal better relieve the boys on herd," Chip called.
+"I'll get you a horse, P--Perkins"--he had almost said "Pink"--"and you
+can go along.  Then to-night you'll go on guard with Cal."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pink, with a docility that would have amazed any who
+knew him well, and followed Chip out to the corral, where Cal and Weary
+were already inside with their ropes, among the circling mass.
+
+Chip led out a gentle little cow-pony that could almost day-herd
+without a rider of any sort, and Pink bridled him before the covertly
+watching crew.  He did not do it as quickly as he might have done, for
+he "played to the gallery" and deliberately fumbled the buckle and
+pinned one ear of the pony down flat with the head-stall.
+
+A new saddle, stiff and unbroken, is ever a vexation unto its proud
+owner, and its proper adjustment requires time and much language.  Pink
+omitted the language, so that the process took longer than it would
+naturally have done; but Cal and Weary, upon their mounts, made
+cigarettes and waited, with an air of endurance, and gave Pink much
+advice.  Then he got somehow into the saddle and flapped elbows beside
+them, looking like a gorgeous-hued canary with wings a-flutter.
+
+Happy Jack, who had been standing herd disconsolately with two aliens,
+stared open-mouthed at Pink's approach and rode hastily to camp, fair
+bursting with questions and comments.
+
+The herd, twelve hundred range-fattened steers, grazed quietly on a
+side hill half a mile or more from camp.  Pink ran a quick, appraising
+eye over the bunch estimating correctly the number, and noting their
+splendid condition.
+
+"Never saw so many cattle in one bunch before, did yuh?" queried Cal,
+misinterpreting the glance.
+
+Pink shook his head vaguely.  "Does one man own all those cows?" he
+wanted to know, with just the proper amount of incredulous wonder.
+
+"Yeah--and then some.  This ain't any herd at all; just a few that
+we're shipping to get 'em out uh the way uh the real herds."
+
+"About how many do you think there are here?" asked Pink.
+
+Cal turned his back upon his conscience and winked at Weary.  "Oh,
+there's only nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one," he lied
+boldly.  "Last bunch we gathered was fifty-one thousand six hundred and
+twenty-nine and a half.  Er--the half," he explained hastily in answer
+to Pink's look of unbelief, "was a calf that we let in by mistake.  I
+caught it, after we counted, and took it back to its mother."
+
+"I should think," Pink ventured hesitatingly, "it would be hard to find
+its mother.  I don't see how you could tell."
+
+"Well," said Cal gravely, sliding sidewise in the saddle, "it's this
+way.  A calf is always just like its mother, hair for hair.  This calf
+had white hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh diamonds on its
+left side.  All I had to do was ride the range till I found the cow
+that matched."
+
+"Oh!"  Pink looked thoughtful and convinced.
+
+Weary, smiling to himself, rode off to take his station at the other
+side of the herd.  Even the Happy Family must place duty a pace before
+pleasure, and Cal, much as he would liked to have continued the
+conversation, resisted temptation and started down along the nearest
+edge of the bunch.  Pink showed inclination to follow.
+
+"You stay where you're at, sonny," Cal told him, over his shoulder.
+
+"What must I do?" Pink straightened his tie and set his panama more
+firmly on his yellow curls, for a brisk wind was blowing.
+
+Cal's voice came back to him faintly: "Just dub around here and don't
+do a darn thing; and don't bother the cattle."
+
+"Good advice, that," Pink commented amusedly.  "Hits day-herding off to
+a T."  He prepared for a lazy afternoon, and enjoyed every minute.
+
+On his way back to camp at suppertime, Pink rode close to Cal and
+looked as if he had something on his mind.  Cal and Weary exchanged
+glances.
+
+"I'd like to ask," Pink began timidly, "how you fed that calf--before
+you found his mother.  Didn't he get pretty hungry?"
+
+"Why, I carried a bottle uh milk along," Cal lied fluently.  "When the
+bottle went empty I'd catch a cow and milk it."
+
+"Would it stand without being tied?"
+
+"Sure.  All range cows'll gentle right down, if yuh know the right way
+to approach 'em, and the words to say.  That's a secret that we don't
+tell anybody that hasn't been a cowboy for a year, and rode fourteen
+broncos straight up.  Sorry I can't tell yuh."
+
+Pink went diplomatically back to the calf.  "Did you carry it in your
+arms, or--"
+
+"The calf?  Sure.  How else would I carry it?"  Cal's big, baby-blue
+eyes matched Pink's for innocence.  "I carried that bossy in my arms
+for three days," he declared solemnly, "before I found a cow with white
+hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh--er--clubs----"
+
+"Diamonds" corrected Pink, drinking in each word greedily.
+
+"That's it: diamonds, on its right hind--er--shoulders----"
+
+"The calf's was on its left side," reminded Pink reproachfully.  "I
+don't believe you found the right mother, after all!"
+
+"Yeah, I sure did, all right," contended Cal earnestly.  "I know,
+'cause she was that grateful, when she seen me heave in sight over a
+hill a mile away, she come up on the gallop, a-bawling, and--er--licked
+my hand!"
+
+That settled it, of course.  Pink dismounted stiffly and walked
+painfully to the cook-tent.  Ten months out of saddle--with a new,
+unbroken one to begin on again--told, even upon Pink, and made for
+extreme discomfort.
+
+When he had eaten, hungrily and in silence, responding to the mildly
+ironical sociability of his fellows with a brevity which only his soft
+voice saved from bruskness, he unrolled his new bed and lay down with
+not a thought for the part he was playing.  He heard with absolute
+indifference Weary's remark outside, that "Cadwolloper's about all in;
+day-herding's too strenuous for him."  The last that came to him, some
+one was chanting relishfully:
+
+  Mamma had a precious lamby his cheeks were red and rosy;
+  And when he rode the festive bronk, he tumbled on his nosey.
+
+There was more; but Pink had gone to sleep, and so missed it.
+
+At sundown he awoke and went out to saddle the night horse Chip had
+caught for him, and then went to bed again.  When shaken gently for
+middle guard, he dressed sleepily, added a pair of white Angora chaps
+to his afternoon attire, and stumbled out into the murky moonlight.
+
+Guided and coached by Cal, he took his station and began that
+monotonous round which had been a part of the life he loved best.
+Though stiff and sore from unaccustomed riding, Pink felt quite content
+to be where he was; to watch the quiet land and the peaceful,
+slumbering herd; with the drifting gray clouds above, and the moon
+swimming, head under, in their midst.  Twice in a complete round he met
+Cal, going in opposite direction.  At the second round Cal stopped him.
+
+"How yuh coming?" he queried cheerfully.
+
+"All right, thank you," said Pink.
+
+"Yuh want to watch out for a lop-horned critter over on the other
+side," Cal went on, in confidential tone.  "He keeps trying to sneak
+out uh the bunch.  Don't let him get away; if he goes, take after him
+and fog him back."
+
+"He won't get away from me, if I can help it," Pink promised, and Cal
+rode on, with Pink smiling maliciously after him.
+
+As he neared the opposite side, a dim shape angled slowly out before
+him, moving aimlessly away from the sleeping herd.  Pink followed.
+Farther they went, and faster.  Into a little hollow went the
+"critter", and circled.  Pink took down his rope, let loose a good ten
+feet of it, and spurred unexpectedly close to it.
+
+Whack!  The rope landed with precision on the bowed shoulders of Cal.
+"Yuh will try to fool your betters, will yuh?"  Whack!  "I guess I can
+point out a critter that won't stray out uh the bunch again fer a
+spell!"  Whack!
+
+Cal straightened, gasping astonishment, in the saddle, pulled up with a
+jerk, and got off, in unlovely mood.
+
+"And I can point to a little mamma's lamb that won't take down his rope
+to his betters again, either!" he cried angrily.  "Climb down and get
+your ears cuffed proper, yuh darned, pink little smart Aleck; or them
+shiny heels'll break your pretty neck.  Thump me with a rope, will yuh?"
+
+Pink got down.  Immediately after, to use a slang term, they "mixed."
+Presently Cal, stretched the long length of him in the grass, with Pink
+sitting comfortably upon his middle, looked up at the dizzying swim of
+the moon, saw new and uncharted stars, and nearer, dimly revealed in
+the half-light, the self-satisfied, cherubic face of Pink.
+
+He essayed to rise and continue the discussion, and discovered a quite
+surprising state of affairs.  He could scarcely move: and the more he
+tried the more painful became Pink's diabolical hold of him.  He
+blinked and puzzled over the mystery.
+
+"Of all the bone-headed, feeble-minded sons-uh-guns it's ever been my
+duty and pleasure to reconstruct," announced Pink melodiously, "you
+sure take the sour-dough biscuit.  You're a song that's been tried on
+the cattle and failed t' connect.  You're the last wail of a coyote
+dying in the dim distance.  For a man that's been lynched and cut down
+and waiting for another yank, you certainly--are--mild!  You're the
+tamest thing that ever happened.  A lady could handle yuh with safety
+and ease.  You're a children's playmate.  For a deep-dyed desperado
+that's wanted for manslaughter in Texas, perjury in South Dakota, and
+bigamy in Utah, you're the last feeble whisper of a summer breeze.
+_You_ cuff my ears proper?  Oh, my! and oh, fudge!  It is to laugh!"
+
+Cat, battered as to features and bewildered as to mind, blinked again
+and grinned feebly.
+
+"Yuh try an old gag that I wore out on humans of your ilk in Wyoming,"
+went on Pink, warming to the subject.  "Yuh load me with stuff that
+would bring the heehaw from a sheep-herder.  Yuh can't even lie
+consistent to a pilgrim.  You're a story that's been told and
+forgotten, a canto that won't rhyme, blank verse with club feet.
+You're the last, horrible example of a declining race.  You're extinct."
+
+"Say"--Pink's fists kneaded energetically Cal's suffering
+diaphragm.--"are yuh--all--ba-a-d?"
+
+"Oh, Lord!  No.  I'm dead gentle.  Lemme up."
+
+"D'yuh think that critter will quit the bunch ag'in to-night?"
+
+"He ain't liable to," Cal assured him meekly.  "Say, who the devil are
+yuh anyhow?"
+
+"I'm Percival Cadwallader Perkins.  Do yuh like that name?  Do yuh
+think it drips sweetness and poetry, like a card uh honey?"
+
+"_Ouch_!  It--it's _swell_!"
+
+"You're a dam' liar," declared Pink, getting up.  "Furthermore, yuh old
+chuckle-head, yuh ought t' know better than try t' run any ranikaboos
+on me.  I've got your pedigree, right back to the Flood; and it's safe
+betting yuh got mine, and don't know it.  Your best girl happens to be
+my cousin."
+
+Cal scrambled slowly and painfully to his feet.  "Then you're Milk
+River Pink.  I might uh guessed it," he sighed.
+
+"I cannot tell a lie," Pink averred.  "Only, plain Pink'll do for me.
+Where d'yuh suppose the bunch is by this time?"
+
+They mounted and rode back together.  Cal was deeply thoughtful.
+
+"Say," he said suddenly, just as they parted to ride their rounds, "the
+boys'll be tickled plumb to death.  We've been wishing you'd blow in
+here ever since the Cross L quit the country."
+
+Pink drew rein and looked back, resting one hand on the cantle.  "My
+gentle friend," he warned, "yuh needn't break your neck spreading the
+glad tidings.  Yuh better let them frivolous youths wise-up in their
+own playful way, same as you done."
+
+"Sure," agreed Cal, passing his fingers gingerly over certain portions
+of his face.  "I ain't a hog.  I'm willing they should have some sport
+with yuh, too."
+
+Next morning, when Cal appeared at breakfast with a slight limp and
+several inches of cuticle missing from his features, the Happy Family
+learned that his horse had fallen down with him as he was turning a
+stray back into the herd.
+
+Chip looked up quizzically and then hid a smile behind his coffee-cup.
+
+It was Weary that afternoon on dayherd who indulged his mendacity for
+the benefit of Pink; and his remarks were but paving-stones for a
+scheme hatched overnight by the Happy Family.
+
+Weary began by looking doleful and emptying his lungs in sighs deep and
+sorrowful.  When Pink, rising obligingly to the bait, asked him if he
+felt bad.  Weary only sighed the more.  Then, growing confidential, he
+told how he had dreamed a dream the night before.  With picturesque
+language, he detailed the horror of it.  He was guilty of murder, he
+confessed, and the crime weighed heavily on his conscience.
+
+"Not only that," he went on, "but I know that death is camping on my
+trail.  That dream haunts me.  I feel that my days are numbered in
+words uh one syllable.  That dream'll come true; you see if it don't!"
+
+"I--I wouldn't worry over just a bad dream, Mr. Weary," comforted Pink.
+
+"But that ain't all.  I woke up in a cold sweat, and went outside.  And
+there in the clouds, perfect as life, I seen a posse uh men galloping
+up from the South.  Down South," he explained sadly, "sleeps my
+victim--a white-headed, innocent old man.  That posse is sure headed
+for me, Mr. Perkins."
+
+"Still, it was only clouds."
+
+"Wait till I tell yuh," persisted Weary, stubbornly refusing comfort.
+"When I got up this morning I put my boots on the wrong feet; that's a
+sure sign that your dream'll come true.  At breakfast I upset the can
+uh salt; which is bad luck.  Mr. Perkins, I'm a lost man."
+
+Pink's eyes widened; he looked like a child listening to a story of
+goblins.  "If I can help you, Mr. Weary, I will," he promised
+generously.
+
+"Will yuh be my friend?  Will yuh let me lean on yuh in my dark hours?"
+Weary's voice shook with emotion.
+
+Pink said that he would, and he seemed very sympathetic and anxious for
+Weary's safety.  Several times during their shift Weary rode around to
+where Pink was sitting uneasily his horse, and spoke feelingly of his
+crime and the black trouble that loomed so closer and told Pink how
+much comfort it was to be able to talk confidentially with a friend.
+
+When Pink went out that night to stand his shift, he found Weary at his
+side instead of Cal.  Weary explained that Cal was feeling pretty bum
+on account of that fall he had got, and, as Weary couldn't sleep,
+anyway, he had offered to stand in Cal's place.  Pink scented mischief.
+
+This night the moon shone brightly at intervals, with patches of
+silvery clouds racing before the wind and chasing black splotches of
+shadows over the sleeping land.  For all that, the cattle lay quiet,
+and the monotony of circling the herd was often broken by Weary and
+Pink with little talks, as they turned and rode together.
+
+"Mr. Perkins, fate's a-crowding me close," said Weary gloomily, when an
+hour had gone by.  "I feel as if--what's that?"
+
+Voices raised in excited talk came faintly and fitfully on the wind.
+Weary turned his horse, with a glance toward the cattle, and, beckoning
+Pink to follow, rode out to the right.
+
+"It's the posse!" he hissed.  "They'll go to the herd so look for me.
+Mr. Perkins, the time has come to fly.  If only I had a horse that
+could drift!"
+
+Pink thought he caught the meaning.  "Is--is mine any good, Mr. Weary?"
+he quavered.  "If he is, you--you can have him.  I--I'll stay and--and
+fool them as--long as I can."
+
+"Perkins," said Weary solemnly, "you're sure all right!  Let that posse
+think you're the man they want for half an hour, and I'm safe.  I'll
+never forget yuh!"
+
+He had not thought of changing horses, but the temptation mastered him.
+He was riding a little sorrel, Glory by name, that could beat even the
+Happy Family itself for unexpected deviltry.  Yielding to Pink's
+persuasions, he changed mounts, clasped Pink's hand affectionately, and
+sped away just as the posse appeared over a rise, riding furiously.
+
+Pink, playing his part, started toward them, then wheeled and sped away
+in the direction that would lead them off Weary's trail.  That is, he
+sped for ten rods or so.  After that he seemed to revolve on an axis,
+and there was an astonishing number of revolutions to the minute.
+
+The stirrups were down in the dark somewhere below the farthest reach
+of Pink's toes--he never once located them.  But Pink was not known all
+over Northern Montana as a "bronco-peeler" for nothing.  He surprised
+Glory even more than that deceitful bit of horseflesh had surprised
+Pink.  While his quirt swung methodically, he looked often over his
+shoulder for the posse, and wondered that it did not appear.
+
+The posse, however, was at that moment having troubles of its own.
+Happy Jack, not having a night horse saddled, had borrowed one not
+remarkable for its sure-footedness.  No sooner had they sighted their
+quarry than Jack's horse stepped in a hole and went head-long--which
+was bad enough.  When he got up he planted a foot hastily on Jack's
+diaphragm and then bolted straight for the peacefully slumbering
+herd--which was worse.
+
+With stirrup-straps snapping like pistol-shots, he tore down through
+the dreaming cattle, with none to stop him or say him nay.  The herd
+did not wait for explanations; as the posse afterward said, it quit the
+earth, while they gathered around the fallen Jack and tried to discover
+if it was a doctor or coroner that was needed.
+
+When Jack came up sputtering sand and profane words, there was no herd,
+no horse and no Pink anywhere in that portion of Chouteau County.
+Weary came back, laughing at the joke and fully expecting to see Pink a
+prisoner.  When he saw how things stood, he said "Mamma mine!" and
+headed for camp on a run.  The others deployed to search the range for
+a beef-herd, strayed, and with no tag for its prompt delivery.
+
+Weary crept into the bed-tent and got Chip by the shoulder.  Chip sat
+up, instantly wide-awake.  "What's the matter?" he demanded sharply.
+
+"Chip, we--we've lost Cadwolloper!"  Weary's voice was tragic.
+
+"Hell!" snapped Chip, lying down again.  "Don't let that worry yuh."
+
+"And we've lost the herd, too," added Weary mildly.
+
+Chip got up and stayed up, and some of his remarks, Weary afterward
+reported, were scandalous.
+
+There was another scene at sunrise that the Happy Family voted
+scandalous--and that was when they rode into a little coulee and came
+upon the herd, quietly grazing, and Pink holding them, with each blue
+eye a volcano shooting wrath.
+
+"Yuh knock-kneed bunch uh locoed sheep-herders!" he greeted spitefully,
+"if yuh think yuh can saw off on your foolery and hold this herd, I'll
+go and get something to eat.  When I come to this outfit t' work, I
+naturally s'posed yuh was cow-punchers.  Yuh ain't.  Yuh couldn't hold
+a bunch uh sick lambs inside a high board corral with the gate shut and
+locked on the outside.  When it comes t' cow-science, you're the limit.
+Yuh couldn't earn your board on a ten-acre farm in Maine, driving one
+milk-cow and a yearling calf t' pasture and back.  You're a hot bunch
+uh rannies--I don't think!  Up on Milk River they'd put bells on every
+dam' one uh yuh t' keep yuh from getting lost going from the mess-house
+t' the corral and back.  And, Mr. Weary, next time yuh give a man a
+horse t' fall off from, for the Lord's sake don't put him on a gentle
+old skate that would be pickings for a two-year-old kid.  I thought
+this here Glory'd give a man something to do, from all the yawping I've
+heard done about him.  I heard uh him when I was on the Cross L; and I
+will say right now that he's the biggest disappointment I've met up
+with in many a long day.  He's punk.  Come and get him and let me have
+something alive.  I'm weary uh trying to delude myself into thinking
+that this red image is a horse."
+
+The Happy Family, huddled ten paces before him, stared.  Pink slid out
+of the saddle and came forward, smiling, and dimpling.  He held out a
+gloved hand to the first man he came to, which was Weary himself.  "Are
+yuh happy to meet Milk River Pink?" he wanted to know.
+
+The Happy Family, grinning sheepishly, crowded close to shake him by
+the hand.
+
+
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE RANGE
+
+Cal Emmett straightened up with his gloved hand pressed tight against
+the small of his back, sighed "Hully Gee!" at the ache of his muscles
+and went over to the water bucket and poured a quart or so of cool,
+spring water down his parched throat.  The sun blazed like a furnace
+with the blower on, though it was well over towards the west; the air
+was full of smoke, dust and strong animal odors, and the throaty
+bawling of many cattle close-held.  For it was nearing the end of
+spring round-up, and many calves were learning, with great physical
+and mental distress, the feel of a hot iron properly applied.  Cal
+shouted to the horse-wrangler that the well had gone dry--meaning the
+bucket--and went back to work.
+
+"I betche we won't git through in time for no picnic," predicted
+Happy Jack gloomily, getting the proper hold on the hind leg of a
+three-months-old calf.  "They's three hundred to decorate yet, if
+they's one; and it'll rain--"
+
+"You're batty," Cal interrupted.  "Uh course we'll get through--we've
+_got_ to; what d'yuh suppose we've been tearing the bone out for the
+last three weeks for?"
+
+Chip, with a foot braced against the calf's shoulder, ran a U on its
+ribs with artistic precision.  Chip's Flying U's were the pride of
+the whole outfit; the Happy Family was willing at any time, to bet
+all you dare that Chip's brands never varied a quarter-inch in
+height, width or position.  The Old Man and Shorty had been content
+to use a stamp, as prescribed by law; but Chip Bennett scorned so
+mechanical a device and went on imperturbably defying the law with
+his running iron--and the Happy Family gloated over his independence
+and declared that they would sure deal a bunch of misery to the man
+that reported him.  His Flying U's were better than a stamp, anyhow,
+they said, and it was a treat to watch the way he slid them on, just
+where they'd do the most good.
+
+"I'm going home, after supper," he said, giving just the proper width
+to the last curve of the two-hundredth U he had made that afternoon.
+"I promised Dell I'd try and get home to-night, and drive over to the
+picnic early to-morrow.  She's head push on the grub-pile, I believe,
+and wants to make sure there's enough to go around.  There's about
+two hundred and fifty calves left.  If you can't finish up to-night,
+it'll be your funeral."
+
+"Well, I betche it'll rain before we git through--it always does,
+when you don't want it to," gloomed Happy, seizing another calf.
+
+"If it does," called Weary, who was branding--with a stamp--not far
+away, "if it does, Happy, we'll pack the bossies into the cook-tent
+and make Patsy heat the irons in the stove.  Don't yuh cry, little
+boy--we'll sure manage _somehow_."
+
+"Aw yes--_you_ wouldn't see nothing to worry about, not if yuh was
+being paid for it.  They's a storm coming--any fool can see that; and
+she's sure going to come down in large chunks.  We ain't got this
+amatoor hell for nothing!  Yuh won't want to do no branding in the
+cook-tent, nor no place else.  I betche--"
+
+"Please," spoke up Pink, coiling afresh the rope thrown off a calf he
+had just dragged up to Cal and Happy Jack, "won't somebody lend me a
+handkerchief?  I want to gag Happy; he's working his hoodoo on us
+again."
+
+Happy Jack leered up at him, consciously immune--for there was no
+time for strife of a physical nature, and Happy knew it.  Everyone
+was working his fastest.
+
+"Hoodoo nothing!  I guess maybe yuh can't see that bank uh
+thunderheads.  I guess your sight's poor, straining your eyes towards
+the Fourth uh July ever since Christmas.  If yuh think yuh can come
+Christian Science act on a storm, and bluff it down jest by sayin' it
+ain't there, you're away off.  I ain't that big a fool; I--" he
+trailed into profane words, for the calf he was at that minute
+holding showed a strong inclination to plant a foot in Happy's
+stomach.
+
+Cal Emmett glanced over his shoulder, grunted a comprehensive
+refutation of Happy Jack's fears and turned his whole attention to
+work.  The branding proceeded steadily, with the hurry of skill that
+makes each motion count something done; for though not a man of them
+except Happy Jack would have admitted it, the Happy Family was
+anxious.  With two hundred and fifty calves to be branded in the open
+before night, on the third day of July; with a blistering sun sapping
+the strength of them and a storm creeping blackly out of the
+southwest; with a picnic tugging their desires and twenty-five long
+prairie miles between them and the place appointed, one can scarce
+wonder that even Pink and Weary--born optimists, both of them--eyed
+the west anxiously when they thought no one observed them.  Under
+such circumstances, Happy Jack's pessimism came near being
+unbearable; what the Happy Family needed most was encouragement.
+
+The smoke hung thicker in the parched air and stung more sharply
+their bloodshot, aching eyeballs.  The dust settled smotheringly upon
+them, filled nostrils and lungs and roughened their patience into
+peevishness.  A calf bolted from the herd, and a "hold-up" man
+pursued it vindictively, swearing by several things that he would
+break its blamed neck--only his wording was more vehement.  A cinder
+got in Slim's eye and one would think, from his language, that such a
+thing was absolutely beyond the limit of man's endurance, and a blot
+upon civilization.  Even Weary, the sweet-tempered, grew irritable
+and heaped maledictions on the head of the horse-wrangler because he
+was slow about bringing a fresh supply of water.  Taken altogether,
+the Happy Family was not in its sunniest mood.
+
+When Patsy shouted that supper was ready, they left their work
+reluctantly and tarried just long enough to swallow what food was
+nearest.  For the branding was not yet finished, and the storm
+threatened more malignantly.
+
+Chip saddled Silver, his own particular "drifter," eyed the clouds
+appraisingly and swung into the saddle for a fifteen-mile ride to the
+home ranch and his wife, the Little Doctor.  "You can make it, all
+right, if yuh half try," he encouraged.  "It isn't going to cut loose
+before dark, if I know the signs.  Better put your jaw in a sling,
+Happy--you're liable to step on it.  Cheer up! to-morrow's the Day we
+Celebrate in letters a foot high.  Come early and stay late, and
+bring your appetites along.  Fare-you-well, my brothers."  He rode
+away in the long lope that eats up the miles with an ease astonishing
+to alien eyes, and the Happy Family rolled a cigarette apiece and
+went back to work rather more cheerful than they had been.
+
+Pleasure, the pleasure of wearing good clothes, dancing
+light-footedly to good music and saying nice things that bring smiles
+to the faces of girls in frilly dresses and with brown, wind-tanned
+faces and eyes ashine, comes not often to the veterans of the
+"Sagebrush Cavalry."  They were wont to count the weeks and the days,
+and at last the hours until such pleasure should come to them.  They
+did not grudge the long circles, short sleeps and sweltering hours at
+the branding, which made such pleasures possible--only so they were
+not, at the last, cheated of their reward.
+
+Every man of them--save Pink--had secret thoughts of some particular
+girl.  And more than one girl, no doubt, would be watching, at the
+picnic, for a certain lot of white hats and sun-browned faces to
+dodge into sight over a hill, and looking for one face among the
+group; would be listening for a certain well-known, well-beloved
+chorus of shouts borne faintly from a distance--the clear-toned,
+care-naught whooping that heralded the coming of Jim Whitmore's Happy
+Family.
+
+To-morrow they would be simply a crowd of clean-hearted, clean-limbed
+cowboys, with eyes sunny and untroubled as a child's, and laughs that
+were good to hear and whispered words that were sweet to dream over
+until the next meeting.  (If you ask the girls of the range-land, and
+believe their verdict, cowboys make the very best and most piquant of
+lovers.) Tomorrow there would be no hint of the long hours in the
+saddle, or the aching muscles and the tired, smarting eyes.  They
+might, if pressed, own that they burnt the earth getting there, but
+the details of that particular conflagration would be far, far behind
+them--forgotten; no one could guess, to-morrow, that they were ever
+hot or thirsty or tired, or worried over a threatening storm, or that
+they ever swore at one another ill-naturedly from the sheer strain of
+anxiety and muscle-ache.
+
+By sundown, so great was their industry, the last calf had scampered,
+blatting resentment, to seek his mother in the herd.  Slim kicked the
+embers of the branding fire apart and emptied the water-bucket over
+them with a satisfied grunt.
+
+"By golly, I ain't mourning because brandin's about over," he said.
+"I'm plumb tired uh the sight uh them blasted calves."
+
+"And we got through ahead of the storm," Weary sweetly reminded Happy
+Jack.
+
+Happy looked moodily up at the muttering black mass nearly over their
+heads and said nothing; Happy never did have anything to say when his
+gloomy predictions were brought to naught.
+
+"I'm going to get on the bed-ground without any red tape or argument,
+if yuh ask _me_," volunteered Cal Emmett, rubbing his aching arms.
+"We want to get an early start in the morning."
+
+"Meaning sun-up, I suppose," fleered Pink, who had no especial,
+feminine reason for looking forward with longing.  With Pink, it was
+pleasure in the aggregate that lured him; there would be horse racing
+after dinner, and a dance in the school-house at night, and a season
+of general hilarity over a collection of rockets and Roman candles.
+These things appealed more directly to the heart of Pink than did the
+feminine element; for he had yet to see the girl who could disturb
+the normal serenity of his mind or fill his dreams with visions
+beautiful.  Also, there was one thing about these girls that did not
+please him; they were prone to regard him as a sweet, amusing little
+boy whose dimples they might kiss with perfect composure (though of
+course they never did).  They seemed to be forever taking the "Isn't
+he cunning!" attitude, and refused to regard him seriously, or treat
+him with the respect they accorded to the rest of the Happy Family.
+Weary's schoolma'am had offended him deeply, at a dance the winter
+before, by patting him indulgently on the shoulder and telling him to
+"Run along and find you a partner."  Such things rankled, and he knew
+that the girls knew it, and that it amused them very much.  Worse,
+the Happy Family knew it, and it amused them even more than it amused
+the girls.  For this reason Pink would much prefer to sleep
+luxuriously late and ride over to the picnic barely in time for
+dinner and the races afterward.  He did not want too long a time with
+the girls.
+
+"Sure, we'll start at sun-up," Cal answered gravely.  "We've got to
+be there by ten o'clock, so as to help the girls cut the cake and
+round up all the ham sandwiches; haven't we, Weary?"
+
+"I should smile to remark," Weary assented emphatically.  "Sun-up
+sure sees us on the road, Cadwolloper--and yuh want to be sure and
+wear that new pink silk handkerchief, that matches the roses in your
+cheeks so nice.  My schoolma'am's got a friend visiting her, and
+she's been hearing a lot about yuh.  She's plumb wild to meet yuh.
+Chip drawed your picture and I sent it over in my last letter, and
+the little friend has gone plumb batty over your dimples (Chip drawed
+yuh with a sweet smile drifting, like a rose-leaf with the dew on it,
+across your countenance, and your hat pushed back so the curls would
+show) and it sure done the business for Little Friend.  Schoolma'am
+says she's a good-looker, herself, and that Joe Meeker has took to
+parting his hair on the dead center and wearing a four-inch,
+celluloid collar week days.  But he's all to the bad--she just looks
+at your picture and smiles sad and longing."
+
+"I hate to see a man impose on friendship," murmured Pink.  "I don't
+want to spoil your face till after the Fourth, though that ain't
+saying yuh don't deserve it.  But I will say this: You're a liar--you
+ain't had a letter for more than six weeks."
+
+"Got anything yuh want to bet on that?" Weary reached challengingly
+toward an inner pocket of his vest.
+
+"Nit.  I don't give a darn, anyway yuh look at it.  I'm going to
+bed." Pink unrolled his "sooguns" in their accustomed corner next to
+Weary's bed and went straightway to sleep.
+
+Weary thumped his own battered pillow into some semblance of
+plumpness and gazed with suspicion at the thick fringe of curled
+lashes lying softly upon Pink's cheeks.
+
+"If I was a girl," he said pensively to the others, "I'd sure be in
+love with Cadwolloper myself.  He don't amount to nothing, but his
+face 'd cause me to lose my appetite and pine away like a wilted
+vi'let.  It's straight, about that girl being stuck on his picture;
+I'd gamble she's counting the hours on her fingers, right now, till
+he'll stand before her.  Schoolma'am says it'll be a plumb sin if he
+don't act pretty about it and let her love him."  He eyed Pink
+sharply from the tail of his eye, but not a lash quivered; the breath
+came evenly and softly between Pink's half-closed lips--and if he
+heard there was nothing to betray the fact.
+
+Weary sighed and tried again.  "And that ain't the worst of it,
+either.  Mame Beckman has got an attack; she told Schoolma'am she
+could die for Pink and never bat an eye.  She said she never knowed
+what true love was till she seen him.  She says he looks just like
+the cherubs--all but the wings--that she's been working in red thread
+on some pillow shams.  She was making 'em for her sister a present,
+but she can't give 'em up, now; she calls all the cherubs 'Pink,' and
+kisses 'em night and morning, regular."  He paused and watched
+anxiously Pink's untroubled face.  "I tell yuh, boys, it's awful to
+have the fatal gift uh beauty, like Cadwolloper's got.  He means all
+right, but he sure trifles a lot with girls' affections--which ain't
+right.  Mamma! don't he look sweet, laying there so innocent?  I'm
+sure sorry for Mame, though."  He eyed him sidelong.  But Pink slept
+peacefully on, except that, after a half minute, he stirred slightly
+and muttered something about "drive that darned cow back."  Then
+Weary gave up in despair and went to sleep.  When the tent became
+silent, save for the heavy breathing of tired men.  Pink's long
+lashes lifted a bit, and he grinned maliciously up at the cloth roof.
+
+For obvious reasons he was the only one of the lot who heard with no
+misgivings the vicious swoop of the storm; so long as the tent-pegs
+held he didn't care how hard it rained.  But the others who woke to
+the roar of wind and the crash of thunder and to the swish and beat
+of much falling water, turned uneasily in their beds and hoped that
+it would not last long.  To be late in starting for that particular
+scene of merry-making which had held their desires for so long would
+be a calamity they could not reflect upon calmly.
+
+At three o'clock Pink, from long habit, opened his eyes to the dull
+gray of early morning.  The air in the tent was clammy and chill and
+filled with the audible breathing of a dozen sleeping men; overhead
+the canvas was dull yellow and sodden with the steady drip, drip,
+drop of rain.  There would be no starting out at sunrise--and perhaps
+there would be no starting at all, he thought with lazy
+disappointment, and turned on his side for another nap.  His glance
+fell upon Weary's up-turned, slumber-blank face, and his memory
+reverted revengefully to the baiting of the night before.  He would
+fix Weary for that, he told himself spitefully; mentally measured a
+perpendicular line from Weary's face to the roof, reached up and drew
+his finger firmly down along the canvas for a good ten inches--and if
+you don't know why, try it yourself some time in a tent with the rain
+pouring down upon the land.  As if that were not enough he repeated
+the operation again and again, each time in a fresh place, until the
+rain came through beautifully all over the bed of Weary.  Then he lay
+down, cuddled the blankets up to his ears, closed his eyes and
+composed himself to sleep, at peace with his conscience and the
+world--and it did not disturb his self-satisfaction when Weary
+presently awoke, moved sleepily away from one drip and directly under
+another, shifted again, swore a little in an undertone and at last
+was forced to take refuge under his tarpaulin.  After that Pink went
+blissfully off to dreamland.
+
+At four o'clock it still rained dismally--and the Happy Family,
+waking unhappily one after another, remembered that this was the
+Fourth that they had worked and waited for so long, "swore a prayer
+or two and slept again."  At six the sun was shining, and Jack Bates,
+first realizing the blessed fact, called the others jubilantly.
+
+Weary sat up and observed darkly that he wished he knew what
+son-of-a-gun got the tent to leaking over him, and eyed Pink
+suspiciously; but Pink only knuckled his eyes like a sleepy baby and
+asked if it rained in the night, and said he had been dead to the
+world.  Happy Jack came blundering under the ban by asking Weary to
+remember that he _told_ him it would rain.  As he slept beside Weary,
+his guilt was certain and his punishment, Weary promised himself,
+would be sure.
+
+Then they went out and faced the clean-washed prairie land, filled
+their lungs to the bottom with sweet, wine-like air, and asked one
+another why in the dickens the night-hawk wasn't on hand with the
+cavvy, so they could get ready to start.
+
+At nine o'clock, had you wandered that way, you would have seen the
+Happy Family--a clean-shaven, holiday-garbed, resplendent Happy
+Family--roosting disconsolately wherever was a place clean enough to
+sit, looking wistfully away to the skyline.
+
+They should, by now, have been at the picnic, and every man of them
+realized the fact keenly.  They were ready, but they were afoot; the
+nighthawk had not put in an appearance with the saddle bunch, and
+there was not a horse in camp that they might go in search of him.
+With no herd to hold, they had not deemed it necessary to keep up any
+horses, and they were bewailing the fact that they had not forseen
+such an emergency--though Happy Jack did assert that he had all along
+expected it.
+
+"By golly, I'll strike out afoot and hunt him up, if he don't heave
+in sight mighty suddent," threatened Slim passionately, after a long,
+dismal silence.  "By golly, he'll wisht I hadn't, too."
+
+Cal looked up from studying pensively his patent leathers.  "Go on,
+Slim, and round him up.  This is sure getting hilarious--a fine way
+to spend the Fourth!"
+
+"Maybe that festive bunch that held up the Lewistown Bank, day before
+yesterday, came along and laid the hawk away on the hillside so they
+could help themselves to fresh horses," hazarded Jack Bates, in the
+hope that Happy Jack would seize the opening to prophesy a new
+disaster.
+
+"I betche that's what's happened, all right," said Happy, rising to
+the bait.  "I betche yuh won't see no horses t'day--ner no
+night-hawk, neither."
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another and grinned.
+
+"Who'll stir the lemonade and help pass the sandwiches?" asked Pink,
+sadly.  "Who'll push, when the school-ma'am wants to swing?  Or Len
+Adams? or--"
+
+"Oh, saw off!"  Weary implored.  "We can think up troubles enough,
+Cadwolloper, without any help from you."
+
+"Well, I guess your troubles are about over, cully--I can hear 'em
+coming."  Pink picked up his rope and started for the horse corral as
+the belated cavvy came jingling around the nose of the nearest hill.
+The Happy Family brightened perceptibly; after all, they could be at
+the picnic by noon--if they hurried.  Their thoughts flew to the
+crowd--and to the girls in frilly dresses--under the pine trees in a
+certain canyon just where the Bear Paws reach lazily out to shake
+hands with the prairie land.
+
+Up on the high level, with the sun hot against their right cheeks and
+a lazy breeze flipping neckerchief ends against their smiling lips,
+the world seemed very good, and a jolly place to live in, and there
+was no such thing as trouble anywhere.  Even Happy Jack was betrayed
+into expecting much pleasure and no misfortune, and whistled while he
+rode.
+
+Five miles slipped behind them easily--so easily that their horses
+perked ears and tugged hard against the bits.  The next five were
+rougher, for they had left the trail and struck out across a rough
+bit of barrenness on a short cut to the ford in Sheep Coulee.  All
+the little gullies and washouts were swept clean and smooth with the
+storm, and the grass roots showed white where the soil had washed
+away.  They hoped the rain had not reached to the mountains and
+spoiled the picnic grounds, and wondered what time the girls would
+have dinner ready.
+
+So they rode down the steep trail into Sheep Coulee, galloped a
+quarter mile and stopped, amazed, at the ford.  The creek was running
+bank full; more, it was churning along like a mill-race, yellow with
+the clay it carried and necked with great patches of dirty foam.
+
+"I guess here's where we don't cross," said Weary, whistling mild
+dismay.
+
+"Now, wouldn't that jostle yuh?" asked Pink, of no one in particular.
+
+"By golly, the lemonade 'll be cold, and so'll the san'wiches, before
+we git there," put in Slim, with one of his sporadic efforts to be
+funny.  "We got t' go back."
+
+"Back nothing," chorused five outraged voices.  "We'll hunt some
+other crossing."
+
+"Down the creek a piece--yuh mind where that old sandbar runs half
+across?  We'll try that."  Weary's tone was hopeful, and they turned
+and followed him.
+
+Half a mile along the raging little creek they galloped, with no
+place where they dared to cross.  Then, loping around a
+willow-fringed bend, Weary and Pink, who were ahead, drew their
+horses back upon their haunches.  They had all but run over a huddle
+of humanity lying in the fringe of weeds and tall grasses that grew
+next the willows.
+
+"What in thunder--" began Cal, pulling up.  They slid off their
+horses and bent curiously over the figure.  Weary turned it
+investigatively by a shoulder.  The figure stirred, and groaned.
+"It's somebody hurt; take a hand here, and help carry him out where
+the sun shines.  He's wet to the skin," commanded Weary sharply.
+
+When they lifted him he opened his eyes and looked at them; while
+they carried him tenderly out from the wet tangle and into the warmth
+of the sun, he set his teeth against the groans that would come.
+They stood around him uneasily and looked down at him.  He was young,
+like themselves, and he was a stranger; also, he was dressed like a
+cowboy, in chaps, high-heeled boots and silver-mounted spurs.  The
+chaps were sodden and heavy with water, as was the rest of his
+clothing.
+
+"He must uh laid out in all that storm, last night," observed Cal, in
+a subdued voice.  "He--"
+
+"Somebody better ride back and have the bed wagon brought up, so we
+can haul him to a doctor," suggested Pink.  "He's hurt."
+
+The stranger's eyes swept the faces of the Happy Family anxiously.
+"Not on your life," he protested weakly.  "I don't want any
+doctor--in mine, thank yuh.  I--it's no use, anyhow."
+
+"The hell it ain't!"  Pink was drawing off his coat to make a pillow.
+"You're hurt, somehow, ain't yuh?"
+
+"I'm--dying," the other said, laconically.  "So yuh needn't go to any
+trouble, on my account.  From the looks--yuh was headed for
+some--blowout.  Go on, and let me be."
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another incredulously; they were so
+likely to ride on!
+
+"I guess you don't savvy this bunch, old-timer," said Weary calmly,
+speaking for the six.  "We're going to do what we can.  If yuh don't
+mind telling us where yuh got hurt--"
+
+The lips of the other curled bitterly.  "I was shot," he said
+distinctly, "by the sheriff and his bunch.  But I got away.  Last
+night I tried to cross the creek, and my horse went on down.  It was
+storming--fierce.  I got out, somehow, and crawled into the weeds.
+Laying out in the rain--didn't help me none.  It's--all off."
+
+"There ought to be _something_--" began Jack Bates helplessly.
+
+"There is.  If yuh'll just put me away--afterwards--and say
+nothing,--I'll be--mighty grateful."  He was looking at them sharply,
+as if a great deal depended upon their answer.
+
+The Happy Family was dazed.  The very suddenness of this unlooked-for
+glimpse into the somber eyes of Tragedy was unnerving.  The world had
+seemed such a jolly place; ten minutes ago--five minutes, even, their
+greatest fear had been getting to the picnic too late for dinner.
+And here was a man at their feet, calmly telling them that he was
+about to die, and asking only a hurried burial and a silence after.
+Happy Jack swallowed painfully and shifted his feet in the grass.
+
+"Of course, if yuh'd feel better handing me over--"
+
+"That'll be about enough on that subject," Pink interrupted with
+decision.  "Just because yuh happen to be down and out--for the time
+being--is no reason why yuh should insult folks.  You can take it for
+granted we'll do what we can for yuh; the question is, _what_?  Yuh
+needn' go talking about cashing in--they's no sense in it.  You'll be
+all right.--"
+
+"Huh.  You wait and see."  The fellow's mouth set grimly upon another
+groan.  "If you was shot through, and stuck to the saddle--and
+rode--and then got pummeled--by a creek at flood, and if yuh laid out
+in the rain--all night--  Hell, boys!  Yuh know I'm about all in.
+I'm hard to kill, or I'd have been--dead--  What I want to know--will
+yuh do what I--said?  Will yuh bury me--right here--and keep
+it--quiet?"
+
+The Happy Family moved uncomfortably.  They hated to see him lying
+that way, and talking in short, jerky sentences, and looking so
+ghastly, and yet so cool--as if dying were quite an everyday affair.
+
+"I don't see why yuh ask us to do it," spoke Cal Emmet bluntly.
+"What we want to do is get yuh to help.  The chances is you could
+be--cured.  We--"
+
+"Look here."  The fellow raised himself painfully to an elbow, and
+fell back again.  "I've got folks--and they don't know--about this
+scrape.  They're square--and stand at the top--And they don't--it
+would just about--  For God sake, boys!  Can't yuh see--how I feel?
+Nobody knows--about this.  The sheriff didn't know--they came up on
+me in the dusk--and I fought.  I wouldn't be taken--And it's my first
+bad break--because I got in with a bad--lot.  They'll know
+something--happened, when they find--my horse.  But they'll
+think--it's just drowning, if they don't find--me with a bullet or
+two--  Can't yuh _see_?"
+
+The Happy Family looked away across the coulee, and there were eyes
+that saw little of the yellow sunlight lying soft on the green
+hillside beyond.  The world was not a good place; it was a grim,
+pitiless place, and--a man was dying, at their very feet.
+
+"But what about the rest oh the bunch?" croaked Happy Jack, true to
+his misanthropic nature, but exceeding husky as to voice.  "They'll
+likely tell--"
+
+The dying man shook his head eagerly.  "They won't; they're
+both--dead.  One was killed--last night.  The other when we first
+tried--to make a getaway.  It--it's up to you, boys."
+
+Pink swallowed twice, and knelt beside him; the others remained
+standing, grouped like mourners around an open grave.
+
+"Yuh needn't worry about us," Pink said softly, "You can count on us,
+old boy.  If you're dead sure a doctor--"
+
+"Drop it!" the other broke in harshly.  "I don't want to live.  And
+if I did, I couldn't.  I ain't guessing--I know."
+
+They said little, after that.  The wounded man seemed apathetically
+waiting for the end, and not inclined to further speech.  Since they
+had tacitly promised to do as he wished, he lay with eyes half
+closed, watching idly the clouds drifting across to the skyline,
+hardly moving.
+
+The Happy Family sat listlessly around on convenient rocks, and
+watched the clouds also, and the yellow patches of foam racing down
+the muddy creek.  Very quiet they were--so quiet that little, brown
+birds hopped close, and sang from swaying weeds almost within reach
+of them.  The Happy Family listened dully to the songs, and waited.
+They did not even think to make a cigarette.
+
+The sun climbed higher and shone hotly down upon them.  The dying man
+blinked at the glare, and Happy Jack took off his hat and tilted it
+over the face of the other, and asked him if he wouldn't like to be
+moved into the shade.
+
+"No matter--I'll be in the shade--soon enough," he returned quietly,
+and something gripped their throats to aching.  His voice, they
+observed, was weaker than it had been.
+
+Weary took a long breath, and moved closer.  "I wish you'd let us get
+help," he said, wistfully.  It all seemed so horribly brutal, their
+sitting around him like that, waiting passively for him to die.
+
+"I know--yuh hate it.  But it's--all yuh can do.  It's all I want."
+He took his eyes from the drifting, white clouds, and looked from
+face to face.  "You're the whitest bunch--I'd like to know--who yuh
+are.  Maybe I can put in--a good word for yuh--on the new
+range--where I'm going.  I'd sure like to do--something--"
+
+"Then for the Lord's sake, don't say such things!" cried Pink,
+shakily.  "You'll have us--so damn broke up--"
+
+"All right--I won't.  So long,--boys.  See yuh later--"
+
+"Mamma!" whispered Weary, and got up hastily and walked away.  Slim
+followed him a few paces, then turned resolutely and went back.  It
+seemed cowardly to leave the rest to bear it--and somebody had to.
+They were breathing quickly, and they were staring across the coulee
+with eyes that saw nothing; their lips were shut very tightly
+together.  Weary came back and stood with his back turned.  Pink
+moved a bit, glanced furtively at the long, quiet figure beside him,
+and dropped his face into his gloved hands.
+
+Glory threw up his head, glanced across the coulee at a band of range
+horses trooping down a gully to drink at the river, and whinnied
+shrilly.  The Happy Family started and awoke to the stern necessities
+of life.  They stood up, and walked a little way from the spot,
+avoiding one another's eyes.
+
+"Somebody'll have to go back to camp," said Cal Emmett, in the hushed
+tone that death ever compels from the living.  "We've got to have a
+spade--"
+
+"It better be the handiest liar, then," Jack Bates put in hastily.
+"If that old loose-tongued Patsy ever gets next--"
+
+"Weary better go--and Pink.  They're the best liars in the bunch,"
+said Cal, trying unsuccessfully to get back his everyday manner.
+
+Pink and Weary went over and took the dragging bridle-reins of their
+mounts, caught a stirrup and swung up into the saddles silently.
+
+"And say!" Happy Jack called softly, as they were going down the
+slope.  "Yuh better bring--a blanket."
+
+Weary nodded, and they rode away, their horses stepping softly in the
+thick grasses.  When they were passed quite out of the presence of
+the dead, they spurred their horses into a gallop.
+
+The sun marked mid-afternoon when they returned, and the four who had
+waited drew long breaths of relief at sight of them.
+
+"We told Patsy we'd run onto a--den--"
+
+"Oh, shut up, can't yuh?" Jack Bates interrupted shortly.  "Yuh'll
+have plenty uh time to tell us afterwards."
+
+"We've got a place picked out," said Cal, and led them a little
+distance up the slope, to a level spot in the shadow of a huge, gray
+bowlder.  "That's his headstone," he said, soberly.  "The poor devil
+won't be cheated out uh that, if we _can't_ mark it with his name.
+It'll last as long as he'll need it."
+
+Only in the West, perhaps, may one find a funeral like that.  No
+minister stood at the head of the grave and read, "Dust to dust" and
+all the heartbreaking rest of it.  There was no singing but from a
+meadowlark that perched on a nearby rock and rippled his brief song
+when, with their ropes, they lowered the blanket wrapped form.  They
+stood, with bare heads bowed, while the meadow lark sang.  When he
+had flown, Pink, looking a choir-boy in disguise, repeated softly and
+incorrectly the Lord's prayer.
+
+The Happy Family did not feel that there was any incongruity in what
+they did.  When Pink, gulping a little over the unfamiliar words,
+said:
+
+"Thine be power and glory--Amen;" five clear, youthful voices added
+the Amen quite simply.  Then they filled the grave and stood silent a
+minute before they went down to where their horse stood waiting
+patiently, with now and then a curious glance up the hill to where
+their masters grouped.
+
+The Happy Family mounted and without a backward glance rode soberly
+away; and the trail they took led, not to the picnic, but to camp.
+
+
+
+
+THE REVELER
+
+Happy Jack, coming from Dry Lake where he had been sent for the mail,
+rode up to the Flying U camp just at dinner time and dismounted
+gloomily and in silence.  His horse looked fagged--which was unusual in
+Happy's mounts unless there was urgent need of haste or he was out with
+the rest of the Family and constrained to adopt their pace, which was
+rapid.  Happy, when riding alone, loved best to hump forward over the
+horn and jog along slowly, half asleep.
+
+"Something's hurting Happy," was Cal Emmett's verdict when he saw the
+condition of the horse.
+
+"He's got a burden on his mind as big as a haystack," grinned Jack
+Bates.  "Watch the way his jaw hangs down, will yuh?  Bet yuh
+somebody's dead."
+
+"Most likely it's something he thinks is _going_ to happen," said Pink.
+"Happy always makes me think of a play I seen when I was back home; it
+starts out with a melancholy cuss coming out and giving a sigh that
+near lifts him off his feet, and he says: 'In _soo-ooth_ I know not
+_why_ I am so sa-ad.'  That's Happy all over."
+
+The Happy Family giggled and went on with their dinner, for Happy Jack
+was too close for further comments not intended for his ears.  They
+waited demurely, but in secret mirth, for him to unburden his mind.
+They knew that they would not have long to wait; Happy, bird of ill
+omen that he was, enjoyed much the telling of bad news.
+
+"Weary's in town," he announced heavily, coming over and getting
+himself a plate and cup.
+
+The Happy Family were secretly a bit disappointed; this promised, after
+all, to be tame.
+
+"Did he bring the horses?" asked Chip, glancing up over the brim of his
+cup.
+
+"I dunno," Happy responded from the stove, where he was trying how much
+of everything he could possibly pile upon his plate without spilling
+anything.  "I didn't see no horses--but the one he was ridin'."
+
+Weary had been sent, two weeks ago, to the upper Marias country after
+three saddle horses that had strayed from the home range, and which had
+been seen near Shelby.  It was quite time for him to return, if he
+expected to catch the Flying U wagon before it pulled out on the beef
+roundup.  That he should be in town and not ride out with Happy Jack
+was a bit strange.
+
+"Why don't yuh throw it out uh yuh, yuh big, long-jawed croaker?"
+demanded Pink in a voice queerly soft and girlish.  It had been a real
+grievance to him that he had not been permitted to go with Weary, who
+was his particular chum.  "What's the matter?  Is Weary sick?"
+
+"No," said Happy Jack deliberately, "I guess he ain't what yuh could
+call _sick_."
+
+"Why didn't he come out with you, then?" asked Chip, sharply.  Happy
+did get on one's nerves so.
+
+"Well, I ast him t' come--and he took a shot at me for it."
+
+There was an instant's dead silence.  Then Jack Bates laughed uneasily.
+
+"Happy, how many horses did yuh ride out to camp?"
+
+Happy Jack had, upon one occasion, looked too long upon the wine--or
+whisky, to be more explicit.  Afterward, he had insisted that he was
+riding two horses home, instead of one.  He was not permitted to forget
+that defection.  The Happy Family had an unpleasant habit of recalling
+the incident whenever Happy Jack made a statement which they felt
+disinclined to credit--as this last statement was.
+
+Happy Jack whirled on the speaker.  "Aw, shut up!  I never kidnaped no
+girl off'n no train, and--"
+
+Jack Bates colored and got belligerently to his feet.  That hit him in
+an exceedingly tender place.
+
+"Happy, look here," Chip cut in authoritatively.  "What's wrong with
+Weary?  If he took a shot at you, it's a cinch he had some reason for
+it."
+
+Weary was even dearer to the heart of Chip than to Pink.
+
+"Ah--he never!  He's takin' shots permisc'us, lemme tell yuh.  And he
+ain't troublin' about no _reason_ fer what he's doin'.  He's plumb
+oary-eyed--that's what.  He's on a limb that beats any I ever seen.
+He's drunk--drunk as a boiled owl, and he don't give a damn.  He's lost
+his hat, and he's swapped cayuses with somebody--a measly old
+bench--and he's shootin' up the town t' beat hell!"
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another dazedly.  Weary drunk?  _Weary_?
+It was unbelieveable.  Such a thing had never been heard of before in
+the history of the Happy Family.  Even Chip, who had known Weary before
+either had known the Flying U, could not remember anything of the sort.
+The Happy Family were often hilarious; they had even, on certain
+occasions, shot up the town; but they had done it as a family and they
+had done it sober.  It was an unwritten law among the Flying U boys,
+that all riotous conduct should occur when they were together and when
+the Family could, as a unit, assume the consequences--if consequences
+there were to be.
+
+"I guess Happy must a rode the whole blame saddle-bunch home, this
+time," Cal remarked, with stinging sarcasm.
+
+"Ah, yuh can go and see fer yourselves; yuh don't need t' take _my_
+word fer nothing" cried Happy Jack, much grieved that they should doubt
+him.  "I hain't had but one drink t'day--and that wasn't nothin' but
+beer.  It's straight goods: Weary's as full as he can git and top a
+horse.  He's sure enjoyin' himself, too.  Dry Lake is all hisn--and the
+way he's misusin' the rights uh ownership is plumb scand'l'us.  He
+makes me think of a cow on the fight in a forty-foot corral; nobody
+dast show their noses outside; Dry Lake's holed up in their sullers,
+till he quits camp.
+
+"I seen him cut down on the hotel China-cook jest for tryin' t' make a
+sneak out t' the ice-house after some meat fer dinner.  He like t' got
+him, too.  Chink dodged behind the board-pile in the back yard, an'
+laid down.  He was still there when I left town, and the chances is
+somebody else 'll have t' cook dinner t'day.  Weary was so busy
+close-herdin' the Chinaman that I got a chanst t' sneak out the back
+door uh Rusty's place, climb on m' horse and take a shoot up around by
+the stockyards and pull fer camp.  I couldn't git t' the store, so I
+didn't bring out no mail."
+
+The Happy Family drew a long breath.  This was getting beyond a joke.
+
+"Looks t 'me like you fellows 'd come alive and do something about it,"
+hinted Happy, with his mouth full.  "Weary'll shoot somebody, er git
+shot, if he ain't took care of mighty quick."
+
+"Happy," said Chip bluntly, "I don't grab that yarn.  Weary may be in
+town, and he _may_ be having a little fun with Dry Lake, but he isn't
+drunk.  When you try to run a whizzer like that, you can put me down as
+being from Missouri."
+
+"Same here," put in Pink, ominously soft as to voice.  "Anybody that
+tries to make me believe Weary's performing that way has sure got his
+work cut out for him.  If it was Happy, now--"
+
+"Gee!" cried Jack Bates, laughing as a possible solution came to him.
+"I'm willing to bet money he was just stringing Happy.  I'll bet he
+done it deliberate and with malice aforethought, just to _make_ Happy
+sneak out uh town and burn the earth getting here so he could tell it
+scarey to the rest of us."
+
+"Yeah, that's about the size of it," assented Cal.
+
+The Family felt that they had a new one on Happy Jack, and showed it in
+the smiles they sent toward him.
+
+"By golly, yes!" broke out Slim.  "Weary's been layin' for Happy for a
+long while to pay off making the tent leak on him, that night; he's
+sure played a good one, this time!"
+
+Happy carefully balanced his plate on the wagon-tongue near the
+doubletrees, and stood glaring down upon his tormentors.
+
+"Aw, look here!" he began, with his voice very near to tears.  Then he
+gulped and took a more warlike tone.  "I don't set m'self up t' be a
+know-it-all--but I guess I can tell when a man's full uh booze.  And I
+ain't claimin' t' be no Jiujitsu sharp" (with a meaning glance at Pink)
+"and I know the chances I'm takin' when I stand up agin the bunch--but
+I'm ready, here and now, t' fight any damn man that says I'm a liar, er
+that Weary was jest throwin' a load into me.  Two or three uh yuh have
+licked me mor'n once--but that's all right.  I'm willing t' back up
+anything I've said, and yuh can wade right in a soon as you're a mind
+to.
+
+"I don't back down a darn inch.  Weary's in Dry Lake.  He _is_ drunk.
+And he _is_ shootin' up the town.  If yuh don't want t' believe it, I
+guess they's no law t' make yuh--but if yuh got any sense, and are any
+friends uh Weary's, yuh'll mosey in and fetch him out here if yuh have
+t' bring him the way he brung ole Dock that time Patsy took cramps.  Go
+on in and see fer yourselves, darn yuh!  But don't go shootin' off your
+faces to me till yuh got a license to."
+
+This, if unassuring, was convincing.  The Happy Family stopped smiling,
+and looked at one another uncertainly.
+
+"I guess two or three of you better ride in and see what there is to
+it," announced Chip, dryly.  "If Happy is romancing--"  His look was
+eloquent.
+
+But Happy Jack, though he stood a good deal in awe of Chip and his
+sarcasm, never flinched.  He looked him straight in the eye and
+maintained the calm of conscious innocence.
+
+"I'll go," said Pink, getting up and throwing his plate and cup into
+the dishpan.  "Mind yuh, I don't believe a word of it; Happy, if this
+is just a sell, so help me Josephine, you'll learn some brand new
+Jiujitsu right away quick."
+
+"I'll go along too," Happy boldly retorted, "so if yuh want anything uh
+_me_, after you've saw Weary, yuh won't need t' wait till yuh strike
+camp t' git it.  Weary loadin' me, was he?  Yuh'll find out, all uh
+yuh, that it's _him_ that's loaded."
+
+They caught fresh horses and started--Cal, Pink, Jack Bates and Happy
+Jack.  And Happy stood their jeers throughout the ten-mile ride with an
+equanimity that was new to them.  For the most part he rode in silence,
+and grinned knowingly when they laughed too loudly at the joke Weary
+was playing.
+
+"All right--maybe he is," he flung back, once.  "But he sure looks the
+part well enough t' keep all Dry Lake indoors--and I never knowed Weary
+t' terrorize a hull town before.  And where'd he git that horse? and
+where's Glory at? and why ain't he comin' on t' camp t' help you chumps
+giggle?  Ain't he had plenty uh time t' foller me out and enjoy his
+little joke?  And another thing, he was hard at it when I struck town.
+Now, where'd yuh get off at?"
+
+To this argument they offered several explanations--at all of which
+Happy grunted in great disdain.
+
+They clattered nonchalantly into Dry Lake, still unconvinced and still
+jeering at Happy Jack.  The town was very quiet, even for Dry Lake.  As
+they rounded the blacksmith shop, from where they could see the whole
+length of the one street which the place boasted, a yell, shrill,
+exultant, familiar, greeted them.  A long-legged figure they knew well
+dashed down the street to them, a waving six-shooter in one hand, the
+reins held aloft in the other.  His horse gave evidence of hard usage,
+and it was a horse none of them had ever seen before.
+
+"It's him, all right," Jack Bates admitted reluctantly.
+
+"_Yip!  Cowboys in town_!" rang the slogan of the range land.  "Come
+on and--_wake 'em up_!  _OO-oop-ee_!"  He pulled up so suddenly that
+his horse almost sat down in the dust, and reined in beside Pink.
+
+They eyed him in amaze, and avoided meeting one another's eyes.  Truly,
+he was a strange-looking Weary.  His head was bare and disheveled, his
+eyes bloodshot and glaring, his cheeks flushed hotly.  His
+neck-kerchief covered his chest like a bib and he wore no coat; one
+shirtsleeve was rent from shoulder to cuff, telling eloquently that
+violent hands had sought to lay hold on him.  His long legs, clad in
+Angora chaps, swung limp to the stirrup.  By all these signs and
+tokens, they knew that he was drunk---joyously, unequivocally,
+vociferously drunk!
+
+Joe Meeker peered cautiously out of the window of Rusty Brown's place
+when they rode up, and Cal Emmett swore aloud at sight of him.  Joe
+Meeker was the most indefatigable male gossip for fifty miles around,
+and the story of Weary's spree would spread far and fast.  Worse, it
+would reach first of all the ears of Weary's School-ma'am, who lived at
+Meeker's.
+
+Cal started to get down; he wanted to go in and reason with Joe Meeker.
+At all events, Ruby Satterlee must not hear of Weary's defection.  It
+was all right, maybe, for some men to make fools of themselves in this
+fashion; some women would look upon it with lenience.  But this was
+different; Weary was different, and so was Ruby Satterlee.  Cal
+meditated upon just what would the most effectually close the mouth of
+Joe Meeker.
+
+But Weary spied him as his foot touched the ground.  "Oh, yuh can't
+sneak off like that, old-timer.  Yuh stay right outside and help wake
+'em up!" he shouted hoarsely.
+
+Cal turned and looked at him keenly; looked also at the erratic
+movements of the gun, and reconsidered his decision.  Joe Meeker could
+wait.
+
+"Better come on out to camp, Weary," he said persuasively.  "We're all
+of us going, right away.  Yuh can ride out with us."
+
+Weary had not yet extracted all the joy there was in the situation.  He
+did not want to ride out to camp; more, he had no intention of doing
+so.  He stood up in the stirrups and declaimed loudly his views upon
+the subject, and his opinion of any man who proposed such a move, and
+punctuated his remarks freely with profanity and bullets.
+
+Under cover of Weary's elocution Pink did a bit of jockeying and got
+his horse sidling up against Cal.  He leaned carelessly upon the
+saddle-horn and fixed his big, innocent eyes upon Weary's flushed face.
+
+"He's pretty cute, if he is full," he murmured discreetly to Cal.  "He
+won't let his gun get empty--see?  Loads after every third shot,
+regular.  We've got to get him so excited he forgets that little
+ceremony.  Once his gun's empty, he's all to the bad--we can take him
+into camp.  We'll try and rush him out uh town anyway, and shoot as we
+go.  It's our only show--unless we can get him inside and lay him out."
+
+"Yeah, that's what we'll have to do," Cal assented guardedly.  "He's
+sure tearing it off in large chunks, ain't he?  I never knew--"
+
+"Here!  What you two gazabos making medicine about?" cried Weary
+suspiciously.  "Break away, there.  I won't stand for no side-talks--"
+
+"We're just wondering if we hadn't all better adjourn and have
+something to drink," said Pink musically, straightening up in the
+saddle.  "Come on--I'm almighty dry."
+
+"Same here," said Jack Bates promptly taking the cue, and threw one leg
+over the cantle.  He got no further than that.
+
+"You stay right up on your old bench!" Weary commanded threateningly.
+"We're the kings uh the prairie, and we'll drink on our thrones.  That
+so-many-kinds-of-bar-slave can pack out the dope to us.  It's what he's
+there for."
+
+That settled Pink's little plan to get him inside where, lined up to
+the bar, they might--if they were quick enough--get his gun away from
+him; or, failing that, the warm room and another drink or two would
+"lay him out" and render him harmless.
+
+Weary, shoving three cartridges dexterously into the chambers in place
+of those just emptied, shouted to Rusty to bring out the "sheepdip."
+The four drew together and attempted further consultation, separated
+hastily when his eye fell upon them, and waited meekly his further
+pleasure.  They knew better than to rouse his anger against them.
+
+Weary, displeased because Rusty did not immediately respond to his
+call, sent a shot or two through the window by way of hurrying him.
+
+Whereupon Rusty cautiously opened the door, shoved a tray with bottle
+and glasses ostentatiously out into the sunlight for a peace offering,
+and finding that hostilities ceased, came forth in much fear and served
+them.
+
+They drank solemnly.
+
+"Take another one, darn yuh," commanded Weary.
+
+They drank again, more solemnly.
+
+The sun beat harshly down upon the deserted street, and upon the bare,
+tousled, brown head of Weary.  The four stared at him uneasily; they
+had never seen him like this before, and it gave him an odd, unfamiliar
+air that worried them more than they would have cared to own.
+
+Only Pink refused to lose heart.  "Well, come on--let's wake up these
+dead ones," he shouted, drawing his gun and firing into the air.  "Get
+busy, you sleepers!  _Yip_!  _Cowboys in town_!"  He wheeled and darted
+off down the street, shooting and yelling, and the others, with Weary
+in their midst, followed.  At the blacksmith shop, Pink, tacitly the
+leader of the rescuers, would have gone straight on out of town.  But
+Weary whirled and galloped back, firing merrily into the air.  A bit
+chagrined, Pink wheeled and galloped at his heels, fuming inwardly at
+the methodical reloading after every third shot.  Cal, on the other
+side, glanced across at Pink, shook his head ruefully and shoved more
+shells into his smoking gun.
+
+Back and forth from the store at one end of the street to the
+blacksmith shop at the other they rode, yelling till their throats
+ached and shooting till their gun-barrels were hot; and Weary kept pace
+with them and out-yelled and out-shot the most energetic, and never
+once forgot the little ceremony of shoving in fresh shells after the
+third shot.  Drunk, Weary appeared much more cautious than when sober.
+Pink grew hot and hoarse, and counted the shots, one, two, three, over
+and over till his brain grew sick.
+
+On the seventh trip down the street, a sleek, black head appeared for
+an instant over the top of the board-pile in the hotel yard.  A pair of
+frightened, slant eyes peered out at them.  Weary, just about to
+reload, caught sight of him and gave a whoop of pure joy.
+
+"Lord, how I do hate a Chink!" he cried, and dropped to the ground the
+three shells in his hand that he might fire the two in his gun.
+
+Pink yelled also.  "Nab him, Cal!" and caught his gun arm the instant
+Weary's last bullet left the barrel.
+
+Cal leaned and caught Weary round the neck in a close hug.  Jack Bates
+and Happy Jack crowded close, eager to help but finding no place to
+take hold.
+
+"Now, you blame fool, come along home and quit disgracing the whole
+community!" cried Cal, half angrily.  "Ain't yuh got any sense at all?"
+
+Weary protested; he swore; he threatened.  He was not in the least like
+his old, sweet-tempered self.  He mourned openly because he had no
+longer a gun that he might slay and spare not.  He insisted that he
+would take much pleasure in killing them all off--especially Pink.  He
+felt that Pink was the greatest traitor in the lot, and said that it
+would be a special joy to him to see Pink expire slowly and in great
+pain.  He remarked that they would be sorry, before they were through
+with him, and repeated, many times, the hint that he never forgot a
+friend or forgave an enemy--and looked darkly at Pink.
+
+"You're batty," Pink told him sorrowfully, the while they led him out
+through the lane.  "We're the best friends yuh got--only yuh don't
+appreciate us."
+
+Weary glared at him through a tangle of brown hair, and remarked
+further, in tones that one could hear a mile, upon the subject of
+Pink's treachery and the particular kind of death he deserved to die.
+
+Pink shrugged his shoulder and grew sulky; then, old friendship growing
+strong within him, he sought to soothe him.
+
+But Weary absolutely declined to be soothed.  Cal, serene in his
+fancied favoritism, attempted the impossible, and was greeted with
+language which no man living had ever before heard from the lips of
+Weary the sunny.  Jack Bates and Happy Jack, profiting by his
+experience, wisely kept silence.
+
+For this, the homeward ride was not the companionable gallop it usually
+was.  They tried to learn from Weary what he had done with Glory, and
+whence came the mud-colored cayuse with the dim, blotched brand, that
+he bestrode.  They asked also where were the horses he had been sent to
+bring.
+
+In return, Weary began viciously to dissect their pedigree and general
+moral characters.
+
+After that, they gave over trying to question or to reason, and the
+last two miles they rode in utter silence.  Weary, tiring of venom that
+brought no results, subsided gradually into mutterings, and then into
+sullen silence, so that, save for his personal appearance, they reached
+camp quite decorously.
+
+Chip met them at the bed wagon, where they slipped dispiritedly off
+their horses and began to unsaddle--all save Weary; he stared around
+him, got cautiously to the ground and walked, with that painfully
+circumspect stride sometimes affected by the intoxicated, over to the
+cook-tent.
+
+"Well," snapped Chip to the others, "For once in his life, Happy was
+right."
+
+Weary, still planting his feet primly upon the trampled grass, went
+smiling up to the stupefied Patsy.
+
+"Lord, how I do love a big, fat, shiny Dutch cook!" he murmured, and
+flung his long arms around him in a hug that caused Patsy to grunt.
+"How yuh was, already, Dutchy?  Got any pie in this man's cow-camp?"
+
+Patsy scowled and drew haughtily away from his embrace; there was one
+thing he would not endure, even from Weary: it was having his
+nationality too lightly mentioned.  To call him Dutchy was a direct
+insult, and the Happy Family never did it to his face--unless the
+provocation was very great.  To call him Dutchy and in the same breath
+to ask for pie--that, indeed, went far beyond the limits of decency.
+
+"Py cosh, you not ged any pie, Weary Davidson.  Py cosh, I learns you
+not to call names py sober peoples.  You not get no grub whiles you iss
+too drunk to be decend mit folks."
+
+"Hey?  Yuh won't feed a man when he's hungry?  Yuh darn Dutch--"  Weary
+went into details in a way that was surprising.
+
+The Happy Family rushed up and pulled him off Patsy before he had done
+any real harm, and held him till the cook had got into the shelter of
+his tent and armed himself with a frying pan.  Weary was certainly
+outdoing himself today.  The Happy Family resolved into a peace
+committee.
+
+"Aw, dig up some pie for him, Patsy," pleaded Cal.  "Yuh don't want to
+mind anything he says while he's like this; yuh know Weary's a good
+friend to yuh when he's sober.  Get some strong coffee--that'll
+straighten him out."
+
+"Py cosh, I not feed no drunk fools.  I not care if it iss Weary.  He
+hit mine jaw--"
+
+"Aw, gwan!  I guess yuh never get that way yourself," put in Happy
+Jack, ponderously sarcastic.  "I guess yuh never tanked up in roundup,
+one time, and left me cook chuck fer the hull outfit--and I guess Weary
+never rode all night, and had the dickens of a time, tryin' t' get yuh
+a doctor--yuh old heathen.  Yuh sure are an ungrateful cuss."
+
+"Give him some good, hot coffee, Patsy, and anything he wants to eat,"
+commanded Chip, more sharply than was his habit.  "And don't be all day
+about it, either."
+
+That settled it, of course; Chip, being foreman, was to be
+obeyed--unless Patsy would rather roll his blankets and hunt a new job.
+He took to muttering weird German sentences the while he brought out
+two pies and poured black coffee into a cup.  The reveler drank the
+coffee--three cups of it--ate a whole blueberry pie, and was consoled.
+He even wanted to embrace Patsy again, but was restrained by the
+others.  After that he went over and laid down in the shade of the
+bed-wagon, and straightway began to snore with much energy and
+enthusiasm.
+
+Chip watched him a minute and then went and sat down on the shady side
+of the bed-tent and began gloomily to roll a cigarette.  The rest of
+the Happy Family silently followed his example; for a long while no one
+said a word.
+
+It certainly was a shock to see Weary like that.  Not because it is
+unusual for a man of the range to get in that condition--for on the
+contrary, it is rather commonplace.  And the Happy Family had lived the
+life too long to judge a man harshly because of an occasional
+indiscreet departure from the path virtuous; they knew that the man
+might be a good fellow, after all.  In the West grows Charity sturdily,
+with branches quite broad enough to cover certain defections on the
+part of such men as Weary Davidson.
+
+For that, the real shock came in the utter unexpectedness of the
+thing--and from the fact that a man, even though prone to indulge in
+such riotous conduct, is supposed to forswear such indulgence when he
+has other and more important things to do.  Weary had been sent afar on
+a matter of business; he had ridden Glory, a horse belonging to the
+Flying U.  His arrival without the strays he had been sent after;
+without even the horse he had ridden away--that was the real disaster.
+He had broken a trust; he had, apparently, appropriated a horse that
+did not belong to him, which was worse.  But the Happy Family were
+loyal, to a man.  They did not condemn him; they were only waiting for
+him to sleep himself into a condition to explain the mystery.
+
+"Somebody's doped him," said Pink with decision, after three hours of
+shying around the subject.  "You'll see; somebody's doped him and
+likely took Glory away when they'd got him batty enough not to know the
+difference.  Yuh mind the queer look in his eyes?  And he acts queer.
+So help me Josephine!  I'd sure like to get next to the man that traded
+horses with him."
+
+The Happy Family breathed deeply; they were all, apparently, thinking
+the same thing.
+
+"By golly, that's what," spoke Slim, with decision.  "He does act like
+a man that had been doped."
+
+"Whisky straight wouldn't make that much difference in a man," averred
+Jack Bates.  "Yuh can't _get_ Weary on the fight, hardly, when he's
+sober; and look at the way he was in town--hot to slaughter that
+Chinaman that wasn't doing a thing to him, and saying how he hated
+Chinks.  Weary don't; he always says, when Patsy don't make enough pie
+to go round, that if he was running the outfit he'd have a Chink to
+cook."
+
+"Aw, look at the way he acted t' Rusty--and he thinks a lot uh Rusty,
+too," put in Happy Jack, who felt the importance of discovery and was
+in an unusually complacent mood.  "And he was going t' hang Pink up by
+the heels and--"
+
+Pink turned round and looked at him fixedly, and Happy Jack became
+suddenly interested in his cigarette.
+
+"Say, he'll sure be sore when he comes to himself, though," observed
+Cal.  "I don't know how he's going to square himself with his
+school-ma'am.  Joe Meeker was into Rusty's place while the big setting
+comes off; I would uh given him a gentle hint about keeping his face
+closed, only Weary wouldn't let me off my horse.  Joe'll sure give a
+high-colored picture uh the performance."
+
+"Well, if he does, he'll regret it a lot," prophesied Pink.  "And
+anyway, something sure got wrong with Weary; do yuh suppose he'd give
+up Glory deliberately?  Not on your life!  Glory comes next to the
+Schoolma'am in his affections."
+
+"Wonder where he got that dirt-colored cayuse, anyhow," mused Cal.
+
+"I was studying out the brand, a while ago," Pink answered.  "It's
+blotched pretty bad, but I made it out.  It's the Rocking R--they range
+down along Milk River, next to the reservation.  I've never had
+anything to do with the outfit, but I'd gamble on the brand, all right."
+
+"Well, how the deuce would he come by a Rocking R horse?  He never got
+it around here, anywheres.  He must uh got it up on the Marias."
+
+"Then that must be a good long jag he's had--which I don't believe,"
+interjected Cal.
+
+"Somebody," said Pink meaningly, "ought to have gone along with him;
+this thing wouldn't uh happened, then."
+
+"Ye-e-s?"  Chip felt that the remark applied to him as a foreman,
+rather than as one of the Family, and he resented it.  "If I'd sent
+somebody else with him, the outfit would probably be out two horses,
+instead of one--and there'd be two men under the bed-wagon with their
+hats and coats missing."
+
+Pink's eyes, under their heavy fringe of curled lashes, turned
+ominously purple.  "With all due respect to you, Mr. Bennett, I'd like
+to have you explain--"
+
+A horseman rode quietly up to them from behind a thicket of
+choke-cherry bushes.  Pink, catching sight of him first, stopped short
+off and stared.
+
+"Hello, boys," greeted the new-comer gaily.  "How's everything?  Mamma!
+it's good to get amongst white folks again."
+
+The Happy Family rose up as one man and stared fixedly; not one of them
+spoke, or moved.  Pink was the first to recover.
+
+"Well--I'll be--damned!"
+
+"Yuh sure will, Cadwolloper, if yuh don't let down them pretty lashes
+and quit gawping.  What the dickens ails you fellows, anyhow?  Is--is
+my hat on crooked, or--or anything?"
+
+"Weary, by all that's good!" murmured Chip, dazedly.
+
+Weary swung a long leg over the back of Glory and came to earth.
+"Say," he began in the sunny, drawly voice that was good to hear,
+"what's the joke?"
+
+The Happy Family sat down again and looked queerly at one another.
+
+Happy Jack glanced furtively at a long figure in the grass near by, and
+then, unhappily, at Weary.
+
+"It's him, all right," he blurted solemnly.  "They're both him!"
+
+The Happy Family snickered hysterically.
+
+Weary took a long step and confronted Happy Jack.  "I'm both him, am
+I?" he repeated mockingly.  "Mamma, but you're a lucid cuss!"  He
+turned and regarded the stunned Family judicially.
+
+"If there's any of it left," he hinted sweetly, "I wouldn't mind taking
+a jolt myself; but from the looks, and the actions, yuh must have got
+away with at least two gallons!"
+
+"Oh, we can give you a jolt, I guess," Chip retorted dryly.  "Just step
+this way."
+
+Weary, wondering a bit at the tone of him, followed; at his heels came
+the perturbed Happy Family.  Chip stooped and turned the sleeping one
+over on his back; the sleeper opened his eyes and blinked questioningly
+up at the huddle of bent faces.
+
+The astonished, blue eyes of Weary met the quizzical blue eyes of his
+other self.  He leaned against the wagon wheel.
+
+"Oh, mamma!" he said, weakly.
+
+His other self sat up and looked around, felt for his hat, saw that it
+was gone, and reached mechanically for his cigarette material.
+
+"By the Lord!  Are punchers so damn scarce in this neck uh the woods,
+that yuh've got to shanghai a man in order to make a full crew?" he
+demanded of the Happy Family, in the voice of Weary--minus the drawl.
+"I've got a string uh cayuses in that darn stockyards, back in
+town--and a damn poor town it is!--and I've also got a date with the
+Circle roundup for tomorrow night.  What yuh going to do about it?
+Speak up, for I'm in a hurry to know."
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another and said nothing.
+
+"Say," began Weary, mildly.  "Did yuh say your name was Ira Mallory,
+and do yuh mind how they used to mix us up in school, when we were both
+kids?  'Cause I've got a hunch you're the same irrepressible that has
+the honor to be my cousin."
+
+"I didn't say it," retorted his other self, pugnaciously.  "But I don't
+know as it's worth while denying it.  If you're Will Davidson, shake.
+What the devil d'yuh want to look so much like me, for?  Ain't yuh got
+any manners?  Yuh always was imitating your betters."  He grinned and
+got slowly to his feet.  "Boys, I don't know yuh, but I've a hazy
+recollection that we had one hell of a time shooting up that little
+townerine, back there.  I don't go on a limb very often, but when I do,
+folks are apt to find it out right away."
+
+The Happy Family laughed.
+
+"By golly," said Slim slowly, "that cousin story 's all right--but I
+bet yuh you two fellows are twins, at the very least!"
+
+"Guess again, Slim," cried Weary, already in the clutch of old times.
+"Run away and play, you kids.  Irish and me have got steen things to
+talk about, and mustn't be bothered."
+
+
+
+
+THE UNHEAVENLY TWINS
+
+There was a dead man's estate to be settled, over beyond the Bear Paws,
+and several hundred head of cattle and horses had been sold to the
+highest bidder, who was Chip Bennett, of the Flying U.  Later, there
+were the cattle and horses to be gathered and brought to the home
+range; and Weary, always Chip's choice when came need of a trusted man,
+was sent to bring them.  He was to hire what men he needed down there,
+work the range with the Rocking R, and bring home the stock--when his
+men could take the train and go back whence they had come.
+
+The Happy Family was disappointed.  Pink and Irish, especially, had
+hoped to be sent along; for both knew well the range north of the Bear
+Paws, and both would like to have made the trip with Weary.  But men
+were scarce and the Happy Family worked well together--so well that
+Chip grudged every man of them that ever had to be sent afar.  So Weary
+went alone, and Pink and Irish watched him wistfully when he rode away
+and were extremely unpleasant companions for the rest of that day, at
+least.
+
+Over beyond the Bear Paws men seemed scarcer even than around the
+Flying U range.  Weary scouted fruitlessly for help, wasted two days in
+the search, and then rode to Bullhook and sent this wire--collect--to
+Chip, and grinned as he wondered how much it would cost.  He, too, had
+rather resented being sent off down there alone.
+
+
+  "C. BENNETT, Dry Lake:
+  Can't get a man here for love or money.  Have
+  tried both, and held one up with a gun.  No use.
+  Couldn't top a saw horse.  For the Lord's sake,
+  send somebody I know.  I want Irish and Pink
+  and Happy--and I want them bad.  Get a move on.
+    W. DAVIDSON."
+
+
+Chip grinned when he read it, paid the bill, and told the three to get
+ready to hit the trail.  And the three grinned answer and immediately
+became very busy; hitting the trail, in this case, meant catching the
+next train out of Dry Lake, for there were horses bought with the
+cattle, and much time would be saved by making up an outfit down there.
+
+
+Weary rode dispiritedly into Sleepy Trail (which Irish usually spoke of
+as Camas, because it had but lately been rechristened to avoid
+conflictions with another Camas farther up on Milk River).  Weary
+thought, as he dismounted from Glory, which he had brought with him
+from home, that Sleepy Trail fitted the place exactly, and that
+whenever he heard Irish refer to it as Camas, he would call him down
+and make him use this other and more appropriate title.
+
+Sleepy it was, in that hazy sunshine of mid fore-noon, and apparently
+deserted.  He tied Glory to the long hitching pole where a mild-eyed
+gray stood dozing on three legs, and went striding, rowels a-clank,
+into the saloon.  He had not had any answer to his telegram, and the
+world did not look so very good to him.  He did not know that Pink and
+Irish and Happy Jack were even then speeding over the prairies on the
+eastbound train from Dry Lake, to meet him.  He had come to Sleepy
+Trail to wait for the next stage, on a mere hope of some message from
+the Flying U.
+
+The bartender looked up, gave a little, welcoming whoop and leaned half
+over the bar, hand extended.  "Hello, Irish!  Lord!  When did _you_ get
+back?"
+
+Weary smiled and shook the hand with much emphasis.  Irish had once
+created a sensation in Dry Lake by being taken for Weary; Weary
+wondered if, in the guise of Irish, there might not be some diversion
+for him here in Sleepy Trail.  He remembered the maxim "Turn about is
+fair play," and immediately acted thereon.
+
+"I just came down from the Flying U the other day," he said.
+
+The bartender half turned, reached a tall, ribbed bottle and two
+glasses, and set them on the bar before Weary.  "Go to it," he invited
+cordially.  "I'll gamble yuh brought your thirst right along with
+yuh--and that's your pet brand.  Back to stay?"
+
+Weary poured himself a modest "two fingers," and wondered if he had
+better claim to have reformed; Irish could--and did--drink long and
+deep, where Weary indulged but moderately.
+
+"No," he said, setting the glass down without refilling.  "They sent me
+back on business.  How's everything?"
+
+The bartender spoke his wonder at the empty glass, listened while Weary
+explained how he had cut down his liquid refreshments "just to see how
+it would go, and which was boss," and then told much unmeaning gossip
+about men and women Weary had never heard of before.
+
+Weary listened with exaggerated interest, and wondered what the fellow
+would do if he told him he was not Irish Mallory at all.  He reflected,
+with some amusement, that he did not even know what to call the
+bartender, and tried to remember if Irish had ever mentioned him.  He
+was about to state quietly that he had never met him before, and watch
+the surprise of the other, when the bartender grew more interesting.
+
+"And say! yuh'd best keep your gun strapped on yuh, whilst you're down
+here," he told Weary, with some earnestness.  "Spikes Weber is in this
+country--come just after yuh left; fact is, he's got it into his block
+that you left _because_ he come.  Brought his wife along--say!  I feel
+sorry for that little woman--and when he ain't bowling up and singing
+his war-song about you, and all he'll do when he meets up with yuh,
+he's dealing her misery and keeping cases that nobody runs off with
+her.  Why, at dances, he won't let her dance with nobody but him!  Goes
+plumb wild, sometimes, when it's 'change partners' in a square dance,
+and he sees her swingin' with somebody he thinks looks good to her.
+I've saw him raising hell with her, off in some corner between dances,
+and her trying not to let on she's cryin'.  He's dead sure you're still
+crazy over her, and ready to steal her away from him first chance, only
+you're afraid uh him.  He never gits full but he reads out your
+pedigree to the crowd.  So I just thought I'd tell you, and let yuh be
+on your guard."
+
+"Thanks," said Weary, getting out papers and tobacco.  "And whereabouts
+will I find this lovely specimen uh manhood?"
+
+"They're stopping over to Bill Mason's; but yuh better not go hunting
+trouble, Irish.  That's the worst about putting yuh next to the lay.
+You sure do love a fight.  But I thought I'd let yuh know, as a friend,
+so he wouldn't take you unawares.  Don't be a fool and go out looking
+for him, though; he ain't worth the trouble."
+
+"I won't," Weary promised generously.  "I haven't lost nobody that
+looks like Spikes-er-" he searched his memory frantically for the other
+name, failed to get it, and busied himself with his cigarette, looking
+mean and bloodthirsty to make up.  "Still," he added darkly, "if I
+should happen to meet up with him, yuh couldn't blame me--"
+
+"Oh, sure not!" the bartender hastened to cut in.  "It'd be a case uh
+self-defence--the way he's been makin' threats.  But--"
+
+"Maybe," hazarded Weary mildly, "you'd kinda like to see--_her_--a
+widow?"
+
+"From all accounts," the other retorted, flushing a bit nevertheless,
+"If yuh make her a widow, yuh won't leave her that way long.  I've
+heard it said you was pretty far gone, there."
+
+Weary considered, the while he struck another match and relighted his
+cigarette.  He had not expected to lay bare any romance in the somewhat
+tumultuous past of Irish.  Irish had not seemed the sort of fellow who
+had an unhappy love affair to dream of nights; he had seemed a
+particularly whole-hearted young man.
+
+"Well, yuh see," he said vaguely, "Maybe I've got over it."
+
+The bartender regarded him fixedly and unbelievingly.  "You'll have
+quite a contract making Spikes swallow that," he remarked drily.
+
+"Oh, damn Spikes," murmured Weary, with the fine recklessness of Irish
+in his tone.
+
+At that moment a cowboy jangled in, caught sight of Weary's back and
+fell upon him joyously, hailing him as Irish.  Weary was very glad to
+see him, and listened assiduously for something that would give him a
+clue to the fellow's identity.  In the meantime he called him "Say,
+Old-timer," and "Cully." It had come to be a self-instituted point of
+honor to play the game through without blundering.  He waved his hand
+hospitably toward the ribbed bottle, and told the stranger to "Throw
+into yuh, Old-timer--it's on me."  And when Old-timer straightway began
+doing so, Weary leaned against the bar and wiped his forehead, and
+wondered who the dickens the fellow could be.  In Dry Lake, Irish had
+been--well, hilarious--and not accountable for any little
+peculiarities.  In Sleepy Trail Weary was, perhaps he considered
+unfortunately, sober and therefore obliged to feel his way carefully.
+
+"Say! yuh want to keep your eyes peeled for Spikes Weber, Irish,"
+remarked the unknown, after two drinks.  "He's pawing up the earth
+whenever he hears your name called.  He's sure anxious to see the sod
+packed down nice on top uh yuh."
+
+"So I heard; his nibs here," indicating the bartender, "has been wising
+me up, a lot.  When's the stage due, tomorrow, Oldtimer?"  Weary was
+getting a bit ashamed of addressing them both impartially in that
+manner, but it was the best he could do, not knowing the names men
+called them.  In this instance he spoke to the bartender.
+
+"Why, yuh going to pull out while your hide's whole?" bantered the
+cowboy, with the freedom which long acquaintance breeds.
+
+"I've got business out uh town, and I want to be back time the stage
+pulls in."
+
+"Well, Limpy's still holding the ribbons over them buckskins uh his,
+and he ain't varied five minutes in five years," responded the
+bartender.   "So I guess yuh can look for him same old time."
+
+Weary's eyes opened a bit wider, then drooped humorously.  "Oh, all
+right," he murmured, as though thoroughly enlightened rather than being
+rather more in the dark than before.  In the name of Irish he found it
+expedient to take another modest drink, and then excused himself with a
+"See yuh later, boys," and went out and mounted Glory.
+
+Ten miles nearer the railroad--which at that was not what even a
+Montanan would call close--he had that day established headquarters and
+was holding a bunch of saddle horses pending the arrival of help.  He
+rode out on the trail thoughtfully, a bit surprised that he had not
+found the situation more amusing.  To be taken for Irish was a joke,
+and to learn thereby of Irish's little romance should be funny.  But it
+wasn't.
+
+Weary wondered how Irish got mixed up in a deal like that, which
+somehow did not seem to be in line with his character.  And he wished,
+a bit vindictively, that this Spikes Weber _could_ meet Irish.  He
+rather thought that Spikes needed the chastening effects of such a
+meeting.  Weary, while not in the least quarrelsome on his own account,
+was ever the staunch defender of a friend.
+
+Just where another brown trail branched off and wandered away over a
+hill to the east, a woman rode out and met him face to face.  She
+pulled up and gave a little cry that brought Weary involuntarily to a
+halt.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed, in a tone that Weary felt he had no right to hear
+from any but his little schoolma'am.  "But I knew you'd come back when
+you heard I--Have--have you seen Spikes, Ira?"
+
+Weary flushed embarrassment; this was no joke.  "No," he stammered, in
+some doubt just how to proceed.  "The fact is, you've made a little
+mistake.  I'm not--"
+
+"Oh, you needn't go on," she interrupted, and her voice, had Weary
+known it better, heralded the pouring out of a woman's heart.  "I know
+I've made a mistake, all right; you don't need to tell me that.  And I
+suppose you want to tell me that you've got over--things; that you
+don't care, any more.  Maybe you don't, but it'll take a lot to make me
+believe it.  Because you _did_ care, Ira.  You _cared_, all right
+enough!"  She laughed in the way that makes one very uncomfortable.
+
+"And maybe you'll tell me that I didn't.  But I did, and I do yet.  I
+ain't ashamed to say it, if I did marry Spikes Weber just to spite you.
+That's all it was, and you'd have found it out if you hadn't gone off
+the way you did.  I _hate_ Spikes Weber; and he knows it, Ira.  He
+knows I--care--for you, and he's making my life a hell.  Oh, maybe I
+deserve it--but you won't--  Now you've come back, you can have it out
+with him; and I--I almost hope you'll kill him!  I do, and I don't care
+if it is wicked.  I--I don't care for anything much, but--you."  She
+had big, soft brown eyes, and a sweet, weak mouth, and she stopped and
+looked at Weary in a way that he could easily imagine would be
+irresistible--to a man who cared.
+
+Weary felt that he was quite helpless.  She had hurried out sentences
+that sealed his lips.  He could not tell her now that she had made a
+mistake; that he was not Ira Mallory, but a perfect stranger.  The only
+thing to do now was to carry the thing through as tactfully as
+possible, and get away as soon as he could.  Playing he was Irish, he
+found, was not without its disadvantages.
+
+"What particular brand of hell has he been making for you?" he asked
+her sympathetically.
+
+"I wouldn't think, knowing Spikes as you do, you'd need to ask," she
+said impatiently.  "The same old brand, I guess.  He gets drunk, and
+then--I told him, right out, just after we were married, that I liked
+you the best, and he don't forget it; and he don't let me.  He swears
+he'll shoot you on sight--as if that would do any good!  He hates you,
+Ira."  She laughed again unpleasantly.
+
+Weary, sitting uneasily in the saddle looking at her, wondered if Irish
+really cared; or if, in Weary's place, he would have sat there so
+calmly and just looked at her.  She was rather pretty, in a pink and
+white, weak way.  He could easily imagine her marrying Spikes Weber for
+mere spite; what he could not imagine, was Irish in love with her.
+
+It seemed almost as if she caught a glimmer of his thoughts, for she
+reined closer, and her teeth were digging into her lower lip.  "Well,
+aren't you going to _do_ anything?" she demanded desperately.  "You're
+here, and I've told you I--care.  Are you going to leave me to bear
+Spikes' abuse always?"
+
+"You married him," Weary remarked mildly and a bit defensively.  It
+seemed to him that loyalty to Irish impelled him.
+
+She tossed her head contemptuously.  "It's nice to throw that at me.  I
+might get back at you and say you loved me.  You did, you know."
+
+"And you married Spikes; what can _I_ do about it?"
+
+"What--can--you--do--about it?  Did you come back to ask me that?"
+There was a well defined, white line around her mouth, and her eyes
+were growing ominously bright.
+
+Weary did not like the look of her, nor her tone.  He felt, somehow,
+glad that it was not Irish, but himself; Irish might have felt the
+thrall of old times--whatever they were--and have been tempted.  His
+eyes, also, grew ominous, but his voice was very smooth.  (Irish, too,
+had that trait of being quietest when he was most roused.)
+
+"I came back on business; I will confess I didn't come to see you," he
+said.  "I'm only a bone-headed cowpuncher, but even cowpunchers can
+play square.  They don't, as a rule step in between a man and his wife.
+You married Spikes, and according to your own tell, you did it to spite
+me.  So I say again, what can _I_ do about it?"
+
+She looked at him dazedly.
+
+"Uh course," he went on gently, "I won't stand to see any man abuse his
+wife, or bandy her name or mine around the country.  If I should happen
+to meet up with Spikes, there'll likely be some dust raised.  And if I
+was you, and Spikes abused me, I'd quit him cold."
+
+"Oh, I see," she said sharply, with an exaggeration of scorn.  "You
+have got over it, then.  There's someone else.  I might have known a
+man can't be trusted to care for the same woman long.  You ran after me
+and acted the fool, and kept on till you made me believe you really
+meant all you said--"
+
+"And you married Spikes," Weary reiterated--ungenerously, perhaps; but
+it was the only card he felt sure of.  There was no gainsaying that
+fact, it seemed.  She had married Spikes in a fit of pique at Irish.
+Still, it was not well to remind her of it too often.  In the next five
+minutes of tumultuous recrimination, Weary had cause to remember what
+Shakespeare has to say about a woman scorned, and he wondered, more
+than ever, if Irish had really cared.  The girl--even now he did not
+know what name to call her--was showing a strain of coarse temper; the
+temper that must descend to personalities and the calling of
+unflattering names.  Weary, not being that type of male human who can
+retort in kind, sat helpless and speechless the while she berated him.
+When at last he found opportunity for closing the interview and riding
+on, her anger-sharpened voice followed him shrewishly afar.  Weary
+breathed deep relief when the distance swallowed it, and lifted his
+gray hat to wipe his beaded forehead.
+
+"Mamma mine!" he said fervently to Glory.  "Irish was sure playing big
+luck when she _did_ marry Spikes; and I don't wonder at the poor devil
+taking to drink.  I would, too, if my little schoolma'am--"
+
+At the ranch, he hastened to make it quite plain that he was not Ira
+Mallory, but merely his cousin, Will Davidson.  He was quite determined
+to put a stop to all this annoying mixing up of identities.  And as for
+Spikes Weber, since meeting the woman Spikes claimed from him something
+very like sympathy; only Weary had no mind to stand calmly and hear
+Irish maligned by anybody.
+
+The next day he rode again to Sleepy Trail to meet the stage, hoping
+fervently that he would get some word--and that favorable--from Chip.
+He was thinking, just then, a great deal about his own affairs and not
+at all about the affairs of Irish.  So that he was inside the saloon
+before he remembered that the bartender knew him for Irish.
+
+The bartender nodded to him in friendly fashion, and jerked his head
+warningly toward a far corner where two men sat playing seven-up
+half-heartedly.  Weary looked, saw that both were strangers, and
+puzzled a minute over the mysterious gesture of the bartender.  It did
+not occur to him, just then, that one of the men might be Spikes Weber.
+
+The man who was facing him nipped the corners of the cards idly
+together and glanced up; saw Weary standing there with an elbow on the
+bar looking at him, and pushed back his chair with an oath unmistakably
+warlike.  Weary resettled his hat and looked mildly surprised.  The
+bartender moved out of range and watched breathlessly.
+
+"You ---- ---- --------!" swore Spikes Weber, coming truculently
+forward, hand to hip.  He was of medium height and stockily built, with
+the bull neck and little, deep-set eyes that go often with a nature
+quarrelsome.
+
+Weary still leaned his elbow on the bar and smiled at him tolerantly.
+"Feel bad anywhere?" he wanted to know, when the other was very close.
+
+Spikes Weber, from very surprise, stopped and regarded Weary for a
+space before he began swearing again.  His hand was still at his hip,
+but the gun it touched remained in his pocket.  Plainly, he had not
+expected just this attitude.
+
+Weary waited, smothering a yawn, until the other finished a
+particularly pungent paragraph.  "A good jolt uh brandy 'll sometimes
+cure a bad case uh colic," he remarked.  "Better have our friend here
+fix yuh up--but it'll be on you.  I ain't paying for drinks just now."
+
+Spikes snorted and began upon the pedigree and general character of
+Irish.  Weary took his elbow off the bar, and his eyes lost their
+sunniness and became a hard blue, darker than was usual.  It took a
+good deal to rouse Weary to the fighting point, and it is saying much
+for the tongue of Spikes that Weary was roused thoroughly.
+
+"That'll be about enough," he said sharply, cutting short a sentence
+from the other.  "I kinda hated to start in and take yuh all to
+pieces--but yuh better saw off right there, or I can't be responsible--"
+
+A gun barrel caught the light menacingly, and Weary sprang like the
+pounce of a cat, wrested the gun from the hand of Spikes and rapped him
+smartly over the head with the barrel.  "Yuh would, eh?" he snarled,
+and tossed the gun upon the bar, where the bartender caught it as it
+slid along the smooth surface and put it out of reach.
+
+After that, chairs went spinning out of the way, and glasses jingled to
+the impact of a body striking the floor with much force.  Came the
+slapping sound of hammering fists and the scuffling of booted feet,
+together with the hard breathing of fighting men.
+
+Spikes, on his back, looked up into the blazing eyes he thought were
+the eyes of Irish and silently acknowledged defeat.  But Weary would
+not let it go at that.
+
+"Are yuh whipped to a finish, so that yuh don't want any more trouble
+with anybody?" he wanted to know.
+
+Spikes hesitated but the fraction of a second before he growled a
+reluctant yes.
+
+"Are yuh a low-down, lying sneak of a woman-fighter, that ain't got
+nerve enough to stand up square to a ten-year-old boy?"
+
+Spikes acknowledged that he was.  Before the impromptu catechism was
+ended, Spikes had acknowledged other and more humiliating things--to
+the delectation of the bartender, the stage driver and two or three men
+of leisure who were listening.
+
+When Spikes had owned to being every mean, unknowable thing that Weary
+could call to mind--and his imagination was never of the barren
+sort--Weary generously permitted him to get upon his feet and skulk out
+to where his horse was tied.  After that, Weary gave his unruffled
+attention to the stage driver and discovered the unwelcome fact that
+there was no letter and no telegram for one William Davidson, who
+looked a bit glum when he heard it.
+
+So he, too, went out and mounted Glory and rode away to the ranch where
+waited the horses; and as he went he thought, for perhaps the first
+time in his life, some hard and unflattering things of Chip Bennett.
+He had never dreamed Chip would calmly overlook his needs and leave him
+in the lurch like this.
+
+At the ranch, when he had unsaddled Glory and gone to the bunk-house,
+he discovered Irish, Pink and Happy Jack wrangling amicably over whom a
+certain cross-eyed girl on the train had been looking at most of the
+time.  Since each one claimed all the glances for himself, and since
+there seemed no possible way of settling the dispute, they gave over
+the attempt gladly when Weary appeared, and wanted to know, first
+thing, who or what had been gouging the hide off his face.
+
+Weary, not aware until the moment that he was wounded, answered that he
+had done it shaving; at which the three hooted derision and wanted to
+know since when he had taken to shaving his nose.  Weary smiled
+inscrutably and began talking of something else until he had weaned
+them from the subject, and learned that they had bribed the stage
+driver to let them off at this particular ranch; for the stage driver
+knew Irish, and knew also that a man he had taken to be Irish was
+making this place his headquarters.  The stage driver was one of those
+male gossips who know everything.
+
+When he could conveniently do so, Weary took Irish out of hearing of
+the others and told him about Spikes Weber.  Irish merely swore.  After
+that, Weary told him about Spikes Weber's wife, in secret fear and with
+much tact, but in grim detail.  Irish listened with never a word to say.
+
+"I done what looked to me the best thing, under the circumstances,"
+Weary apologized at the last, "and I hope I haven't mixed yuh up a
+bunch uh trouble.  Mamma mine! she's sure on the fight, though, and
+she's got a large, black opinion of yuh as a constant lover.  If yuh
+want to square yourself with her, Irish, you've got a big contract."
+
+"I don't want to square myself," Irish retorted, grinning a bit.  "I
+did have it bad, I admit; but when she went and got tied up to Spikes,
+that cured me right off.  She's kinda pretty, and girls were scarce,
+and--oh, hell! you know how it goes with a man.  I'd a married her and
+found out afterwards that her mind was like a little paper windmill
+stuck up on the gatepost with a shingle nail--only she saved me the
+trouble.  Uh course, I was some sore over the deal for awhile; but I
+made up my mind long ago that Spikes was the only one in the bunch that
+had any sympathy coming.  If he's been acting up like you say, I change
+the verdict: there ain't anything coming to him but a big bunch uh
+trouble.  I'm much obliged to yuh, Weary; you done me a good turn and
+earnt a lot uh gratitude, which is yours for keeps.  Wonder if supper
+ain't about due; I've the appetite of a Billy goat, if anybody should
+ask yuh."
+
+At supper Irish was uncommonly silent, and did some things without
+thinking; such as pouring a generous stream of condensed cream into his
+coffee.  Weary, knowing well that Irish drank his coffee without cream,
+watched him a bit closer than he would otherwise have done; Irish was
+the sort of man who does not always act by rule.
+
+After supper Weary missed him quite suddenly, and went to the door of
+the bunk-house to see where he had gone.  He did not see Irish, but on
+a hilltop, in the trail that led to Sleepy Trail, he saw a flurry of
+dust.  Two minutes of watching saw it drift out of sight over the hill,
+which proved that the maker was traveling rapidly away from the ranch.
+Weary settled his hat down to his eyebrows and went out to find the
+foreman.
+
+The foreman, down at the stable, said that Irish had borrowed a horse
+from him, unsacked his saddle as if he were in a hurry about something,
+and had pulled out on a high lope.  No, he had not told the foreman
+where he was headed for, and the foreman knew Irish too well to ask.
+Yes, now Weary spoke of it, Irish did have his gun buckled on him, and
+he headed for Sleepy Trail.
+
+Weary waited for no further information.  He threw his saddle on a
+horse that he knew could get out and drift, if need came: presently he,
+too, was chasing a brown dust cloud over the hill toward Sleepy Trail.
+
+That Irish had gone to find Spikes Weber, Weary was positive; that
+Spikes was not a man who could be trusted to fight fair, he was even
+more positive.  Weary, however, was not afraid for Irish--he was merely
+a bit uneasy and a bit anxious to be on hand when came the meeting.  He
+spurred along the trail darkening with the afterglow of a sun departed
+and night creeping down upon the land, and wondered whether he would be
+able to come up with Irish before he reached town.
+
+At the place where the trail forked--the place where he had met the
+wife of Spikes, he saw from a distance another rider gallop out of the
+dusk and follow in the way that Irish had gone.  Without other evidence
+than mere instinct, he knew the horseman for Spikes.  When, further
+along, the horseman left the trail and angled away down a narrow
+coulee, Weary rode a bit faster.  He did not know the country very
+well, and was not sure of where that coulee led; but he knew the nature
+of a man like Spikes Weber, and his uneasiness was not lulled at the
+sight.  He meant to overtake Irish, if he could; after that he had no
+plan whatever.
+
+When, however, he came to the place where Spikes had turned off.  Weary
+turned off also and followed down the coulee; and he did not explain
+why, even to himself.  He only hurried to overtake the other, or at
+least to keep him in sight.
+
+The darkness lightened to bright starlight, with a moon not yet in its
+prime to throw shadows black and mysterious against the coulee sides.
+The coulee itself, Weary observed, was erratic in the matter of height,
+width and general direction.  Places there were where the width
+dwindled until there was scant room for the cow trail his horse
+conscientiously followed; places there were where the walls were easy
+slopes to climb, and others where the rocks hung, a sheer hundred feet,
+above him.
+
+One of the easy slopes came near throwing him off the trail of Spikes.
+He climbed the slope, and Weary would have ridden by, only that he
+caught a brief glimpse of something on the hilltop; something that
+moved, and that looked like a horseman.  Puzzled but persistent, Weary
+turned back where the slope was easiest, and climbed also.  He did not
+know the country well enough to tell, in that come-and-go light made
+uncertain by drifting clouds, just where he was or where he would bring
+up; he only knew instinctively that where Spikes rode, trouble rode
+also.
+
+Quite suddenly at the last came further knowledge.  It was when, still
+following, he rode along a steeply sloping ridge that narrowed
+perceptibly, that he looked down, down, and saw, winding brownly in the
+starlight, a trail that must be the trail he had left at the coulee
+head.
+
+"Mamma!" he ejaculated softly, and strained eyes under his hatbrim to
+glimpse the figure he knew rode before.  Then, looking down again, he
+saw a horseman galloping rapidly towards the ridge, and pulled up short
+when he should have done the opposite--for it was then that seconds
+counted.
+
+When the second glance showed the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in
+his spurs and galloped forward.  Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a
+rifle shot came sharply ahead.  He glanced down and saw horse and rider
+lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail.  Weary drew his own
+gun and went on, his teeth set tight together.  Now, when it was too
+late, he understood thoroughly the situation.
+
+He came clattering out of the gloom to the very, point of the bluff,
+just where it was highest and where it crowded closest the trail a long
+hundred feet below.  A man stood there on the very edge, with a rifle
+in his hands.  He may have been crouching, just before, but now he was
+standing erect, looking fixedly down at the dark heap in the trail
+below, and his figure, alert yet unwatchful, was silhouetted sharply
+against the sky.
+
+When Weary, gun at aim, charged furiously down upon him, he whirled,
+ready to give battle for his life; saw the man he supposed was lying
+down there dead in the trail, and started backward with a yell of pure
+terror.  "Irish!"  He toppled, threw the rifle from him in a single
+convulsive movement and went backward, down and down.--
+
+Weary got off his horse and, gun still gripped firmly, walked to the
+edge and looked down.  In his face, dimly revealed in the fitful
+moonlight, there was no pity but a look of baffled vengeance.  Down at
+the foot of the bluff the shadows lay deep and hid all they held, but
+out in the trail something moved, rose up and stood still a moment, his
+face turned upward to where stood Weary.
+
+"Are yuh hurt, Irish?" Weary called anxiously down to him.
+
+"Never touched me," came the answer from below.  "He got my horse, damn
+him! and I just laid still and kept cases on what he'd do next.  Come
+on down!"
+
+Weary was already climbing recklessly down to where the shadows reached
+long arms up to him.  It was not safe, in that uncertain light, but
+Weary was used to taking chances.  Irish, standing still beside the
+dead horse, watched and listened to the rattle of small stones
+slithering down, and the clink of spur chains upon the rocks.
+
+Together the two went into the shadows and stood over a heap of
+something that had been a man.
+
+"I never did kill a man," Weary remarked, touching the heap lightly
+with his foot.  "But I sure would have, that time, if he hadn't dropped
+just before I cut loose on him."
+
+Irish turned and looked at him.  Standing so, one would have puzzled
+long to know them apart.  "You've done a lot for me, Weary, this trip,"
+he said gravely.  "I'm sure obliged."
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14542 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14542 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14542)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories, by B.
+M. Bower
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories
+
+Author: B. M. Bower
+
+Release Date: December 31, 2004  [eBook #14542]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONESOME TRAIL AND OTHER
+STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE LONESOME TRAIL AND OTHER STORIES
+
+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 Happy Family_, _The Long Shadow_, etc.
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   THE LONESOME TRAIL
+
+   FIRST AID TO CUPID
+
+   WHEN THE COOK FELL ILL
+
+   THE LAMB
+
+   THE SPIRIT OF THE RANGE
+
+   THE REVELER
+
+   THE UNHEAVENLY TWINS
+
+
+
+
+THE LONESOME TRAIL
+
+PART ONE
+
+A man is very much like a horse.  Once thoroughly frightened by
+something he meets on the road, he will invariably shy at the same
+place afterwards, until a wisely firm master leads him perforce to the
+spot and proves beyond all doubt that the danger is of his own
+imagining; after which he will throw up his head and deny that he ever
+was afraid--and be quite amusingly sincere in the denial.
+
+It is true of every man with high-keyed nature, a decent opinion of
+himself and a healthy pride of power.  It was true of Will Davidson, of
+the Flying U--commonly known among his associates, particularly the
+Happy Family, as "Weary."  As to the cause of his shying at a certain
+object, that happened long ago.  Many miles east of the Bear Paws, in
+the town where Weary had minced painfully along the streets on pink,
+protesting, bare soles before the frost was half out of the ground; had
+yelled himself hoarse and run himself lame in the redoubtable base-ball
+nine which was to make that town some day famous--the nine where they
+often played with seven "men" because the other two had to "bug"
+potatoes or do some other menial task and where the umpire frequently
+engaged in throwing lumps of dried mud at refractory players,--there
+had lived a Girl.
+
+She might have lived there a century and Weary been none the worse, had
+he not acquired the unfortunate habit of growing up.  Even then he
+might have escaped injury had he not persisted in growing up and up, a
+straight six-feet-two of lovable good looks, with the sunniest of
+tempers and blue eyes that reflected the warm sweetness of that nature,
+and a smile to tell what the eyes left unsaid.
+
+Such being the tempting length of him, the Girl saw that he was worth
+an effort; she took to smoking the chimney of her bedroom lamp, heating
+curling irons, wearing her best hat and best ribbons on a weekday, and
+insisting upon crowding number four-and-a-half feet into number
+three-and-a-half shoes and managing to look as if she were perfectly
+comfortable.  When a girl does all those things, and when she has a
+good complexion and hair vividly red and long, heavy-lidded blue eyes
+that have a fashion of looking side-long at a man, it were well for
+that man to travel--if he would keep the lightness of his heart and the
+sunny look in his eyes and his smile.
+
+Weary traveled, but the trouble was that he did not go soon enough.
+When he did go, his eyes were somber instead of sunny, and he smiled
+not at all.  And in his heart he carried a deep-rooted impulse to shy
+always at women--and so came to resemble a horse.
+
+He shied at long, blue eyes and turned his own uncompromisingly away.
+He never would dance with a woman who had red hair, except in
+quadrilles where he could not help himself; and then his hand-clasp was
+brief and perfunctory when it came to "Grand right-and-left."  If
+commanded to "Balance-_swing_" the red-haired woman was swung airily by
+the finger-tips--; which was not the way in which Weary swung the
+others.
+
+And then came the schoolma'am.  The schoolma'am's hair was the darkest
+brown and had a shine to it where the light struck at the proper angle,
+and her eyes were large and came near being round, and they were a
+velvety brown and also had a shine in them.
+
+Still Weary shied consistently and systematically.
+
+At the leap-year ball, given on New Year's night, when the ladies were
+invited to "choose your pardners for the hull dance, regardless of who
+brought yuh," the schoolma'am had forsaken Joe Meeker, with whose
+parents she boarded, and had deliberately chosen Weary.  The Happy
+Family had, with one accord, grinned at him in a way that promised many
+things and, up to the coming of the Fourth of July, every promise had
+been conscientiously fulfilled.
+
+They brought him many friendly messages from the schoolma'am, to which
+he returned unfriendly answers.  When he accused them openly of trying
+to "load" him; they were shocked and grieved.  They told him the
+schoolma'am said she felt drawn to him--he looked so like her darling
+brother who had spilled his precious blood on San Juan Hill.  Cal
+Emmett was exceedingly proud of this invention, since it seemed to "go
+down" with Weary better than most of the lies they told.
+
+It was the coming of the Fourth and the celebration of that day which
+provoked further effort to tease Weary.
+
+"Who are _you_ going to take, Weary?" Cal Emmett lowered his left
+eyelid very gently, for the benefit of the others, and drew a match
+sharply along the wall just over his head.
+
+"Myself," answered Weary sweetly, though it was becoming a sore subject.
+
+"You're sure going in bum company, then," retorted Cal.
+
+"Who's going to pilot the schoolma'am?" blurted Happy Jack, who was
+never consciously ambiguous.
+
+"You can search me," said Weary, in a you-make-me-tired tone.  "She
+sure isn't going with Yours Truly."
+
+"Ain't she asked yuh yet?" fleered Cal.  "That's funny.  She told me
+the other day she was going to take advantage of woman's privilege,
+this year, and choose her own escort for the dance.  Then she asked me
+if I knew whether you were spoke for, and when I told her yuh wasn't,
+she wanted to know if I'd bring a note over.  But I was in a dickens of
+a hurry, and couldn't wait for it; anyhow, I was headed the other way."
+
+"Not toward Len Adams, were you?" asked Weary sympathetically.
+
+"Aw, she'll give you an invite, all right," Happy Jack declared.
+"Little Willie ain't going to be forgot, yuh can gamble on that.  He's
+too much like Darling Brother--"
+
+At this point, Happy Jack ducked precipitately and a flapping,
+four-buckled overshoe, a relic of the winter gone, hurtled past his
+head and landed with considerable force upon the unsuspecting stomach
+of Cal, stretched luxuriously upon his bunk.  Cal doubled like a
+threatened caterpillar and groaned, and Weary, feeling that justice had
+not been defeated even though he had aimed at another culprit, grinned
+complacently.
+
+"What horse are you going to take?" asked Chip, to turn the subject.
+
+"Glory.  I'm thinking of putting him up against Bert Rogers' Flopper.
+Bert's getting altogether too nifty over that cayuse of his.  He needs
+to be walked away from, once; Glory's the little horse that can learn
+'em things about running, if--"
+
+"Yeah--_if_!"  This from Cal, who had recovered speech.  "Have yuh got
+a written guarantee from Glory, that he'll run?"
+
+"Aw," croaked Happy Jack, "if he runs at all, it'll likely be
+backwards--if it ain't a dancing-bear stunt on his hind feet.  You can
+gamble it'll be what yuh don't expect and ain't got any money on; that
+there's Glory, from the ground up."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," Weary drawled placidly.  "I'm not setting him
+before the public as a twin to Mary's little lamb, but I'm willing to
+risk him.  He's a good little horse--when he feels that way--and he can
+run.  And darn him, he's _got_ to run!"
+
+Shorty quit snoring and rolled over.  "Betche ten dollars, two to one,
+he won't run," he said, digging his fists into his eyes like a baby.
+
+Weary, dead game, took him up, though he knew what desperate chances he
+was taking.
+
+"Betche five dollars, even up, he runs backwards," grinned Happy Jack,
+and Weary accepted that wager also.
+
+The rest of the afternoon was filled with Glory--so to speak--and much
+coin was hazarded upon his doing every unseemly thing that a horse can
+possibly do at a race, except the one thing which he did do; which goes
+to prove that Glory was not an ordinary cayuse, and that he had a
+reputation to maintain.  To the day of his death, it may be said, he
+maintained it.
+
+Dry Lake was nothing if not patriotic.  Every legal holiday was
+observed in true Dry Lake manner, to the tune of violins and the
+swish-swish of slippered feet upon a more-or-less polished floor.  The
+Glorious Fourth, however, was celebrated with more elaborate
+amusements.  On that day men met, organized and played a matched game
+of ball with much shouting and great gusto, and with an umpire who
+aimed to please.
+
+After that they arranged their horseraces over the bar of the saloon,
+and rode, ran or walked to the quarter-mile stretch of level trail
+beyond the stockyards to witness the running; when they would hurry
+back to settle their bets over the bar where they had drunk to the
+preliminaries.
+
+Bert Rogers came early, riding Flopper.  Men hurried from the saloon to
+gather round the horse that held the record of beating a "real
+race-horse" the summer before.  They felt his legs sagely and wondered
+that anyone should seem anxious to question his ability to beat
+anything in the country in a straightaway quarter-mile dash.
+
+When the Flying U boys clattered into town in a bunch, they were
+greeted enthusiastically; for old Jim Whitmore's "Happy Family" was
+liked to a man.  The enthusiasm did not extend to Glory, however.  He
+was eyed askance by those who knew him or who had heard of his
+exploits.  If the Happy Family had not backed him loyally to a man, he
+would not have had a dollar risked upon him; and this not because he
+could not run.
+
+Glory was an alien, one of a carload of horses shipped in from Arizona
+the summer before.  He was a bright sorrel, with the silvery mane and
+tan and white feet which one so seldom sees--a beauty, none could deny.
+His temper was not so beautiful.
+
+Sometimes for days he was lamblike in his obedience, touching in his
+muzzling affection till Weary was lulled into unwatchful love for the
+horse.  Then things would happen.
+
+Once, Weary walked with a cane for two weeks.  Another time he walked
+ten miles in the rain.  Once he did not walk at all, but sat on a rock
+and smoked cigarettes till his tobacco sack ran empty, waiting for
+Glory to quit sulking, flat on his side, and get up and carry him home.
+
+Any man but Weary would have ruined the horse with harshness, but Weary
+was really proud of his deviltry and would laugh till the tears came
+while he told of some new and undreamed bit of cussedness in his pet.
+
+On this day, Glory was behaving beautifully.  True, he had nearly
+squeezed the life out of Weary that morning when he went to saddle him
+in the stall, and he had afterwards snatched Cal Emmet's hat off with
+his teeth, and had dropped it to the ground and had stood upon it; but
+on the whole, the Happy Family regarded those trifles as a good sign.
+
+When Bert Rogers and Weary ambled away down the dusty trail to the
+starting point, accompanied by most of the Flying U boys and two or
+three from Bert's outfit, the crowd in the grand-stand (which was the
+top rail of the stockyard fence) hushed expectantly.
+
+When a pistol cracked, far down the road, and a faint yell came
+shrilling through the quiet sunshine, they craned necks till their
+muscles ached.  Like a summer sand-storm they came, and behind them
+clattered their friends, the dust concealing horse and rider alike.
+Whooping encouraging words at random, they waited till a black nose
+shot out from the rushing cloud.  That was Flopper.  Beside it a white
+streak, a flying, silvery mane--Glory was running!  Happy Jack gave a
+raucous yell.
+
+Lifting reluctantly, the dust gave hazy glimpses of a long, black body
+hugging jealously close to earth, its rider lying low upon the
+straining neck--that was Flopper and Bert.
+
+Close beside, a sheeny glimmer of red, a tossing fringe of white, a
+leaning, wiry, exultant form above--that was Glory and Weary.
+
+There were groans as well as shouting when the whirlwind had swept past
+and on down the hill toward town, and the reason thereof was plain.
+Glory had won by a good length of him.
+
+Bert Rogers said something savage and set his weight upon the bit till
+Flopper, snorting and disgusted--for a horse knows when he is
+beaten--took shorter leaps, stiffened his front legs and stopped,
+digging furrows with his feet.
+
+Glory sailed on down the trail, scattering Mrs. Jenson's chickens and
+jumping clean over a lumbering, protesting sow.  "Come on--he's going
+to set up the drinks!" yelled someone, and the crowd leaped from the
+fence and followed.
+
+But Glory did not stop.  He whipped around the saloon, whirled past the
+blacksmith shop and was headed for the mouth of the lane before anyone
+understood.  Then Chip, suddenly grasping the situation, dug deep with
+his spurs and yelled.
+
+"He's broken the bit--it's a runaway!"
+
+Thus began the second race, a free-for-all dash up the lane.  At the
+very start they knew it was hopeless to attempt overtaking that red
+streak, but they galloped a mile for good manners' sake; Cal then
+pulled up.
+
+"No use," he said.  "Glory's headed for home and we ain't got the
+papers to stop him.  He can't hurt Weary--and the dance opens up at
+six, and I've got a girl in town."
+
+"Same here," grinned Bert.  "It's after four, now."
+
+Chip, who at that time hadn't a girl--and didn't want one--let Silver
+out for another long gallop, seeing it was Weary.  Then he, too, gave
+up the chase and turned back.
+
+Glory settled to a long lope and kept steadily on, gleefully rattling
+the broken bit which dangled beneath his jaws.  Weary, helpless and
+amused and triumphant because the race was his, sat unconcernedly in
+the saddle and laid imaginary bets with himself on the outcome.
+Without doubt, Glory was headed for home.  Weary figured that, barring
+accidents, he could catch up Blazes, in the little pasture, and ride
+back to Dry Lake by the time the dance was in full swing--for the
+dancing before dark would be desultory and without much spirit.
+
+But the gate into the big field was closed and tied securely with a
+rope.  Glory comprehended the fact with one roll of his knowing eyes,
+turned away to the left and took the trail which wound like a snake
+into the foothills.  Clinging warily to the level where choice was
+given him, trotting where the way was rough, mile after mile he covered
+till even Weary's patience showed signs of weakening.
+
+Just then Glory turned, where a wire gate lay flat upon the ground,
+crossed a pebbly creek and galloped stiffly up to the very steps of a
+squat, vine-covered ranch-house where, like the Discontented Pendulum
+in the fable, he suddenly stopped.
+
+"Damn you, Glory--I could kill yuh for this!" gritted Weary, and slid
+reluctantly from the saddle.  For while the place seemed deserted, it
+was not.  There was a girl.
+
+She lay in a hammock; sprawled would come nearer describing her
+position.  She had some magazines scattered around upon the porch, and
+her hair hung down to the floor in a thick, dark braid.  She was
+dressed in a dark skirt and what, to Weary's untrained, masculine eyes,
+looked like a pink gunny sack.  In reality it was a kimono.  She
+appeared to be asleep.
+
+Weary saw a chance of leading Glory quietly to the corral before she
+woke.  There he could borrow a bridle and ride back whence he came, and
+he could explain about the bridle to Joe Meeker in town.  Joe was
+always good about lending things, anyway.  He gathered the fragments of
+the bit in one hand and clucked under his breath, in an agony lest his
+spurs should jingle.
+
+Glory turned upon him his beautiful, brown eyes, reproachfully
+questioning.
+
+Weary pulled steadily.  Glory stretched neck and nose obediently, but
+as to feet, they were down to stay.
+
+Weary glanced anxiously toward the hammock and perspired, then stood
+back and whispered language it would be a sin to repeat.  Glory,
+listening with unruffled calm, stood perfectly still, like a red statue
+in the sunshine.
+
+The face of the girl was hidden under one round, loose-sleeved arm.
+She did not move.  A faint breeze, freshening in spasmodic puffs,
+seized upon the hammock, and set it swaying gently.
+
+"Oh, damn you, Glory!" whispered Weary through his teeth.  But Glory,
+accustomed to being damned since he was a yearling, displayed
+absolutely no interest.  Indeed, he seemed inclined to doze there in
+the sun.
+
+Taking his hat--his best hat--from his head, he belabored Glory
+viciously over the jaws with it; silently except for the soft thud and
+slap of felt on flesh.  And the mood of him was as near murder as Weary
+could come.  Glory had been belabored with worse things than hats
+during his eventful career; he laid back his ears, shut his eyes tight
+and took it meekly.
+
+There came a gasping gurgle from the hammock, and Weary's hand stopped
+in mid-air.  The girl's head was burrowed in a pillow and her slippers
+tapped the floor while she laughed and laughed.
+
+Weary delivered a parting whack, put on his hat and looked at her
+uncertainly; grinned sheepishly when the humor of the thing came to him
+slowly, and finally sat down upon the porch steps and laughed with her.
+
+"Oh, gee!  It was too funny," gasped the girl, sitting up and wiping
+her eyes.
+
+Weary gasped also, though it was a small matter--a common little word
+of three letters.  In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, it
+was the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated him
+most and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too prim
+to be quite human.  The Happy Family had felt all along that they were
+artists in that line, and they knew that the precise sentences ever
+carried conviction of their truth.  Weary mopped his perspiring face
+upon a white silk handkerchief and meditated wonderingly.
+
+"You aren't a train-robber or a horsethief, or--anything, are you?" she
+asked him presently.  "You seemed quite upset at seeing the place
+wasn't deserted; but I'm sure, if you are a robber running away from a
+sheriff, I'd never dream of stopping you.  Please don't mind me; just
+make yourself at home."
+
+Weary turned his head and looked straight up at her.  "I'm afraid I'll
+have to disappoint yuh, Miss Satterly," he said blandly.  "I'm just an
+ordinary human, and my name is Davidson--better known as Weary.  You
+don't appear to remember me.  We've met before."
+
+She eyed him attentively.  "Perhaps we have--it you say so.  I'm
+wretched about remembering strange names and faces.  Was it at a dance?
+I meet so many fellows at dances--"  She waved a brown little hand and
+smiled deprecatingly.
+
+"Yes," said Weary laconically, still looking into her face.  "It was."
+
+She stared down at him, her brows puckered.  "I know, now.  It was at
+the Saint Patrick's dance in Dry Lake!  How silly of me to forget."
+
+Weary turned his gaze to the hill beyond the creek, and fanned his hot
+face with his hat.  "It was not.  It wasn't at that dance, at all."
+Funny she didn't remember him!  He suspected her of trying to fool him,
+now that he was actually in her presence, and he refused absolutely to
+be fooled.
+
+He could see that she threw out her hand helplessly.  "Well, I may as
+well 'fess up.  I don't remember you at all.  It's horrid of me, when
+you rode up in that lovely, unconventional way.  But you see, at dances
+one doesn't think of the men as individuals; they're just good or bad
+partners.  It resolves itself, you see, into a question of feet.  If I
+should dance with you again,--_did_ I dance with you?"
+
+Weary shot a quick, eloquent glance in her direction.  He did not say
+anything.
+
+Miss Satterly blushed.  "I was going to say, if I danced with you again
+I should no doubt remember you perfectly."
+
+Weary was betrayed into a smile.  "If I could dance in these boots, I'd
+take off my spurs and try and identify myself.  But I guess I'll have
+to ask yuh to take my word for it that we're acquainted."
+
+"Oh, I will.  I meant to, all along.  Why aren't you in town,
+celebrating?  I thought I was the only unpatriotic person in the
+country."
+
+"I just came from town," Weary told her, choosing, his words carefully
+while yet striving to be truthful.  No man likes confessing to a woman
+that he has been run away with.  "I--er--broke my bridle-bit, back a
+few miles" (it was fifteen, if it were a rod) "and so I rode in here to
+get one of Joe's.  I didn't want to bother anybody, but Glory seemed to
+think this was where the trail ended."
+
+Miss Satterly laughed again.  "It certainly was funny--you trying to
+get him away, and being so still about it.  I _heard_ you whispering
+swear-words, and I wanted to scream!  I just couldn't keep still any
+longer.  Is he balky?"
+
+"I don't know what he is--now," said Weary plaintively.  "He was, at
+that time.  He's generally what happens to be the most dev--mean under
+the circumstances."
+
+"Well, maybe he'll consent to being led to the stable; he looks as if
+he had a most unmerciful master!"  (Weary, being perfectly innocent,
+blushed guiltily)  "But I'll forgive you riding him like that, and make
+for you a pitcher of lemonade and give you some cake while he rests.
+You certainly must not ride back with him so tired."
+
+Fresh lemonade sounded tempting, after that ride.  And being lectured
+was not at all what he had expected from the schoolma'am--and who can
+fathom the mind of a man?  Weary gave her one complex glance, laid his
+hand upon the bridle and discovered that Glory, having done what
+mischief he could, was disposed to be very meek.  At the corral gate
+Weary looked back.
+
+"At dances," he mused aloud, "one doesn't consider men as
+individuals--it's merely a question of feet.  She took me for a train
+robber; and I danced with her about forty times, that night, and took
+her over to supper and we whacked up on our chicken salad because there
+was only one dish for the two of us--oh, mamma!"
+
+He pulled off the saddle with a preoccupied air and rubbed Glory down
+mechanically.  After that he went over and sat down on the oats' box
+and smoked two cigarettes while he pondered many things.
+
+He stood up and thoughtfully surveyed himself, brushed sundry bright
+sorrel hairs from his coat sleeves, stooped and tried to pinch creases
+into the knees of his trousers, which showed symptoms of "bagging."  He
+took off his hat and polished it with his sleeve he had just brushed so
+carefully, pinched four big dimples in the crown, turned it around
+three times for critical inspection, placed it upon his head at a
+studiously unstudied angle, felt anxiously at his neck-gear and slapped
+Glory affectionately upon the rump--and came near getting kicked into
+eternity.  Then he swung off up the path, softly whistling "In the
+good, old summer-time."  An old hen, hovering her chicks in the shade
+of the hay-rack, eyed him distrustfully and cried "k-r-_r-r-r_" in a
+shocked tone that sent her chickens burrowing deeper under her feathers.
+
+Miss Satterly had changed her pink kimono for a white shirt-waist and
+had fluffed her hair into a smooth coil on the top of her head.  Weary
+thought she looked very nice.  She could make excellent lemonade, he
+discovered, and she proved herself altogether different from what the
+messages she sent him had led him to expect.  Weary wondered, until he
+became too interested to think about it.
+
+Presently, without quite knowing how it came about, he was telling her
+all about the race.  Miss Satterly helped him reckon his
+winnings--which was not easy to do, since he had been offered all sorts
+of odds and had accepted them all with a recklessness that was
+appalling.  While her dark head was bent above the piece of paper, and
+her pencil was setting down figures with precise little jabs, he
+watched her.  He quite forgot the messages he had received from her
+through the medium of the Happy Family, and he quite forgot that women
+could hurt a man.
+
+"Mr. Davidson," she announced severely, when the figures had all been
+dabbed upon the paper, "You ought to have lost.  It would be a lesson
+to you.  I haven't quite figured all your winnings, these six-to-ones
+and ten-to-ones and--and all that, take time to unravel.  But you,
+yourself, stood to lose just three hundred and sixty-five dollars.
+Gee! but you cowboys are reckless."
+
+There was more that she said, but Weary did not mind.  He had
+discovered that he liked to look at the schoolma'am.  After that,
+nothing else was of much importance.  He began to wish he might prolong
+his opportunity for looking.
+
+"Say," he said suddenly, "Come on and let's go to the dance."
+
+The schoolma'am bit at her pencil and looked at him.  "It's late--"
+
+"Oh, there's time enough," urged Weary.
+
+"Maybe--but--"
+
+"Do yuh think we aren't well enough acquainted?"
+
+"Well we're not exactly old friends," she laughed.
+
+"We're going to be, so it's all the same," Weary surprised himself by
+declaring with much emphasis.  "You'd go, wouldn't you, if I was--well,
+say your brother?"
+
+Miss Satterly rested her chin in her palms and regarded him
+measuringly.  "I don't know.  I never had one--except three or four
+that I--er--adopted, at one time or another.  I suppose one could go,
+though--with a brother."
+
+Weary made a rapid, mental note for the benefit of the Happy
+Family--and particularly Cal Emmett.  "Darling Brother" was a myth,
+then; he ought to have known it, all along.  And if that were a myth,
+so probably were all those messages and things that he had hated.  She
+didn't care anything about him--and suddenly that struck him
+unpleasantly, instead of being a relief, as it consistently should have
+been.
+
+"I wish you'd adopt me, just for to-night, and go;" he said, and his
+eyes backed the wish.  "You see," he added artfully, "it's a sin to
+waste all that good music--a real, honest-to-God stringed orchestra
+from Great Falls, and--"
+
+"Meekers have taken both rigs," objected she, weakly.
+
+"I noticed a side saddle hanging in the stable," he wheedled, "and I'll
+gamble I can rustle something to put it on.  I--"
+
+"I should think you'd gambled enough for one day," she quelled.  "But
+that chunky little gray in the pasture is the horse I always ride.  I
+expect," she sighed, "my new dancing dress would be a sight to behold
+when I got there--and it won't wash.  But what does a mere man care--"
+
+"Wrap it up in something, and I'll carry it for yuh," Weary advised
+eagerly.  "You can change at the hotel.  It's dead easy."  He picked up
+his hat from the floor, rose and stood looking anxiously down at her.
+"About how soon," he insinuated, "can you be ready?"
+
+The schoolma'am looked up at him irresolutely, drew a long breath and
+then laughed.  "Oh, ten minutes will do," she surrendered.  "I shall
+put my new dress in a box, and go just as I am.  Do you _always_ get
+your own way, Mr. Davidson?"
+
+"Always," he lied convincingly over his shoulder, and jumped off the
+porch without bothering to use the steps.
+
+She was waiting when he led the little gray up to the house, and she
+came down the steps with a large, flat, pasteboard box in her arms.
+
+"Don't get off," she commanded.  "I can mount alone--and you'll have to
+carry the box.  It's going to be awkward, but you _would_ have me go."
+
+Weary took the box and prudently remained in the saddle.  Glory, having
+the man he did for master, was unused to the flutter of women's skirts
+so close, and rolled his eyes till the whites showed all round.
+Moreover, he was not satisfied with that big, white thing in Weary's
+arms.
+
+He stood quite still, however, until the schoolma'am was settled to her
+liking in the saddle, and had tucked her skirt down over the toe of her
+right foot.  He watched the proceeding with much interest--as did
+Weary--and then walked sedately from the yard, through the pebbly creek
+and up the slope beyond.  He heard Weary give a sigh of relief at his
+docility, and straightway thrust his nose between his white front feet,
+and proceeded to carry out certain little plans of his own.  Weary,
+taken by surprise and encumbered by the box, could not argue the point;
+he could only, in range parlance, "hang and rattle."
+
+"Oh," cried Miss Satterly, "if he's going to act like that, give me the
+box."
+
+Weary would like to have done so, but already he was half way to the
+gate, and his coat was standing straight out behind to prove the speed
+of his flight.  He could not even look back.  He just hung tight to the
+box and rode.
+
+The little gray was no racer, but his wind was good; and with urging he
+kept the fleeing Glory in sight for a mile or so.  Then, horse and
+rider were briefly silhouetted against the sunset as they topped a
+distant hill, and after that the schoolma'am rode by faith.
+
+At the gate which led into the big Flying U field she overtook them.
+Glory, placid as a sheep, was nibbling a frayed end of the rope which
+held the gate shut, and Weary, the big box balanced in front of him
+across the saddle, was smoking a cigarette.
+
+"Well," greeted Miss Satterly breathlessly, and rather tartly, "only
+for you having my dress, I'd have gone straight back home.  Do brothers
+always act like this?"
+
+"Search me," said Weary, shaking his head.  "Anyway, yuh better talk to
+Glory about it.  He appears to be running this show.  When I rode out
+to your place, I didn't have any bit in his mouth at all.  Coming back,
+I've got one of Joe Meeker's teething rings, that wouldn't hold a pet
+turkey.  But we're going to the dance, Miss Satterly.  Don't you worry
+none about that."
+
+Miss Satterly laughed and rode ahead of them.  "I'm going," she
+announced firmly.  "It's leap year, and I think I can rustle a partner
+if you decide to sit and look through that gate all night."
+
+"You'll need your pretty dress.  Glory ain't much used to escorting
+young ladies, but he's a gentleman; we're coming, all right."
+
+It was strange, perhaps, that Glory should miss the chance of proving
+his master a liar, but he nevertheless ambled decorously to Dry Lake
+and did nothing more unseemly than nipping occasionally at the neck of
+the little gray.
+
+That is how Weary learned that large, brown eyes do not look sidelong
+at a man after the manner of long, heavy-lidded blue ones; and that,
+also, is how he came to throw up his head and deny to himself and his
+world that he ever was shy of women.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+Weary rode stealthily around the corner of the little, frame
+school-house and was not disappointed.  The schoolma'am was sitting
+unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her
+face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to
+approach the place.  Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the
+shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing
+fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they
+were caressing so wantonly.  She was humming a tune softly to herself.
+Weary caught the words, sung absently, under her breath:
+
+  "Didn't make no blunder--yuh couldn't confuse him.
+  A perfect wonder, yuh had to choose him!"
+
+The schoolma'am was addicted to coon songs of the period.
+
+She seemed to be very busy about something and Weary, craning his neck
+to see over her shoulder, wondered what.  Also, he wished he knew what
+she was thinking about, and he hoped her thoughts were not remote from
+himself.  Just then Glory showed unmistakable and malicious intentions
+of sneezing, and Weary, catching a glimpse of something in Miss
+Satterly's hand, hastened to make his presence known.
+
+"I hope yuh aren't limbering up that weapon of destruction on my
+account, Schoolma'am," he observed mildly.
+
+The schoolma'am jumped and slid something out of sight under her
+ruffled, white apron.  "Weary Davidson, how long have you been standing
+there?  I believe you'd come straight down from the sky or straight up
+from the ground, if you could manage it.  You seem capable of doing
+everything except coming by the trail like a sensible man."  This with
+severity.
+
+Weary swung a long leg over Glory's back and came lightly to earth,
+immediately taking possession of the vacant half of doorstep.  The
+schoolma'am obligingly drew skirts aside to make room for him--an
+inconsistent movement not at all in harmony with her eyebrows, which
+were disapproving.
+
+"Yuh don't like ordinary men.  Yuh said so, once when I said I was just
+a plain, ordinary man.  I've sworn off being ordinary since yuh gave me
+that tip," he said cheerfully.  "Let's have a look at that cannon
+you're hiding under your apron.  Where did yuh resurrect it?  Out of
+some old Indian grave?
+
+"Mamma!  It won't go off sudden and unexpected, will it?  What kind uh
+shells--oh, mamma!"  He pushed his hat back off his forehead with a
+gesture not left behind with his boyhood, held the object the length of
+his long arm away and regarded it gravely.
+
+It was an old, old "bull-dog" revolver, freckled with rust until it
+bore a strong resemblance to certain noses which Miss Satterly looked
+down upon daily.  The cylinder was plugged with rolls of drab cotton
+cloth, supposedly in imitation of real bullets.  It was obviously
+during the plugging process that Miss Satterly had been interrupted,
+for a drab string hung limply from one hole.  On the whole, the thing
+did not look particularly formidable, and Weary's lips twitched.
+
+"A tramp stopped here the other day, and--I was frightened a little,"
+she was explaining, pink-cheeked.  "So aunt Meeker found this up in the
+loft and she thought it would do to--to bluff with."
+
+Weary aimed carefully at a venturesome and highly inquisitive gopher
+and pulled, with some effort, the rusted trigger.  The gopher stood
+upon his hind feet and chipped derisively.
+
+"You see, it just insults him.  Yuh could'nt scare a blind man with
+it--  Look here!  If yuh go pouting up your lips like that again,
+something's going to happen 'em.  There's a limit to what a man can
+stand."
+
+Miss Satterly hastily drew her mouth into a thin, untempting, red
+streak, for she had not seen Weary Davidson, on an average, twice a
+week for the last four months for nothing.  He was not the man to bluff.
+
+"Of course," she said resentfully, "you can make fun of it--but all the
+same, it's better than nothing.  It answers the purpose."
+
+Weary turned his head till he could look straight into her eyes--a
+thing he seemed rather fond of doing, lately.  "What purpose?  It sure
+isn't ornamental; it's a little the hardest looker I ever saw in the
+shape of a gun.  And it won't scare anything.  If you want a gun, why,
+take one that can make good.  You can have mine; just watch what a
+different effect it has."
+
+He reached backward and drew a shining thing from his pocket, flipped
+it downward--and the effect was unmistakably different.  The gopher
+leaped and rolled backward and then lay still, and Miss Satterly gave a
+little, startled scream and jumped quite off the doorstep.
+
+"Don't yuh see?  You couldn't raise any such a dust with yours.  If yuh
+pack a gun, you always want to pack one that's ready and willing to do
+business on short notice.  I'll let yuh have this, if you're sure it's
+safe with yuh.  I'd hate to have you shooting yourself accidental."
+
+Weary raised innocent eyes to her face and polished the gun caressingly
+with his handkerchief.  "Try it once," he urged.
+
+The schoolma'am was fond of boasting that she never screamed at
+anything.  She had screamed just now, over a foolish little thing, and
+it goes without saying she was angry with the cause.  She did not sit
+down again beside him, and she did not take the gun he was holding up
+invitingly to her.  She put her hands behind her and stood accusingly
+before him with the look upon her face which never failed to make
+sundry small Beckmans and Pilgreens squirm on their benches when she
+assumed it in school.
+
+"Mr. Davidson"--not Weary Davidson, as she was wont to call him--"you
+have killed my pet gopher.  All summer I have fed him, and he would eat
+out of my hand."
+
+Weary cast a jealous eye upon the limp, little animal, searched his
+heart for remorse and found none.  Ornery little brute, to get familiar
+with _his_ schoolma'am!
+
+"I did not think you could be so wantonly cruel, and I am astonished
+and--and deeply pained to discover that fatal flaw in your character."
+
+Weary began to squirm, after the manner of delinquent Beckmans and
+Pilgreens.  One thing he had learned: When the schoolma'am rose to
+irreproachable English, there was trouble a-brew.  It was a sign he had
+never known to fail.
+
+"I cannot understand the depraved instinct which prompts a man brutally
+to destroy a life he cannot restore, and which in no way menaces his
+own--or even interferes with his comfort.  You may apologize to me; you
+may even be sincerely repentant"--the schoolma'am's tone at this point
+implied considerable doubt--"but you are powerless to return the life
+you have so heedlessly taken.  You have revealed a low, brutal trait
+which I had hoped your nature could not harbor, and I am--am deeply
+shocked and--and grieved."
+
+Just here a tiny, dry-weather whirlwind swept around the corner, caught
+ruffled, white apron and blue skirt in its gyrations and, pushing them
+wickedly aside, gave Weary a brief, delicious glimpse of two small,
+slippered feet and two distracting ankles.  The schoolma'am blushed and
+retreated to the doorstep, but she did not sit down.  She still stood
+straight and displeased beside him.  Evidently she was still shocked
+and grieved.
+
+Weary tipped his head to one side so that be might look up at her from
+under his hat-brim.  "I'll get yuh another gopher; six, if yuh say so,"
+he soothed, "The woods is full of 'em."
+
+The angry, brown eyes of Miss Satterly swept the barren hills
+contemptuously.  She would not even look at him.  "Pray do not
+inconvenience yourself, Mr. Davidson.  It is not the gopher that I care
+for so much--it is the principle."
+
+Weary sighed and slid the gun back into his pocket.  It seemed to him
+that Miss Satterly, adorable as she always was, was also rather
+unreasonable at times.  "All right, I'll get yuh another principle,
+then."
+
+"Mr. Davidson," she said sternly, "you are perfectly odious!"
+
+"Is that something nice, Girlie?"  Weary smiled trustfully up at her.
+
+"Odious," explained the schoolma'am haughtily, "is not something nice.
+I'm sorry your education has been so neglected.  Odious, Mr. Davidson,
+is a synonym for hateful, obnoxious, repulsive, disagreeable,
+despicable--"
+
+"I never did like cinnamon, anyhow," put in Weary, cheerfully.
+
+"I did not mention cinnamon.  I said--"
+
+"Say, yuh look out uh sight with your hair fixed that way.  I wish
+you'd wear it like that all the time," he observed irrelevantly,
+looking up at her with his sunniest smile.
+
+"I wish to goodness I were really out of sight," snapped the
+schoolma'am.  "You make me exceedingly weary."
+
+"_Mrs._ Weary," corrected he, complacently.  "That's what I'm sure
+aiming at."
+
+"You aim wide of the mark, then," she retorted valiantly, though
+confusion waved a red flag in either cheek.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  A minute ago you were roasting me because my aim
+was too good," he contended mildly, glancing involuntarily toward the
+gopher stretched upon its little, yellow back, its four small feet
+turned pitifully up to the blue.
+
+"If you had an atom of decency you'd be ashamed to mention that tribute
+to your diabolical marksmanship."
+
+"Oh, mamma!" ejaculated Weary under his breath, and began to make
+himself a smoke.  His guardian angel was exhorting him to silence, but
+it preached, as usual, to unsentient ears.
+
+"_I_ never mentioned all those things," he denied meekly.  "It's you
+that keeps on mentioning.  I wish yuh wouldn't.  I like to hear you
+talk, all right, and flop all those big words easy as roping a calf;
+but I wish you'd let me choose your subject for yuh.  I could easy name
+one where you could use words just as high and wide and handsome, and a
+heap more pleasant than the brand you've got corralled.  Try admiration
+and felicitation and exhilarating, ecstatic osculation--"  He stopped
+to run the edge of paper along his tongue, and perhaps it was as well
+he did; there was no need of making her any angrier.  Miss Satterly
+hated to feel that she was worsted, and it was quite clear that Weary
+had all along been "guying" her.
+
+"If you came here to make me _hate_ you, you have accomplished your
+errand admirably; it would be advisable now for you to hike."
+
+Weary, struck by that incongruous last word, did an unforgivable thing.
+He laughed and laughed, while the match he had just lighted flared,
+sent up a blue thread of brimstone smoke, licked along the white wood
+and scorched his fingers painfully before he remembered his cigarette.
+
+Miss Satterly turned abruptly and went into the house, put on her hat
+and took up the little, tin lard-pail in which her aunt Meeker always
+packed her lunch.  She was back, had the key turned in the lock and was
+slowly pulling on her gloves by the time Weary recovered from his mirth.
+
+"Since you will not leave the place, I shall do so.  I want to say
+first, however, that I not only think you odious, but all the synonyms
+I mentioned besides.  You need not come for me to go to the Labor Day
+dance, because I will not go with you.  I shall go with Joe."
+
+Weary gave her a startled glance and almost dropped his cigarette.
+This seemed going rather far, he thought--but of course she didn't
+really mean it; the schoolma'am, he heartened himself with thinking,
+was an awful, little bluffer.
+
+"Don't go off mad, Girlie.  I'm sorry I killed your gopher--on the
+dead, I am.  I just didn't think, That's a habit I've got--not thinking.
+
+"Say!  You stay, and we'll have a funeral.  It isn't every common,
+scrub gopher that can have a real funeral with mourners and music when
+he goes over the Big Divide.  He--he'll appreciate the honor; I would,
+I know, if it was me."
+
+The schoolma'am took a few steps and stopped, evidently in some
+difficulty with her glove.  From the look of her, no human being was
+within a mile of her; she certainly did not seem to hear anything Weary
+was saying.
+
+"Say!  I'll sing a song over him, if you'll wait a minute.  I know two
+whole verses of 'Bill Bailey,' and the chorus to 'Good Old Summertime.'
+I can shuffle the two together and make a full deck.  I believe they'd
+go fine together.
+
+"Say, you never heard me sing, did yuh?  It's worth waiting for--only
+yuh want to hang tight to something when I start.  Come on--I'll let
+you be the mourner."
+
+Since Miss Satterly had been taking steps quite regularly while Weary
+was speaking, she was now several rods away--and she had, more than
+ever, the appearance of not hearing him and of not wanting to hear.
+
+"Say, Tee-e-cher!"
+
+The schoolma'am refused to stop, or to turn her head a fraction of an
+inch, and Weary's face sobered a little.  It was the first time that
+inimitable "Tee-e-cher" of his had failed to bring the smile back into
+the eyes of Miss Satterly.  He looked after her dubiously.  Her
+shoulders were thrown well back and her feet pressed their imprint
+firmly into the yellow dust of the trail.  In a minute she would be
+quite out of hearing.
+
+Weary got up, took a step and grasped Glory's trailing bridle-rein and
+hurried after her much faster than Glory liked and which he reproved
+with stiffened knees and a general pulling back on the reins.
+
+"Say!  You wouldn't get mad at a little thing like that, would yuh?"
+expostulated Weary, when he overtook her.  "You know I didn't mean
+anything, Girlie."
+
+"I do not consider it a little thing," said the schoolma'am, icily.
+
+Thus rebuffed, Weary walked silently beside her up the hill--silently,
+that is, save for the subdued jingling of his spurs.  He was beginning
+to realize that there was an uncomfortable, heavy feeling in his chest,
+on the side where his heart was.  Still, he was of a hopeful nature and
+presently tried again.
+
+"How many times must I say I'm sorry, Schoolma'am?  You don't look so
+pretty when you're mad; you've got dimples, remember, and yuh ought to
+give 'em a chance.  Let's sit down on this rock while I square myself.
+Come on."  His tone was wheedling in the extreme.
+
+Miss Satterly, not replying a word, kept straight on up the hill; and
+Weary, sighing heavily, followed.
+
+"Don't you want to ride Glory a ways?  He's real good, to-day.  He put
+in the whole of yesterday working out all the cussedness that's been
+accumulating in his system for a week, so he's dead gentle.  I'll lead
+him, for yuh."
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Satterly.  "I prefer to walk."
+
+Weary sighed again, but clung to his general hopefulness, as was his
+nature.  It took a great deal to rouse Weary; perhaps the schoolma'am
+was trying to find just how much.
+
+"Say, you'd a died laughing if you'd seen old Glory yesterday; he liked
+to scared Slim plumb to death.  We were working in the big corral and
+Slim got down on one knee to fix his spur.  Glory saw him kneel down,
+and gave a running jump and went clear over Slim's head.  Slim hit for
+the closest fence, and he never looked back till he was clean over on
+the other side.  Mamma!  I was sure amused.  I thought Glory had done
+about everything there was to do--but I tell yuh, that horse has got an
+imagination that will make him famous some day."
+
+For the first time since the day of his spectacular introduction to
+her, Miss Satterly displayed absolutely no interest in the
+eccentricities of Glory.  Slowly it began to dawn upon Weary that she
+did not intend to thaw that evening.  He glanced at her sidelong, and
+his eyes had a certain gleam that was not there five minutes before.
+He swung along beside her till they reached the top of the hill, fell
+behind without a word and mounted Glory.
+
+When he overtook Miss Satterly, he lifted his hat to her nonchalantly,
+touched up Glory with his spurs, and clattered away down the coulee,
+leaving the schoolma'am in a haze of yellow dust and bewilderment far
+in the rear.
+
+The next morning Miss Satterly went very early to the school-house--for
+what purpose she did not say.  A meadow-lark on the doorstep greeted
+her with his short, sweet ripple of sound and then flew to a nearby
+sage bush and watched her curiously.  She looked about her half
+expectant, half disappointed.
+
+A little, fresh mound marked the spot where the dead gopher had been,
+and a narrow strip of shingle stood upright at the end.  Someone had
+scratched the words with a knife:
+
+  GONE BUT NOT FORGOT.
+
+Probably the last word would have been given its full complement of
+syllables, had the shingle been wider; as it was, the "forgot" was
+cramped until it was barely intelligible.
+
+Miss Satterly, observing the mark of high-heeled boots in the immediate
+vicinity of the grave, caught herself wondering if the remains had been
+laid away to the tune of "Bill Bailey," with the chorus of "Good Old
+Summertime" shuffled in to make a full deck.  She started to laugh and
+found that laughter was quite impossible.
+
+Suddenly the schoolma'am did a strange thing.  She glanced about to
+make sure no one was in sight, knelt and patted the tiny mound very
+tenderly; then, stooping quickly, she pressed her lips impulsively upon
+the rude lettering of the shingle.  When she sprang up her cheeks were
+very red, her eyes dewy and lovely, and the little laugh she gave at
+herself was all atremble.  If lovers could be summoned as opportunely
+in real life as they are in stories, hearts would not ache so often and
+life would be quite monotonously serene.
+
+Weary was at that moment twenty miles away, busily engaged in
+chastising Glory, that had refused point-blank to cross a certain
+washout.  His mind being wholly absorbed in the argument, he was not
+susceptible to telepathic messages from the Meeker school-house--which
+was a  pity.
+
+Also, it was a pity he could not know that Miss Satterly lingered late
+at the school-house that night, doing nothing but watch the trail where
+it lay, brown and distinct and utterly deserted, on the top of the bill
+a quarter of a mile away.  It is true she had artfully scattered a
+profusion of papers over her desk and would undoubtedly have been
+discovered hard at work upon them and very much astonished at beholding
+him--if he had come.  It is probable that Weary would have found her
+quite unapproachable, intrenched behind a bulwark of dignity and
+correct English.
+
+When the shadow of the schoolhouse stretched somberly away to the very
+edge of the coulee.  Miss Satterly gathered up the studied confusion on
+her desk, bundled the papers inside, and turned the key with a snap,
+jabbed three hatpins viciously through her hat and her hair and went
+home--and perhaps it were well that Weary was not there at that time.
+
+The next night, papers strewed the desk as before, and the schoolma'am
+stood by the window, her elbows planted on the unpainted sill, and
+watched the trail listlessly.  Her eyes were big and wistful, like a
+hurt child's, and her cheeks were not red as usual, nor even pink.  But
+the trail lay again brown, and silent, and lonesome, with no quick
+hoof-beats to send the dust swirling up in a cloud.
+
+The shadows flowed into the coulee until it was full to the brim and
+threatening the golden hilltop with a brown veil of shade before Miss
+Satterly locked her door and went home.  When she reached her aunt
+Meeker's she did not want any supper and she said her head ached.  But
+that was not quite true; it was not her head that ached so much; it was
+her heart.
+
+The third day, the schoolma'am fussed a long time with her hair, which
+she did in four different styles.  The last style was the one which
+Weary had pronounced "out uh sight"--only she added a white chiffon bow
+which she had before kept sacred to dances and which Weary always
+admired.  At noon she encouraged the children to gather wild flowers
+from the coulee, and she filled several tin cans with water from the
+spring and arranged the bouquets with much care.  Weary loved flowers.
+Nearly every time he came he had a little bunch stuck under his
+hat-band.  A few she put in her hair, along with the chiffon bow.  She
+urged the children through their work and dismissed them at eleven
+minutes to four and told them to go straight home.
+
+After she had swept the floor and dusted everything that could be
+dusted so that the school-room had the peculiar, immaculate emptiness
+and forlornness, like a church on a week day, and had taken a few of
+the brightest flowers and pinned them upon her white shirt-waist.  Miss
+Satterly tuned her guitar in minor and went out and sat upon the shady
+doorstep and waited frankly, strumming plaintive little airs while she
+watched the trail.  To-morrow was Labor Day, and so he would certainly
+ride over to-night to see if she had really meant it (Miss Satterly did
+not explain to herself what "it" was; surely, there was no need).
+
+At half-past five--Miss Satterly had looked at her watch seventeen
+times during the interval--a tiny cloud of dust rose over the brow of
+the hill, and her heart danced in her chest until she could scarce
+breathe.
+
+The cloud grew and grew and began drifting down the trail, and behind
+it a black something rose over the hilltop and followed it, so
+proclaiming itself a horseman galloping swiftly towards her.  The color
+spread from the schoolma'am's cheeks to her brow and throat.  Her
+fingers forgot their cunning and plucked harrowing discords from the
+strings, but her lips were parted and smiling tremulously.  It was
+late--she had almost given up looking--but he was coming!  She knew be
+would come.  Coming at a breakneck pace--he must be pretty anxious,
+too.  The schoolma'am recovered a bit of control and revolved in her
+mind several pert forms of greeting.  She would not be too ready to
+forgive him--it would do him good to keep him anxious and uncertain for
+a while before she gave in.
+
+Now he was near the place where he would turn off the main road and
+gallop straight to her.  Glory always made that turn of his own accord,
+lately.  Weary had told her, last Sunday, how he could never get Glory
+past that turn, any more, without a fight, no matter what might be the
+day or the hour.
+
+Now he would swing into the school-house trail.  Miss Satterly raised
+both hands with a very feminine gesture and patted her hair
+tentatively, tucking in a stray lock here and there.
+
+Her hands dropped heavily to her lap, just as the blood dropped away
+from her cheeks and the happy glow dulled in her eyes.  It was not
+Weary.  It was the Swede who worked for Jim Adams and who rode a sorrel
+horse which, at a distance, resembled Glory.
+
+Mechanically she watched him go on down the trail and out of sight;
+picked up her guitar which had grown suddenly heavy, crept inside and
+closed the door and locked it She looked around the clean, eerily
+silent schoolroom, walked with echoing steps to the desk and laid her
+head down among the cans of sweet-smelling, prairie flowers and cried
+softly, in a tired, heartbreaking fashion that made her throat ache,
+and her head.
+
+The shadows had flowed over the coulee-rim and the hilltops were
+smothered in gloom when Miss Satterly went home that night, and her
+aunt Meeker sent her straight to bed and dosed her with horrible home
+remedies.
+
+By morning she had recovered her spirit--her revengeful spirit, which
+she kept as the hours wore on and Weary did not come.  She would teach
+him a lesson, she told herself often.  By evening, however, her mood
+softened.  There were many things that could have kept him away against
+his will; he was not his own master, and it was shipping time.
+Probably he had been out with the roundup, or something.  She decided
+that petty revenge is unwomanly besides giving evidence of a narrow
+mind and shallow, and if Weary could show a good and sufficient reason
+for staying away like that when there were matters to be settled
+between them, she would not be petty and mean about it; she would be
+divine--and forgive.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+Weary was standing pensively by the door, debating with himself the
+advisability of going boldly over and claiming the first waltz with the
+schoolma'am--and taking a chance on being refused--when Cal Emmett gave
+him a vicious poke in the ribs by way of securing his attention.
+
+"Do yuh see that bunch uh red loco over there by the organ?" he wanted
+to know.  "That's Bert Rogers' cousin from Iowa."
+
+Weary looked and wilted against the wall.  "Oh, Mamma!" he gasped.
+
+"Ain't she a peach?  There'll be more than one pair uh hands go into
+the air to-night.  It's a good thing Len got the drop on me first or
+I'd be making seven kinds of a fool uh myself, chances is.  Bert says
+she's bad medicine--a man-killer from away back.
+
+"Say, she's giving us the bad-eye.  Don't rubber like that, Weary; it
+ain't good manners, and besides; the schoolma'am's getting fighty, if
+I'm any judge."
+
+Weary pulled himself together and tried to look away, but a pair of
+long blue eyes with heavy white lids drew him hypnotically across the
+room.  He did not want to go; he did not mean to go, but the first he
+knew he was standing before her and she was smiling up at him just as
+she used to do.  And an evil spell seemed to fall upon Weary, so that
+he thought one set of thoughts while his lips uttered sentences quite
+apart from his wishes.  He was telling her, for instance, that he was
+glad to see her; and he was not glad.  He was wishing the train which
+brought her to Montana had jumped the track and gone over a high
+cut-bank, somewhere.
+
+She continued to smile up at him, and she called him Will and held out
+her hand.  When, squirming inward protest, he took it, she laid her
+left hand upon his and somehow made him feel as if he were in a trap.
+Her left hand was soft and plump and cool, and it was covered with
+rings that gave flashes and sparkles of light when she moved, and her
+nails were manicured to a degree not often seen in Dry Lake.  She drew
+her fingers caressingly over his hand and spoke to him in _italics_, in
+the way that had made many a man lose his head and say things extremely
+foolish.  Her name was Myrtle Forsyth, as Weary had cause to remember.
+
+"How strange to see you away out here," she murmured, and glanced to
+where the musicians were beginning to play little preparatory strains.
+"Have you forgotten how to _waltz_, Will?  You used to dance so _well_!"
+
+What could a man do after a hint as broad as that one?  Weary held out
+his arm meekly, while mentally he was gnashing his teeth, and muttered
+something about her giving him a trial.  And she slipped her hand under
+his elbow with a proprietary air that was not lost upon a certain
+brown-eyed young woman across the hall.
+
+Weary had said some hard things to Myrtle Forsyth when he talked with
+her last, away back in Iowa; he had hoped to heaven he never would see
+her again.  Now, she observed that he had not lost his good looks in
+grieving over her.  She decided that he was even better looking; there
+was an air of strength and a self poise that was very becoming to his
+broad shoulders and the six feet two inches of his height.  She
+thought, before the waltz was over, that she had made a mistake when
+she threw him over--a mistake which she ought to rectify at once.
+
+Weary never knew how she managed it--in truth, he was not aware that
+she did it at all--but he seemed to dance a great many times with her
+of the long eyes and the bright auburn hair.  The schoolma'am seemed
+always to be at the farther end of the room, and she appeared to be
+enjoying herself very much and to dance incessantly.
+
+Once he broke away from Miss Forsyth and went and asked Miss Satterly
+for the next waltz; but she opened her big eyes at him and assured him
+politely that she was engaged.  He tried for a quadrille, a two-step, a
+schottische--even for a polka, which she knew he hated; but the
+schoolma'am was, apparently, the most engaged young woman in Dry Lake
+that night.
+
+So Weary owned himself beaten and went back to Miss Forsyth, who had
+been watching and learning many things and making certain plans.  Weary
+danced with her once and took a fit of sulking, when he stood over by
+the door and smoked cigarettes and watched moodily the whirling
+couples.  Miss Forsyth drifted to other acquaintances, which was
+natural; what was not so natural, to Weary's mind, was to see her
+sitting out a quadrille with the schoolma'am.
+
+That did not look good to Weary, and he came near going over and
+demanding to know what they were talking about.  He was ready to bet
+that Myrt Forsyte, with that smile, was up to some deviltry--and he
+wished he knew what.  She reminded him somewhat of Glory when Glory was
+cloyed with peaceful living.  He even told himself viciously that Myrt
+Forsyth had hair the exact shade of Glory's, and it came near giving
+him a dislike of the horse.
+
+The conversation in the corner, after certain conventional subjects had
+been exhausted, came to Miss Forsyth's desire something like this: She
+said how she loved to waltz,--with the right partner, that is.  Apropos
+the right partner, she glanced slyly from the end of her long eyes and
+remarked:
+
+"Will--Mr. Davidson--is an _ideal_ partner, don't you think?  Are
+you--but of _course_ you must be _acquainted_ with him, living in the
+same _neighborhood_?"  Her inflection made a question of the
+declaration.
+
+"Certainly I am acquainted with Mr. Davidson," said Miss Satterly with
+just the right shade of indifference.  "He does dance very well, though
+there are others I like better."  That, of course, was a prevarication.
+"You knew him before tonight?"
+
+Miss Forsyth laughed that sort of laugh which may mean anything you
+like.  "_Knew_ him?  Why, we were en--that is, we grew _up_ in the same
+_town_.  I was so perfectly _amazed_ to find him _here_, poor fellow."
+
+"Why poor fellow?" asked Miss Satterly, the direct.  "Because you found
+him? or because he is here?"
+
+The long eyes regarded her curiously.  "Why, don't you _know_?
+Hasn't--hasn't it _followed_ him?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," said the schoolma'am, calmly facing the
+stare.  "If you mean a dog, he doesn't own one, I believe.  Cowboys
+don't seem to take to dogs; they're afraid they might be mistaken for
+sheep-herders, perhaps--and that would be a disgrace."
+
+Miss Forsyth leaned back and her eyes, half closed as they were, saw
+Weary away down by the door.  "No, I didn't mean a _dog_.  I'm _glad_
+if he has gotten _quite away_ from--he's such a _dear_ fellow!  Even if
+he _did_--but I never believed it, you know.  If only he had _trusted_
+me, and _stayed_ to face--  But he went without telling me _goodbye_,
+even, and we--  But he was _afraid_, you see--"
+
+Miss Satterly also glanced across to where Weary stood gloomily alone,
+his hands thrust into his pockets.  "I really can't imagine Mr.
+Davidson as being afraid," she remarked defensively.
+
+"Oh, but you don't understand!  Will is _physically_ brave--and he was
+afraid I--  but I _believed_ in him, _always_--even when--"  She broke
+off suddenly and became prettily diffident.  "I wonder _why_ I am
+talking to _you_ like this.  But there is something so _sympathetic_ in
+your very _atmosphere_--and seeing _him_ so _unexpectedly_ brought it
+all _back_--and it seemed as if I _must_ talk to _someone_, or I should
+_shriek_."  (Myrtle Forsyth was often just upon the point of
+"shrieking") "And he was _so_ glad to see me--and when I _told_ him I
+never _believed_ a _word_--  But you see, _leaving_ the way he _did_--"
+
+"Well," said Miss Satterly rather unsympathetically, "and how did he
+leave, then?"
+
+Miss Forsyth twisted her watch chain and hesitated.  "I really ought
+_not_ to say a _word_--if you really don't _know_--what he _did_--"
+
+"If it's to his discredit," said the schoolma'am, looking straight at
+her, "I certainly don't know.  It must have been something awful,
+judging from your tone.  Did he"--she spoke solemnly--"did he
+_mur-r_der ten people, old men and children, and throw their bodies
+into--a _well_?"
+
+It is saying much for Miss Forsyth that she did not look as
+disconcerted as she felt.  She did, however, show a rather catty look
+in her eyes, and her voice was tinged faintly with malice.  "There are
+_other_ crimes--beside--_murder_," she reminded.  "I won't tell _what_
+it was--but--but _Will_ found it necessary to _leave in the night_!  He
+did not even come to tell _me_ goodbye, and I have--but now we have met
+by _chance_, and I could _explain_--and so," she smiled tremulously at
+the schoolma'am, "I _know_ you can _understand_--and you will not
+_mention_ to _anyone_ what I have told you.  I'm too _impulsive_--and I
+felt _drawn_ to you, somehow.  I--I would _die_ if I thought any _harm_
+could come to Will because of my _confiding_ in you.  A woman," she
+added pensively, "has so _much_ to bear--and this has been very
+_hard_--because it was not a thing I could _talk over_--not even with
+my own _mother_!"  Miss Forsyth had the knack of saying very little
+that was definite, and implying a great deal.  This method saved her
+the unpleasantness of retraction, and had quite as deep an effect is if
+she came out plainly.  She smiled confidingly down at the schoolma'am
+and went off to waltz with Bert Rogers, apparently quite satisfied with
+what she had accomplished.
+
+Miss Satterly sat very still, scarce thinking consciously.  She stared
+at Weary and tried to imagine him a fugitive from his native town, and
+in spite of herself wondered what it was he had done.  It must be
+something very bad, and she shrank from the thought.  Then Cal Emmett
+came up to ask her for a dance, and she went with him thankfully and
+tried to forget the things she had heard.
+
+Weary, after dancing with every woman but the one he wanted, and
+finding himself beside Myrtle Forsyth with a frequency that puzzled
+him, felt an unutterable disgust for the whole thing.  After a waltz
+quadrille, during which he seemed to get her out of his arms only to
+find her swinging into them again, and smiling up at him in a way he
+knew of old, he made desperately for the door; snatched up the first
+gray hat he came to--which happened to belong to Chip--and went out
+into the dewy darkness.
+
+It was half an hour before he could draw the hostler of the Dry Lake
+stable away from a crap game, and it was another half hour before he
+succeeded in overcoming Glory's disinclination for a gallop over the
+prairie alone.
+
+But it was two hours before Miss Forsythe gave over watching furtively
+the door, and it was daylight before Chip Emmett found a gray hat under
+the water bench--a hat which he finally recognized as Weary's and so
+appropriated to his own use.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOUR
+
+Weary clattered up to the school-house door to find it erupting divers
+specimens of young America--by adoption, some of them.  He greeted each
+one cheerfully by name and waited upon his horse in the shade.
+
+Close behind the last sun-bonnet came Miss Satterly, key in hand.
+Evidently she had no intention of lingering, that night; Weary smiled
+down upon her tentatively and made a hasty guess as to her state of
+mind--a very important factor in view of what he had come to say.
+
+"It's awful hot, Schoolma'am; if I were you I'd wait a while--till the
+sun lets up a little."
+
+To his unbounded surprise, Miss Satterly calmly sat down upon the
+doorstep.  Weary promptly slid out of the saddle and sat down beside
+her, thankful that the step was not a wide one.  "You've been
+unmercifully hard to locate since the dance," he complained.  "I like
+to lost my job, chasing over this way, when I was supposed to be headed
+another direction.  I came by here last night at five minutes after
+four, and you weren't in sight anywhere; was yesterday a holiday?"
+
+"You probably didn't look in the window," said the schoolma'am.  "I was
+writing letters here till after five."
+
+"With the door shut and locked?"
+
+"The wind blew so," explained Miss Satterly, lamely.  "And that lock--"
+
+"First I knew of the wind blowing yesterday.  It was as hot as the hubs
+uh he--as blue blazes when I came by.  There weren't any windows up,
+even--I hope you was real comfortable."
+
+"Perfectly," she assured him.
+
+"I'll gamble yuh were!  Well, and where were yuh cached last Sunday?"
+
+"Nowhere.  I went with Bert and Miss Forsyth up in the mountains.  We
+took our lunch and had a perfectly lovely time."
+
+"I'm glad somebody had a good time.  I got away at nine o'clock and
+came over to Meeker's--and you weren't there; so I rode the rim-rocks
+till sundown, trying to locate yuh.  It's easier hunting strays in the
+Bad Lands."
+
+Miss Satterly seemed about to speak, but she changed her mind and gazed
+at the coulee-rim.
+
+"It's hard to get away, these days," Weary went on explaining.  "I
+wanted to come before the dance, but we were gathering some stuff out
+the other way, and I couldn't.  The Old Man is shipping, yuh see; we're
+holding a bunch right now, waiting for cars.  I got Happy Jack to stand
+herd in my place, is how I got here."
+
+The schoolma'am yawned apologetically into her palm.  Evidently she was
+not greatly interested in the comings and goings of Weary Davidson.
+
+"How did yuh like the dance?" he asked, coming to the subject that he
+knew was the vital point.
+
+"Lovely," said the schoolma'am briefly, but with fervor.
+
+"Different here," asserted Weary.  "I drifted, right before supper."
+
+"_Did_ you?"  Miss Satterly accented the first word in a way she taught
+her pupils indicated surprise.  "I don't reckon you noticed it.  You
+were pretty busy, about then."
+
+Miss Satterly laughed languid assent.
+
+"I never knew before that Bert Rogers was any relation of Myrt
+Forsyth," observed Weary, edging still nearer the vital point.  "They
+sure aren't much alike."
+
+"You used to know her?" asked Miss Satterly, politely.
+
+"Well, I should say yes.  I used to go to school with Myrt.  How do you
+like her?"
+
+"Lovely," said Miss Satterly, this time without fervor.
+
+Weary began digging a trench with his spurs.  He wished the schoolma'am
+would not limit herself so rigidly to that one adjective.  It became
+unmeaning with much use, so that it left a fellow completely in the
+dark.
+
+"Just about everybody says that about her--at first," he remarked.
+
+"Did you?" she asked him, still politely.
+
+"I did a heap worse than that," said Weary, grimly determined.  "I had
+a bad case of calf-love and made a fool uh myself generally."
+
+"What fun!" chirped the schoolma'am with an unconvincing little laugh.
+
+"Not for me, it wasn't.  Whilst I had it I used to pack a lock uh that
+red hair in my breast pocket and heave sighs over it that near lifted
+me out uh my boots.  Oh, I was sure earnest!  But she did me the
+biggest favor she could; a slick-haired piano-tuner come to town and
+she turned me down for him.  I was plumb certain my heart was busted
+wide open, at the time, though."  Weary laughed reminiscently.
+
+"She said--I think you misunderstood her.  She appears to--" Miss
+Satterly, though she felt that she was being very generous, did not
+quite know how to finish.
+
+"Not on your life!  It was the first time I ever did understand Myrt.
+When I left there I wasn't doing any guessing."
+
+"You shouldn't have left," she told him suddenly; gripping her courage
+at this bold mention of his flight.  How she wished she knew why he
+left.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  It was about the only thing I could do, at the
+time--the only thing, that is, that I wanted to do.  It seemed like I
+couldn't get away fast enough."  It was brazen of him, she thought, to
+treat it all so coolly.  "And out here," he added thoughtfully, "I
+could get the proper focus on Myrt--which I couldn't do back there."
+
+"Distance lends--"
+
+"Not in this case," he interrupted.  "It's when you're right with Myrt
+that she kinda hypnotizes yuh into thinking what she wants yuh to
+think."  He was remembering resentfully the dance.
+
+"But to sneak away--"
+
+"That's a word I don't remember was ever shot at me before," said
+Weary, the blood showing through the skin on his cheeks.  "If that
+damned Myrt has been telling yuh--"
+
+"I didn't think you would speak like that about a woman, Mr. Davidson,"
+said the schoolma'am with disapproval in her tone; and the disapproval
+not going very deep, there was the more of it upon the surface.
+
+"I suppose it gives evidence of a low, brutal trait in my nature, that
+you hoped I couldn't harbor," acceded Weary meekly.
+
+"It does," snapped the schoolma'am, her cheeks hot.  If she had
+repented her flare of temper over the gopher, she certainly did not
+intend letting him know it too soon.  She seemed inclined to discipline
+him a bit.
+
+Weary smoked silently and raked up the sun-baked soil with his spurs.
+"How long is Myrt going to stay?" he ventured at last.
+
+"I never asked her," she retorted.  "You ought to know--you probably
+have seen her last."  The schoolma'am blundered, there.
+
+Weary drew a sigh of relief; if she were jealous, it must mean that she
+cared.  "That's right.  I saw her last night," he stated calmly.
+
+Miss Satterly sat more erect, if that were possible.  She had not known
+of this last meeting, and she had merely shot at random, anyway.
+
+"At least," he amended, watching her from the corner of his eye, "I saw
+a woman and a man ride over the hill back of Denson's, last night.  The
+man was Bert, and the woman had red hair; I took it to be Myrt."
+
+"You surely should be a good judge," remarked Miss Satterly, irritated
+because she knew he was teasing.
+
+Weary was quick to read the signs.  "What did you mean, a while back,
+about me sneaking away from Chadville?  And how did yuh happen to have
+your dances booked forty-in-advance, the other night?  And what makes
+yuh so mean to me, lately?  And will yuh take a jaunt over Eagle Butte
+way with me next Sunday--if I can get off?"
+
+The schoolma'am, again feeling herself mistress of the situation,
+proceeded with her disciplining.  She smiled, raised one hand and
+checked off the questions upon her fingers.  You never would guess how
+oddly her heart was behaving--she looked such a self-possessed young
+woman.
+
+"I'll begin at the last one and work backward," she said, calmly.  "And
+I must hurry, for aunt Meeker hates to keep supper waiting.  No, I will
+_not_ go for a jaunt over Eagle Butte way next Sunday.  I have other
+plans; if I _hadn't_ other plans I still would not go.  I hope this is
+quite plain to you?"
+
+"Oh, it's good and plain," responded Weary.  "But for the Lord's sake
+don't take up that talking in italics like Myrt does.  I can't stand
+this bearing down hard on every other word.  It sets my teeth all on
+edge."
+
+The schoolma'am opened her eyes wider.  Was it possible Weary was
+acquiring an irritable temper?  "_Second_," she went on deliberately,
+"I do not _consider_ that I have been _mean_ to you; and if I _have_ it
+is because I _choose_ to be so."
+
+Weary, observing a most flagrant accent, shut his lips rather tightly
+together.
+
+"Third--let me see.  Oh, that about the _dances_; I can only say that
+we _women_, as a means of _self-defence_, claim the privilege of
+_effacing_ undesirable, would-be partners by a certain _form_ of
+rejection, which _eliminates_ the necessity of going into unpleasant
+_details_, and--er--lets the fellow down easy."  The schoolma'am's
+emphasis and English seemed to collapse together, but Weary did not
+notice that.
+
+"I'm sure grateful to be let down easy," he said softly, without
+looking up; his head was bent so that his hat quite concealed from the
+schoolma'am his face, but if she had known him longer, perhaps she
+would have gone carefully after that.
+
+"As to your sneaking away from--wherever it was--surely, you ought to
+know about that better than I do.  One must go far to outdistance
+dishonor, for a man's misdeeds are sure to follow him, soon or late.  I
+will not go into details--but you understand what I mean."
+
+"No," said Weary, still with bent head, "I'll be darned if I do.  And
+if I did, I know about where to locate the source of all the
+information you've loaded up on.  Things were going smooth as silk till
+Myrt Forsyth drifted out here--the red-headed little devil!"
+
+"Mr. Davidson!" cried the schoolma'am, truly shocked.
+
+"Oh, I'm revealing some more low, brutal instincts, I expect I'm liable
+to reveal a lot more if I hang around much longer."  He stopped, as if
+there was more he wanted to say, and was doubtful of the wisdom of
+saying it.
+
+"I came over to say something--something particular--but I've changed
+my mind.  I guess yuh haven't much time to listen, and I don't believe
+it would interest yuh as much as I thought it would--a while back.  You
+just go ahead and make a bosom friend uh Myrt Forsyth, Schoolma'am, and
+believe every blamed lie she tells yuh.  I won't be here to argue the
+point.  Looks to me like I'm about due to drift."
+
+Miss Satterly, dumb with fear of what his words might mean, sat stiffly
+while Weary got up and mounted Glory in a business like manner that was
+extremely disquieting.
+
+"I wish you could a cared, Girlie," he said with a droop of his
+unsmiling mouth and a gloom in his eyes when he looked at her.  "I was
+a chump, I reckon, to ever imagine yuh could.  Good-bye--and be good
+to--yourself."  He leaned to one side, swung backward his feet and
+Glory, obeying the signal, wheeled and bounded away.
+
+Miss Satterly watched him gallop up the long slope and the pluckety
+pluckety of Glory's fleeing feet struck heavy, numbing blows upon her
+heart.  She wondered why she had refused to ride with him, when she did
+want to go--she did.  And why had she been so utterly hateful, after
+waiting and watching, night after night, for him to come?
+
+And just how much did he mean by being due to drift?  He couldn't be
+really angry--and what was he going to say--the thing he changed his
+mind about.  Was it--Well, he would come again in a few days, and then--
+
+
+
+
+PART FIVE
+
+Weary did not go back.  When the hurry of shipping was over he went to
+Shorty and asked for his time, much to the foreman's astonishment and
+disgust.  The Happy Family was incensed and wasted profanity and
+argument trying to make him give up the crazy notion of quitting.
+
+It seemed to Weary that he warded off their curiosity and answered
+their arguments very adroitly.  He was sick of punching cows, he said,
+and he wasn't hankering for a chance to shovel hay another winter to an
+ungrateful bunch of bawling calves.  He was going to drift, for a
+change--but he didn't know where.  It didn't much matter, so long as he
+got a change uh scenery.  He just merely wanted to knock around and get
+the alkali dust out of his lungs and see something grow besides calves
+and cactus.  His eyes plumb ached for sight of an apple tree with real,
+live apples on it--that weren't wrapped up in a paper napkin.
+
+When was he coming back?  Well, now, that was a question; he hadn't got
+started yet, man.  What he was figuring on wasn't the coming back part,
+but the getting started.
+
+The schoolma'am?  Oh, he guessed she could get along without him, all
+right.  Seeing they mentioned her, would some of them tell her hello
+for him--and so long?
+
+This last was at the station, where they had ridden in a body to see
+him off.  Weary waved his hat as long as the town was in sight, and the
+Happy Family ran their horses to keep pace with the train when it
+pulled out, emptied their six-shooters into the air and yelled parting
+words till the Pullman windows were filled with shocked, Eastern faces,
+eager to see a real, wild cowboy on his native soil.
+
+Then Weary went into the smoker, sought a place where he could stretch
+the long legs of him over two seats, made him a cigarette and forgot to
+smoke it while he watched the gray plains slide away behind him; till
+something went wrong with his eyes.  It was just four o'clock, and
+school was out.  The schoolma'am was looking down the trail, maybe--
+At any rate she was a good many miles away from him now--so many that
+even if he got off and had Glory right there and ran him every foot of
+the way, he could not possibly get to her--and the way the train was
+galloping over the rails, she was every minute getting farther off,
+and--  What a damn fool a man can make of himself, rushing off like
+that when, maybe--
+
+After that, a fellow who traveled for a San Francisco wine house spoke
+to him pleasantly and Weary thrust vain longings from him and was
+himself again.
+
+For two months he wandered aimlessly and, then, not quite at the point
+of going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out,
+one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work.  He was in
+Portland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off a
+north-bound train the night before.
+
+People hurried past without a glance in his direction, and even after
+two months this made him lonesome, coming as he did from a place where
+every man hailed him jovially by his adopted name.
+
+There was little that he could do--or would do.  He tried digging
+ditches for the city, along with a motley collection of the sons of all
+nations but his, seemingly.
+
+The first day be blistered both hands and got a "crick" in his back.
+
+The second day, he quit.
+
+On the third day, he brought up at the door of a livery stable.  A man
+with a slate-colored, silk waistcoat was standing aggressively in the
+doorway, one hand deep in his pocket and the other energetically
+punctuating the remarks he was making to a droop-shouldered hostler.
+Some of the remarks were interesting in the extreme and Weary,
+listening, drew a deep sigh of thankfulness that they were not directed
+at himself, because his back was still lame and his hands sore, and in
+Portland law-abiding citizens are not supposed to "pack" a gun.
+
+The droop-shouldered man waited humbly for the climax--which reached so
+high a tension that the speaker rose upon his toes to deliver it, and
+drew his right hand from his pocket to aid in the punctuation--when he
+pulled his hat down on his head and slunk away.
+
+It was while the orator was gazing contemptuously after him that he
+heard Weary cheerfully asking for work.  For Weary was a straight
+guesser; he knew when he stood in the presence of the Great and Only.
+The man wheeled and measured Weary slowly with his eyes--and there
+being a good deal of Weary if you measured lengthwise, he consumed
+several seconds doing it.
+
+"Humph!" when the survey was over.  "What do _you_ know about horses?"
+His tone was colored still by the oration he had just delivered, and it
+was not encouraging.
+
+Weary looked down upon him and smiled indulgence of the tone.  "If you
+aren't busy right now, I'll start in and tell yuh.  Yuh better sit down
+on that bucket whilst I'm doing it--if I'm thorough it'll take time."
+
+"Humph!" said the man again and carefully pared the end of a fat, black
+cigar.  "You seem to think you know it all.  What's your trade?"
+
+"Punching cows--in Northern Montana," answered Weary, mildly.
+
+The man took the trouble to look at him again, this time more
+critically--and more favorably, perhaps.  "Bronco-buster?" he demanded,
+briefly.
+
+"Some," grinned Weary, his thoughts whirling back to the dust and
+uproar in the Flying U corrals--and to Glory.
+
+The man seemed to read what was in his eyes.  "You ought to know better
+than to founder a three-hundred-dollar trotter, then," he remarked,
+with some of the growl smoothed out of his voice.
+
+"I sure had," agreed Weary, sympathetically.
+
+"That's why I fired that four-or-five-kinds-of idiot just now,"
+confided the other, rising to the sympathy in Weary's tone.  "I need
+men that know a little something about horses--the foreman can't always
+be at a man's elbow.  You can start right in--pay's good.  Go tell the
+foreman I've hired you; that's him back there in the office."
+
+Then came the rain.  Week after week of drab clouds and drizzle, and no
+sun to hearten a man for his work.  Week after week of bobbing
+umbrellas, muddy crossings, sloppy pavements and dripping eaves--and a
+cold that chilled the marrow in his bones.
+
+Weary, after a week of poking along in the rain of an evening when his
+work was done, threw up his hands, figuratively, and bought him an
+umbrella, hoping devoutly they would never get to hear of it in Dry
+Lake.  He stood for two minutes in the deep doorway of the store before
+he found nerve to open the awkward thing, and when he did so he glanced
+sheepishly around him as if it were a weak thing to do and a
+disgraceful.
+
+Fog and rain and mud and mist, day after day through long months.
+Feeding hungry horses their breakfast at five o'clock in the morning;
+brushing, currying, combing till they shone satin-smooth.  Harnessing,
+unharnessing; washing mud from rigs that would be splashed and
+plastered again before night.  Driving to houses that were known by the
+number over the door, giving the reins over to somebody and walking
+back in the rain.  Piling mangers with hay, strewing the stalls deep
+with straw.  Patting this horse as he passed, commanding the next to
+move over, stopping to whisper caressing words into the ear of a
+favorite.  Sitting listlessly in the balcony of some theatre in the
+evening while a mimic world lived its joys and sorrows below and an
+orchestra played soft accompaniment to his vagrant thoughts.  All this
+was Weary's life in Portland.
+
+Not exactly hilarious, that life.  Not a homelike one to a man fresh
+from eating, sleeping, working, reveling with fellows who would
+cheerfully give him the coat upon their straight backs if he needed it;
+fight for him, laugh at him, or laugh with him, tease him, bully him,
+love him like a brother--in short, fresh from Jim Whitmore's Happy
+Family.
+
+No one hailed him as Weary; his fellow hostlers called him simply Bill.
+No one knew the life he knew or loved the things he loved.  His stories
+of wild rides and hard drives must be explained as he went along and
+fell even then upon barren soil; so he gave up telling them.  Even his
+speech, colored as it was with the West which lies East of the
+Cascades, sounded strange in their ears and set him apart.  They
+referred to him as "the cowboy".
+
+Sometimes, when the skies were leaden and the dead atmosphere pressed
+his very soul to the dank earth, Weary would hoist his umbrella and
+walk and walk and walk, till the streets grew empty around him and his
+footsteps sounded hollow on the pavements.  One Sunday when it was not
+actually raining he hired a horse and rode into the country--and he
+came back draggled and unhappy from plodding through the mud, and he
+never repeated the experiment.
+
+Sometimes he would sit all the evening in his damp-walled room and
+smoke cigarettes and wonder what the boys were doing, down in the
+bunk-house at home.  He wondered if they kept Glory up--or if he was
+rustling on the range, his sorrel back humped to the storms and the
+deviltry gone out of him with the grim battle for mere life.
+
+Perhaps there was a dance somewhere; it was a cinch they would all be
+there--and Happy Jack would wear the same red necktie and the same
+painful smile of embarrassment, and there would be a squabble over the
+piece of bar mirror to shave by.  And the schoolma'am--  But here
+Weary's thoughts would shy and stop abruptly, and if it were not too
+late he would put on his hat and go to a show; one of those ten-cent
+continuous-performance places, where the Swede and the Dutchman
+flourish and the Boneless Man ties himself in knots.
+
+A man will grow accustomed to anything, give him time enough.  When
+four months had passed in this fashion, Weary began insensibly to turn
+more to the present and less often, to the past.  His work was not
+hard, the pay was good and he learned the ways of the town and got more
+in touch with his acquaintances.  They came to fill his life, so that
+he thought less often of Chip and Cal and Happy Jack and Slim.  Others
+were gradually taking their places.
+
+No one had as yet come to lift Miss Satterly's brown eyes from the deep
+places of his heart, because he again shied at women; but he was able
+to draw a veil before them so that they did not haunt him so much.  He
+began to whistle once more, as he went about his work; but he never
+whistled "Good Old Summertime."  There were other foolish songs become
+popular; he rather fancied "Navajo" these days.
+
+It was past April Fool's day, and Weary was singing "Nava, Nava, my
+Navajo," melodiously while he spread the straw bedding with his fork.
+It was a beastly day, even for that climate, but he was glad of it.  He
+had only to fill a dozen mangers and his morning's work was done, with
+the prospect of an idle forenoon; for no one would want to drive,
+today, unless it was absolutely necessary.
+
+  "I have a love for-r you that will grow-ow;
+  If you'll have a coon for a beau--"
+
+trilled Weary, and snapped the wires off a bale of hay and tore it
+open, in a hurry to finish.
+
+A familiar, pungent odor smote his nostrils and he straightened.  For a
+minute he stood perfectly still; then his fingers groped tremblingly in
+the hay, closed upon something, and every nerve in him quivered.  He
+held it fast in his shaking hands and sat down weakly upon the torn
+bale.
+
+It was a branch off a sage bush--dry, shapeless, bruised in the press,
+but it carried its message bravely.  Holding it close to his face,
+drinking in the smell of it greedily, he closed his eyes involuntarily.
+
+Great, gray plains closed in upon him--dear, familial plains, scarred
+and broken with sharp-nosed hills and deep, water-worn coulees gleaming
+barren and yellow in the sun.  The blue, blue sky was bending down to
+meet the hills, with feathery, white clouds trailing lazily across.
+His cheeks felt the cool winds which flapped his hat-brim and tingled
+his blood.  His knees pressed the throb and life, the splendid, working
+muscles of a galloping horse.
+
+Weary's head went down upon his hands, with the bit of sage pressed
+hard against his cheek.
+
+Now he was racing over the springy sod which sent a sweet, grassy smell
+up to meet him.  Wild range cattle lumbered out of his way, ran a few
+paces and stopped to gaze after him with big, curious eyes.  Before him
+stood the white-tented camp of the round-up, and the rope corral was
+filled with circling horses half hidden by the veil of dust thrown
+upward by their restless, trampling hoofs.  Now he was in the midst of
+them, a coil of rope in his left hand; his right swung the loop
+circling over his head.  And the choking dust was in his eyes and
+throat, and in his nostrils the rank odor of many horses.  Men were
+shouting to one another above the confusion.  Oaths were hurled after a
+horse which warily dodged the rope.  Saddles strewed the ground, bits
+clanked, spurs jingled, care-free laughs brightened the clamor.
+
+The scene shifted.  He was sitting, helpless, in the saddle while Glory
+carried him wantonly over the hills, shaking his head to make the
+broken bridle rattle.  Now he was stopping in front of a vine-covered
+porch, where a girl lay sleeping in a hammock--a girl with soft, dark
+hair falling down to the floor in a heavy braid.  Again, he was sitting
+on the school-house steps, holding a smoking gun in his hand, and the
+schoolma'am was standing, flushed and reproving, before him.  The wind
+came and fluttered her skirts--
+
+"What's the matter, Bill?  Yuh sick?"
+
+Weary raised a white, haggard face.  The plains, the blue sky, the
+sunshine, the wind, the girl--were gone.  He was sitting upon a torn
+bale of hay in a livery stable in Portland.  Through the wide, open
+door he could see the muddy street.  Gray water-needles darted
+incessantly up from the pavement where the straight lines of rain
+struck.  On the roof the rain was drumming a monotone.  In his fingers
+was a crumpled bit of gray sage-brush.
+
+"Sick, Bill?" repeated the foreman, sympathetically.
+
+"Oh, go to hell!" said Weary, ungratefully.  He felt tired, and weak
+and old.  He wanted to be left alone.  He wanted--God, how he wanted
+the dream to come back to him, and to come back to him true!  To close
+about him and wrap him in its sunny folds; to steep his senses in the
+light and the life, the sound and the smell of the plains; to hear the
+wind rushing over the treeless hills; to see the wild range cattle
+nosing the crisp, prairie grass.
+
+He got unsteadily upon his legs and went slowly to his room; dropped
+wearily upon the bed, and buried his face in the pillow like a hurt
+child.  In his fingers he clutched a pungent, gray weed.
+
+
+
+
+PART SIX
+
+Late that night Weary, his belongings stuffed hurriedly into the
+suit-case he called his "war-bag," started home; so impatient he had a
+childish desire to ride upon the engine so that he might arrive the
+sooner, and failing that he spent much of his time lurching between
+smoking car and tourist sleeper, unable to sit quietly in any place for
+longer than ten minutes or so.  In his coat pocket, where his fingers
+touched it often, was a crumpled bit of sage-brush.  Dry it was, and the
+gray leaves were crumbling under the touch of his homesick fingers, but
+the smell of it, aromatic and fresh and strong, breathed of the plains he
+loved.
+
+At Kalispell he went out on the platform and filled his lungs again and
+again with Montana air, that was clean of fog and had a nip to it.  The
+sun shone, the sky was blue and the clouds reminded him of a band of
+new-washed sheep scattered and feeding quietly.  The wind blew keen in
+his face and set his blood a-dance, his blood, which for long months had
+moved sluggishly in his veins.
+
+At Shelby, a half-dozen cowboys galloped briefly into view as the train
+whizzed by down the valley, and Weary raised the car window and leaned
+far out to gaze after them with hungry eyes.  He wanted to swing his hat
+and give a whoop that would get the last wisps of fog and gray murk out
+of his system--but there were other passengers already shivering and
+eyeing him in unfriendly fashion because of the open window.  He wanted
+to get out and run and run bareheaded, over the bleak, brown hills; but
+he closed the window and behaved as well as he could.
+
+The stars came out and winked at him just as they used to do when he sat
+on Meeker's front porch and listened to the schoolma'am singing softly in
+the hammock, her guitar tinkling a mellow undertone.  It was too early
+now for the hammock to be swinging in the porch.  School must be started
+again, though, and seeing the schoolma'am lived right there with her aunt
+Meeker, they weren't likely to hire another teacher.
+
+He hoped Myrt Forsyth had gone back to Chadville where she belonged.  He
+wished now that he had written to some of the boys and kept posted on
+what was happening.  He had never sent back so much as a picture postal,
+and he had consequently not heard a word.  But Weary's nature was ever
+hopeful except when he was extremely angry, and then he did not care much
+about anything.  So now, he took it for granted things had gone along
+smoothly and that nothing would be changed.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Miss Satterly had just finished listlessly hearing the last spelling
+class recite, when she glanced through the window and saw Glory, bearing
+a familiar figure, race down the hill and whip into the school-house
+path.  Her heart gave a flop, so that she caught at the desk to steady
+her and she felt the color go out of her face.  Then her presence of mind
+returned so that she said "School's dismissed"--without going through the
+form of "Attention, turn, stand, pass."
+
+The children eyed her curiously, hesitated and then rushed noisily out,
+and she sank down upon a bench and covered her face with her hands.  It
+was queer that she could not seem to get hold of herself and be calm; it
+was disgraceful that she should tremble so.  Outside she could hear them
+shouting, "Hello, Weary!" in a dozen different keys, and each time her
+blood jumped.  Her eyes had not tricked her, then--though it was not the
+first time she had trembled to see a sorrel horse gallop down that hill,
+and then turned numb when came disillusionment.  Would those children
+never start home?  By degrees their shrill voices sounded further away,
+and the place grew still.  But the schoolma'am kept her face covered.
+
+Spurred heels clanked on the threshold, stopped there, and the door shut
+with a slam.  But she did not look up; she did not dare.
+
+Steps came down the room toward her--long, hurrying steps, determined
+steps.  Close beside her they stopped, and for a space that seemed to her
+long minutes there was no sound.
+
+"Say hello to me--won't you, Girlie?" said a wistful voice that thrilled
+to the tips of the schoolma'am's shaking fingers.  She dropped her hands
+then, reluctantly.  Her lips quivered as Weary had never before seen them
+do.
+
+"Hello," she obeyed, faintly.
+
+He stood for a moment, studying her face.
+
+"Look up here, Schoolma'am," he commanded at last.  "I hate to have my
+feet get so much attention.  I've come back to fight it out--to a finish,
+this time.  Yuh can't stampede me again--look up here.  I've been plumb
+sick for a sight of those big eyes of yours."
+
+Miss Satterly persisted in gazing at the boots of Weary.
+
+"Well, are yuh going to?"  There was a new, masterful note in Weary's
+voice, that the schoolma'am felt but did not quite understand--then.  She
+did not, perhaps, realize how plainly her whole attitude spoke surrender.
+
+Weary waited what seemed to him a reasonable time, but her lashes drooped
+lower, if anything.  Then he made one of the quick, unlooked-for moves
+which made him a master of horses.  Before she quite knew what was
+occurring, the schoolma'am was upon her feet and snuggled close in
+Weary's eager arms.  More, he had a hand under her chin, her face was
+tilted back and he was smiling down into her wide, startled eyes.
+
+"I didn't burn a streak a thousand miles long in the atmosphere, getting
+back here, to be scared out now by a little woman like you," he remarked,
+and tucked a stray, brown lock solicitously behind her ear.  Then he bent
+and kissed her deliberately upon the mouth.
+
+"Now, say you're my little schoolma'am.  Quick, before I do it again." He
+threatened with his lips, and he looked as if he were quite anxious to
+carry out his threat.
+
+"I'm your--" the schoolma'am hid her face from him.  "Oh, Will!  Whatever
+made you go off like that, and I--I nearly died wanting to see you--"
+
+Weary laid his cheek very tenderly against hers, and held her close.  No
+words came to either, just then.
+
+"What if I'd kept on being a fool--and hadn't come back at all, Girlie?"
+he asked softly, after a while.
+
+The schoolma'am shuddered eloquently in his arms.
+
+"It was sure lonesome--it was _hell_ out there alone," he observed,
+reminiscently.
+
+"It was sure--h-hell back here alone, too," murmured a smothered voice
+which did not sound much like the clear, self-assertive tones of Miss
+Satterly.
+
+"Well, it come near serving you right," Weary told her, relishfully
+grinning over the word she used.
+
+"What made yuh chase me off?"
+
+"I--don't know; I--"
+
+"I guess yuh don't, all right," agreed Weary, giving a little squeeze by
+way of making quite sure he had her there.  "Say, what was that yarn Myrt
+Forsyth told yuh about me?"
+
+"I--I don't know.  She--she hinted a lot--"
+
+"I expect she did--that's Myrt, every rattle uh the box," Weary cut in
+dryly.
+
+"And she--she said you had to leave home--in the night--"
+
+"Oh, she did, eh?  Well, Girlie, if the time-table hasn't changed, Miss
+Myrt Forsyth sneaked off the same way.  The train west leaves--or did
+leave--Chadville along about midnight, so--Say, it feels good to be back,
+little schoolma'am.  You don't know how good--"
+
+"I guess I do," cried the schoolma'am very emphatically.  "I just guess I
+know something about that, myself.  Oh you dear, great, tall--"
+
+Something happened just then to the schoolma'am's lips, so that she could
+not finish the sentence.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST AID TO CUPID
+
+The floor manager had just called out that it was "ladies' choice," and
+Happy Jack, his eyes glued in rapturous apprehension upon the thin,
+expressionless face of Annie Pilgreen, backed diffidently into a
+corner.  He hoped and he feared that she would discover him and lead
+him out to dance; she had done that once, at the Labor Day ball, and he
+had not slept soundly for several nights after.
+
+Someone laid proprietary hand upon his cinnamon-brown coat sleeve, and
+he jumped and blushed; it was only the schoolma'am, however, smiling up
+at him ingratiatingly in a manner wholly bewildering to a simple minded
+fellow like Happy Jack.  She led him into another corner, plumped
+gracefully and with much decision down upon a bench, drew her skirts
+aside to make room for him and announced that she was tired and wanted
+a nice long talk with him.  Happy Jack, sending a troubled glance after
+Annie, who was leading Joe Meeker out to dance, sighed a bit and sat
+down obediently--and thereby walked straight into the loop which the
+schoolma'am had spread for his unwary feet.
+
+The schoolma'am was sitting out an astonishing number of dances--for a
+girl who could dance from dark to dawn and never turn a hair--and the
+women were wondering why.  If she had sat them out with Weary Davidson
+they would have smiled knowingly and thought no more of it; but she did
+not.  For every dance she had a different companion, and in every case
+it ended in that particular young man looking rather scared and
+unhappy.  After five minutes of low-toned monologue on the part of the
+schoolma'am, Happy Jack went the way of his predecessors and also
+became scared and unhappy.
+
+"Aw, say!  Miss Satterly, _I_ can't act," he protested in a panic.
+
+"Oh, yes, you could," declared the schoolma'am, with sweet assurance,
+"if you only thought so."
+
+"Aw, I couldn't get up before a crowd and say a piece, not if--"
+
+"I'm not sure I want you to.  There are other things to an
+entertainment besides reciting things.  I only want you to promise that
+you will help me out.  You will, won't you?"  The schoolma'am's eyes,
+besides being pretty, were often disconcertingly direct in their gaze.
+
+Happy Jack wriggled and looked toward the door, which suddenly seemed a
+very long way off.  "I--I've got to go up to the Falls, along about
+Christmas," he stuttered feebly, avoiding her eyes.  "I--I can't get
+off any other time, and I've--I've got a tooth--"
+
+"You're the fifth Flying-U man who has 'a tooth,'" the schoolma'am
+interrupted impatiently.  "A dentist ought to locate in Dry Lake; from
+what I have heard confidentially to-night, there's a fortune to be made
+off the teeth of the Happy Family alone."
+
+Every drop of blood in Happy's body seemed to stand then in his face.
+"I--I'll pull the curtain for yuh," he volunteered, meekly.
+
+"You're the seventh applicant for that place."  The schoolma'am was
+crushingly calm.  "Every fellow I've spoken to has evinced a morbid
+craving for curtain-pulling."
+
+Happy Jack crumpled under her sarcasm and perspired, and tried to think
+of something, with his brain quite paralyzed and useless.
+
+The schoolma'am continued inexorably; plainly, _her_ brain was not
+paralyzed.  "I've promised the neighborhood that I would give a
+Christmas tree and entertainment--and when a school-teacher promises
+anything to a neighborhood, nothing short of death or smallpox will be
+accepted as an excuse for failing to keep the promise; and I've seven
+tongue-tied kids to work with!"  (The schoolma'am was only
+spasmodically given to irreproachable English.)  "Of course, I relied
+upon my friends to help me out.  But when I come to calling the roll,
+I--I don't seem to _have_ any friends."  The schoolma'am was twirling
+the Montana sapphire ring which Weary had given her last spring, and
+her voice was trembly and made Happy Jack feel vaguely that he was a
+low-down cur and ought to be killed.
+
+He swallowed twice.  "Aw, yuh don't want to go and feel bad about it; I
+never meant--I'll do anything yuh ask me to."
+
+"Thank you.  I knew I could count upon you, Jack."
+
+The schoolma'am recovered her spirits with a promptness that was
+suspicious; patted his arm and called him an awfully good fellow, which
+reduced Happy Jack to a state just this side imbecility.  Also, she
+drew a little memorandum book from somewhere, and wrote Happy Jack's
+name in clear, convincing characters that made him shiver.  He saw
+other names above his own on the page; quite a lot of them; seven in
+fact.  Miss Satterly, evidently, was not quite as destitute of friends
+as her voice, awhile back, would lead one to believe.  Happy Jack
+wondered.
+
+"I haven't quite decided what we will have," she remarked briskly.
+"When I do, we'll all meet some evening in the school-house and talk it
+over.  There's lots of fun getting up an entertainment; you'll like it,
+once you get started."
+
+Happy did not agree with her, but he did not tell her so; he managed to
+contort his face into something resembling a grin, and retreated to the
+hotel, where he swallowed two glasses of whiskey to start his blood
+moving again, and then sat down and played poker disasterously until
+daylight made the lamps grow a sickly yellow and the air of the room
+seem suddenly stale and dead.  But Happy never thought of blaming the
+schoolma'am for the eighteen dollars he lost.
+
+Neither did he blame her for the nightmares which tormented his sleep
+during the week that followed or the vague uneasiness that filled his
+waking hour, even when he was not thinking directly of the ghost that
+dogged him.  For wherever he went, or whatever he did, Happy Jack was
+conscious of the fact that his name was down on the schoolma'am's list
+and he was definitely committed to do anything she asked him to do,
+even to "speaking a piece"--which was in his eyes the acme of mental
+torture.
+
+When Cal Emmett, probably thinking of Miss Satterly's little book,
+pensively warbled in his ear:
+
+  Is your name written there,
+  On the page white and fair?
+
+Happy Jack made no reply, though he suddenly felt chilly along the
+spinal column.  It was.
+
+"Schoolma'am wants us all to go over to the schoolhouse
+tonight--seven-thirty, sharp--to help make medicine over this Santa
+Claus round-up.  Slim, she says you've got to be Santy and come down
+the stovepipe and give the kids fits and popcorn strung on a string.
+She says you've got the figure."  Weary splashed into the wash basin
+like a startled muskrat.
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another distressfully.
+
+"By golly," Slim gulped, "you can just tell the schoolma'am to go
+plumb--" (Weary faced him suddenly, his brown hair running rivulets)
+"and ask the Old Man," finished Slim hurriedly.  "He's fifteen pounds
+fatter'n I be."
+
+"Go tell her yourself," said Weary, appeased.  "I promised her you'd
+all be there on time, if I had to hog-tie the whole bunch and haul yuh
+over in the hayrack."  He dried his face and hands leisurely and
+regarded the solemn group.  "Oh, mamma! you're sure a nervy-looking
+bunch uh dogies.  Yuh look like--"
+
+"Maybe you'll hog-tie the whole bunch," Jack Bates observed irritably,
+"but if yuh do, you'll sure be late to meeting, sonny!"
+
+The Happy Family laughed feeble acquiescence.
+
+"I won't need to," Weary told them blandly.  "You all gave the
+schoolma'am leave to put down your names, and its up to you to make
+good.  If yuh haven't got nerve enough to stay in the game till the
+deck's shuffled yuh hadn't any right to buy a stack uh chips."
+
+"Yeah--that's right," Cal Emmett admitted frankly, because shyness and
+Cal were strangers.  "The Happy Family sure ought to put this thing
+through a-whirling.  We'll give 'em vaudeville till their eyes water
+and their hands are plumb blistered applauding the show.  Happy, you're
+it.  You've got to do a toe dance."
+
+Happy Jack grinned in sickly fashion and sought out his red necktie.
+
+"Say, Weary," spoke up Jack Bates, "ain't there going to be any female
+girls in this opera troupe?"
+
+"Sure.  The Little Doctor's going to help run the thing, and Rena
+Jackson and Lea Adams are in it--and Annie Pilgreen.  Her and Happy are
+down on the program for 'Under the Mistletoe', a tableau--the red fire,
+kiss-me-quick brand."
+
+"Aw gwan!" cried Happy Jack, much distressed and not observing Weary's
+lowered eyelid.
+
+His perturbed face and manner gave the Happy Family an idea.  An idea,
+when entertained by the Happy Family, was a synonym for great mental
+agony on the part of the object of the thought, and great enjoyment on
+the part of the Family.
+
+"That's right," Weary assured him sweetly, urged to further deceit by
+the manifest approval of his friends.  "Annie's ready and willing to do
+her part, but she's afraid you haven't got the nerve to go through with
+it; but the schoolma'am says you'll have to anyhow, because your name's
+down and you told her distinct you'd do anything she asked yuh to.
+Annie likes yuh a heap, Happy; she said so.  Only she don't like the
+way yuh hang back on the halter.  She told me, private, that she wished
+yuh wasn't so bashful."
+
+"Aw, gwan!" adjured Happy Jack again, because that was his only form of
+repartee.
+
+"If I had a girl like Annie--"
+
+"Aw, I never said I had a girl!"
+
+"It wouldn't take me more than two minutes to convince her I wasn't as
+scared as I looked.  You can gamble I'd go through with that living
+picture, and I'd sure kiss--"
+
+"Aw, gwan!  I ain't stampeding clear to salt water 'cause she said
+'Boo!' at me--and I don't need no cayuse t' show me the trail to a
+girl's house--"
+
+At this point, Weary succeeded in getting a strangle-hold and the
+discussion ended rather abruptly--as they had a way of doing in the
+Flying U bunk-house.
+
+Over at the school-house that night, when Miss Satterly's little, gold
+watch told her it was seven-thirty, she came out of the corner where
+she had been whispering with the Little Doctor and faced a select,
+anxious-eyed audience.  Even Weary was not as much at ease as he would
+have one believe, and for the others--they were limp and miserable.
+
+She went straight at her subject.  They all knew what they were there
+for, she told them, and her audience looked her unwinkingly in the eye.
+They did _not_ know what they were there for, but they felt that they
+were prepared for the worst.  Cal Emmett went mentally over the only
+"piece" he knew, which he thought he might be called upon to speak.  It
+was the one beginning, according to Cal's version:
+
+  Twinkle, Twinkle little star,
+  What in thunder are you at?
+
+There were thirteen verses, and it was not particularly adapted to a
+Christmas entertainment.
+
+The schoolma'am went on explaining.  There would be tableaux, she said
+(whereat Happy Jack came near swallowing his tongue) and the Jarley
+Wax-works.
+
+"What're them?" Slim, leaning awkwardly forward and blinking up at her,
+interrupted stolidly.  Everyone took advantage of the break and
+breathed deeply.
+
+The schoolma'am told them what were the Jarley Wax-works, and even
+reverted to Dickens and gave a vivid sketch of the original _Mrs.
+Jarley_.  The audience finally understood that they would represent wax
+figures of noted characters, would stand still and let _Mrs. Jarley_
+talk about them--without the satisfaction of talking back--and that
+they would be wound up at the psychological moment, when they would be
+expected to go through a certain set of motions alleged to portray the
+last conscious acts of the characters they represented.
+
+The schoolma'am sat down sidewise upon a desk, swung a neat little foot
+unconventionally and grew confidential, and the Happy Family knew they
+were in for it.
+
+"Will Davidson" (which was Weary) "is the tallest fellow in the lot, so
+he must be the Japanese Dwarf and eat poisoned rice out of a chopping
+bowl, with a wooden spoon--the biggest we can find," she announced
+authoritatively, and they grinned at Weary.
+
+"Mr. Bennett," (which was Chip) "you can assume a most murderous
+expression, so we'll allow you to be Captain Kidd and threaten to slay
+your Little Doctor with a wooden sword--if we can't get hold of a real
+one."
+
+"Thanks," said Chip, with doubtful gratitude.
+
+"Mr. Emmett, we'll ask you to be _Mrs. Jarley_ and deliver the
+lectures."
+
+When they heard that the Happy Family howled derision at Cal, who got
+red in the face in spite of himself.  The worst was over.  The victims
+scented fun in the thing and perked up, and the schoolma'am breathed
+relief, for she knew the crowd.  Things would go with a swing, after
+this, and success was, barring accidents, a foregone conclusion.
+
+Through all the clatter and cross-fire of jibes Happy Jack sat, nervous
+and distrait, in the seat nearest the door and farthest from Annie
+Pilgreen.  The pot-bellied stove yawned red-mouthed at him, a scant
+three feet away.  Someone coming in chilled with the nipping night air
+had shoveled in coal with lavish hand, so that the stove door had to be
+thrown open as the readiest method of keeping the stove from melting
+where it stood.  Its body, swelling out corpulently below the iron
+belt, glowed red; and Happy Jack's wolf-skin overcoat was beginning to
+exhale a rank, animal odor.  It never occurred to him that he might
+change his seat; he unbuttoned the coat absently and perspired.
+
+He was waiting to see if the schoolma'am said anything about "Under the
+Mistletoe" with red fire--and Annie Pilgreen.  If she did, Happy Jack
+meant to get out of the house with the least possible delay, for he
+knew well that no man might face the schoolma'am's direct gaze and
+refuse to do her bidding,
+
+So far the Jarley Wax-works held the undivided attention of all save
+Happy Jack; to him there were other things more important.  Even when
+he was informed that he must be the Chinese Giant and stand upon a
+coal-oil box for added height, arrayed in one of the big-flowered
+calico curtains which Annie Pilgreen said she could bring, he was
+apathetic.  He would be required to swing his head slowly from side to
+side when wound up--very well, it looked easy enough.  He would not
+have to say a word, and he supposed he might shut his eyes if he felt
+like it.
+
+"As for the tableaux"--Happy Jack felt a prickling of the scalp and
+measured mentally the distance to the door--"We can arrange them later,
+for they will not require any rehearsing.  The Wax-works we must get to
+work on as soon as possible.  How often can you come and rehearse?"
+
+"Every night and all day Sundays," Weary drawled.
+
+Miss Satterly frowned him into good behavior and said twice a week
+would do.
+
+Happy Jack slipped out and went home feeling like a reprieved criminal;
+he even tried to argue himself into the belief that Weary was only
+loading him and didn't mean a word he said.  Still, the schoolma'am had
+said there would be tableaux, and it was a cinch she would tell Weary
+all about it--seeing they were engaged.  Weary was the kind that found
+out things, anyway.
+
+What worried Happy Jack most was trying to discover how the dickens
+Weary found out he liked Annie Pilgreen; that was a secret which Happy
+Jack had almost succeeded in keeping from himself, even.  He would have
+bet money no one else suspected it--and yet here was Weary grinning and
+telling him he and Annie were cut out for a tableau together.  Happy
+Jack pondered till he got a headache, and he did not come to any
+satisfactory conclusion with himself, even then.
+
+The rest of the Happy Family stayed late at the school-house, and Weary
+and Chip discussed something enthusiastically in a corner with the
+Little Doctor and the schoolma'am.  The Little Doctor said that
+something was a shame, and that it was mean, to tease a fellow as
+bashful as Happy Jack.
+
+Weary urged that sometimes Cupid needed a helping hand, and that it
+would really be doing Happy a big favor, even if he didn't appreciate
+it at the time.  So in the end the girls agreed and the thing was
+settled.
+
+The Happy Family rode home in the crisp starlight gurgling and leaning
+over their saddle-horns in spasmodic fits of laughter.  But when they
+trooped into the bunk-house they might have been deacons returning from
+prayer meeting so far as their decorous behavior was concerned.  Happy
+Jack was in bed, covered to his ears and he had his face to the wall.
+They cast covert glances at his carroty top-knot and went silently to
+bed--which was contrary to habit.
+
+At the third rehearsal, just as the Chinese Giant stepped off the
+coal-oil box--thereby robbing himself miraculously of two feet of
+stature--the schoolma'am approached him with a look in her big eyes
+that set him shivering.  When she laid a finger mysteriously upon his
+arm and drew him into the corner sacred to secret consultations, the
+forehead of Happy Jack resembled the outside of a stone water-jar in
+hot weather.  He knew beforehand just about what she would say.  It was
+the tableau that had tormented his sleep and made his days a misery for
+the last ten days--the tableau with red fire and Annie Pilgreen.
+
+Miss Satterly told him that she had already spoken to Annie, and that
+Annie was willing if Happy Jack had no objections.  Happy Jack had, but
+he could not bring himself to mention the fact.
+
+The schoolma'am had not quoted Annie's reply verbatim, but that was
+mere detail.  When she had asked Annie if she would take part in a
+tableau with Happy Jack, Annie had dropped her pale eyelids and said:
+"Yes, ma'am."  Still it was as much as the schoolma'am, knowing Annie,
+could justly expect.
+
+Annie Pilgreen was an anaemic sort of creature with pale eyes,
+ash-colored hair that clung damply to her head, and a colorless
+complexion; her conversational powers were limited to "Yes, sir" and
+"No, sir" (or Ma'am if sex demanded and Annie remembered in time).  But
+Happy Jack loved her; and when a woman loves and is loved, her
+existence surely is justified for all time.
+
+Happy Jack sent a despairing glance of appeal at the Happy Family; but
+the Family was very much engaged, down by the stove.  Cal Emmett was
+fanning himself with _Mrs. Jarley's_ poppy-loaded bonnet and refreshing
+his halting memory of the lecture with sundry promptings from Len Adams
+who held the book.  Chip Bennett was whittling his sword into shape and
+Weary was drumming a tattoo in the great wooden bowl with the spoon he
+used to devour poisoned rice upon the stage.  The others were variously
+engaged; not one of them appeared conscious of the fact that Happy Jack
+was facing the tragedy of his bashful life.
+
+Before he realized it, Miss Satterly had somehow managed to worm from
+him a promise, and after that nothing mattered.  The Wax-works, the
+tree, the whole entertainment dissolved into a blurred background,
+against which he was to stand with Annie Pilgreen, for the amusement of
+his neighbors, who would stamp their feet and shout derisive things at
+him.  Very likely he would be subjected to the agony of an encore, and
+he knew, beyond all doubt, that he would never be permitted to forget
+the figure he should cut; for Happy Jack knew he was as unbeautiful as
+a hippopotamus and as awkward.  He wondered why he, of all the fellows
+who were to take part, should be chosen for that tableau; it seemed to
+him they ought to pick out someone who was at least passably
+good-looking and hadn't such big, red hands and such immense feet.  His
+plodding brain revolved the mystery slowly and persistently.
+
+When he remounted his wooden pedestal, thereby transforming himself
+into a Chinese Giant of wax, he looked the part.  Where the other
+statues broke into giggles, to the detriment of their mechanical
+perfection, or squirmed visibly when the broken alarm clock whirred its
+signal against the small of their backs, Happy Jack stood immovably
+upright, a gigantic figure with features inhumanly stolid.  The
+schoolma'am pointed him out as an example to the others, and pronounced
+him enthusiastically the best actor in the lot.
+
+"Happy's swallowed his medicine--that's what ails him," the Japanese
+Dwarf whispered to Captain Kidd, and grinned.
+
+The Captain turned his head and studied the brooding features of the
+giant.  "He's doing some thinking," he decided.  "When he gets the
+thing figured out, in six months or a year, and savvies it was a put-up
+job from the start, somebody'll have it coming."
+
+"He can't pulverize the whole bunch, and he'll never wise up to who's
+the real sinner," Weary comforted himself.
+
+"Don't you believe it.  Happy doesn't think very often; when he does
+though, he can ring the bell--give him time enough."
+
+"Here, you statues over there want to let up on the chin-whacking or
+I'll hand yuh a few with this," commanded _Mrs. Jarley_, and shook the
+stove-poker threateningly.
+
+The Japanese Dwarf returned to his poisoned rice and Captain Kidd
+apologized to his victim, who was frowning reproof at him, and the
+rehearsal proceeded haltingly.
+
+That night, Weary rode home beside Happy Jack and tried to lift him out
+of the slough of despond.  But Happy refused to budge, mentally, an
+inch.  He rode humped in the saddle like a calf in its first blizzard,
+and he was discouragingly unresponsive; except once, when Weary
+reminded him that the tableau would need no rehearsing and that it
+would only last a minute, anyway, and wouldn't hurt.  Whereupon Happy
+Jack straightened and eyed him meditatively and finally growled, "Aw
+gwan; I betche you put her up to it, yuh darned chump."
+
+After that Weary galloped ahead and overtook the others and told them
+Happy Jack was thinking and mustn't be disturbed, and that he thought
+it would not be fatal to anyone, though it was kinda hard on Happy.
+
+From that night till Christmas eve, Happy Jack continued to think.  It
+was not, however, till the night of the entertainment, when he was
+riding gloomily alone on his way to the school-house, that Happy Jack
+really felt that his brain had struck pay dirt.  He took off his hat,
+slapped his horse affectionately over the ears with it and grinned for
+the first time since the Thanksgiving dance.  "Yes sir," he said
+emphatically aloud, "I betche that's how it is, all right and I
+betche--"
+
+The schoolma'am, her cheeks becomingly pink from excitement, fluttered
+behind the curtain for a last, flurried survey of stage properties and
+actors.  "Isn't Johnny here, yet?" she asked of Annie Pilgreen who had
+just come and still bore about her a whiff of frosty, night air.
+Johnny was first upon the program, with a ready-made address beginning,
+"Kind friends, we bid you welcome on this gladsome day," and the time
+for its delivery was overdue.
+
+Out beyond the curtain the Kind Friends were waxing impatient and the
+juvenile contingent was showing violent symptoms of descending
+prematurely upon the glittering little fir tree which stood in a corner
+next the stage.  Back near the door, feet were scuffling audibly upon
+the bare floor and a suppressed whistle occasionally cut into the hum
+of subdued voices.  Miss Satterly was growing nervous at the delay, and
+she repeated her question impatiently to Annie, who was staring at
+nothing very intently, as she had a fashion of doing.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," she answered absently.  Then, as an afterthought, "He's
+outside, talking to Happy Jack."
+
+Annie was mistaken; Happy Jack was talking to Johnny.  The schoolma'am
+tried to look through a frosted window.
+
+"I do wish they'd hurry in; it's getting late, and everybody's here and
+waiting."  She looked at her watch.  The suppressed whistle back near
+the door was gaining volume and insistence.
+
+"Can't we turn her loose, Girlie?"  Weary came up and laid a hand
+caressingly upon her shoulder.
+
+"Johnny isn't here, yet, and he's to give the address of welcome.
+_Why_ must people whistle and make a fuss like that, Will?"
+
+"They're just mad because they aren't in the show," said Weary.  "Say,
+can't we cut out the welcome and sail in anyway?  I'm getting kinda
+shaky, dreading it."
+
+The schoolma'am shook her head.  It would not do to leave out
+Johnny--and besides, country entertainments demanded the usual Address
+of Welcome.  It is never pleasant to trifle with an unwritten law like
+that.  She looked again at her watch and waited; the audience, being
+perfectly helpless, waited also.
+
+Weary, listening to the whistling and the shuffling of feet, felt a
+queer, qualmy feeling in the region of his diaphragm, and he yielded to
+a hunger for consolation and company in his misery.  He edged over to
+where Chip and Cal were amusing themselves by peeping at the audience
+from behind the tree.
+
+"Say, how do yuh stack up, Cal?" he whispered, forlornly.
+
+"Pretty lucky," Cal told him inattentively, and the cheerfulness of his
+whole aspect grieved Weary sorely.  But then, he explained to himself,
+Cal always did have the nerve of a mule.
+
+Weary sighed and wondered what in thunder ailed him, anyway; he was
+uncertain whether he was sick, or just plain scared.  "Feel all right,
+Chip?" he pursued; anxiously.
+
+"Sure," said Chip, with characteristic brevity.  "I wonder who those
+silver-mounted spurs are for, there on the tree?  They've been put on
+since this afternoon--can't yuh stretch your neck enough to read the
+name, Cal?  They're the real thing, all right."
+
+Weary's dejection became more pronounced.  "Oh, mamma! am I the only
+knock-kneed son-of-a-gun in this crowd?" he murmured, and turned
+disconsolately away.  His spine was creepy cold with stage fright; he
+listened to the sounds beyond the shielding curtain and shivered.
+
+Just then Johnny and Happy Jack appeared looking rather red and guilty,
+and Johnny was thrust unceremoniously forward to welcome his kind
+friends and still the rising clamor.
+
+Things went smoothly after that.  It is true that Weary, as the
+Japanese Dwarf, halted the Wax-works and glared glassily at the faces
+staring back at him while the alarm clock buzzed unheeded against his
+spine.  _Mrs. Jarley_, however, was equal to the emergency.  She
+proceeded calmly to wind him up the second time, gave Weary an
+admonitory kick and whispered, "Come alive, yuh chump," and turned to
+the audience.
+
+"This here Japanese Dwarf I got second-handed at a bargain sale for
+three-forty-nine, marked down for one week only," she explained
+blandly.  "I got cheated like h--like I always do at them bargain
+sales, for it's about wore out.  I guess I can make the thing work well
+enough to show yuh what it's meant to represent, though."  She gave
+Weary another kick, commanded him again to "Come out of it and get
+busy," and the Dwarf obediently ate its allotted portion of poison.
+And every one applauded Weary more enthusiastically than they had the
+others, for they thought it was all his part.  So much for justice.
+
+"Our last selection will be a tableau entitled, 'Under the Mistletoe,'"
+announced the schoolma'am's clear tones.  Then she took up her guitar
+and went down from the stage to where the Little Doctor waited with her
+mandolin.  While the tableau was being arranged they meant to play
+together in lieu of a regular orchestra.  The schoolma'am's brow was
+smooth, for the entertainment had been a success so far; and the
+tableau would be all right, she was sure--for Weary had charge of that.
+She hoped that Happy Jack would not hate it so very much, and that it
+would help to break the ice between him and Annie Pilgreen.  So she
+plucked the guitar strings tentatively and began to play.
+
+Behind the curtain, Annie Pilgreen stood simpering in her place and
+Happy Jack went reluctantly forward, resigned and deplorably
+inefficient.  Weary, himself again now that his torment was over, posed
+him cheerfully.  But Happy Jack did not get the idea.  He stood, as
+Weary told him disgustedly, looking like a hitching-post.  Weary
+labored with him desperately, his ear strained to keep in touch with
+the music which would, at the proper time, die to a murmur which would
+be a signal for the red fire and the tableau.  Already the lamps were
+being turned low, out there beyond the curtain.
+
+Though it was primarily a scheme of torture for Happy Jack, Weary was
+anxious that it should be technically perfect.  He became impatient.
+"Say, _don't_ stand there like a kink-necked horse, Happy!" he implored
+under his breath.  "Ain't there any joints in your arms?"
+
+"I ain't never practised it," Happy Jack protested in a hoarse whisper.
+"I never even seen a tableau in my life, even.  If somebody'd show me
+once, so's I could get the hang of it--"
+
+"Oh, mamma! you're a peach, all right.  Here, give me that sage brush!
+Now, watch.  We haven't got all night to make medicine over it.  See?
+Yuh want to hold it over her head and kinda bend down, like yuh were
+daring yourself to kiss--"
+
+Happy Jack backed off to get the effect; incidentally, he took the
+curtain back with him; also incidentally--, Johnny dropped a match into
+the red fire, which glowed beautifully.  Weary caught his breath, but
+he was game and never moved any eyelash.
+
+The red glow faded and left an abominable smell behind it, and some
+merciful hand drew the curtain--but it was not the hand of Happy Jack.
+He had gone out through the window and was crouching beneath it
+drinking in greedily the hand-clapping and the stamping of feet and the
+whistling, with occasional shouts of mirth which he recognized as
+coming from the rest of the Happy Family.  It all sounded very sweet to
+the great, red ears of Happy Jack.
+
+When the clatter showed signs of abatement he stole away to where his
+horse was tied, his sorrel coat gleaming with frost sparkles in the
+moonlight.  "It's you and me to hit the trail, Spider," he croaked to
+the horse, and with his bare hand scraped the frost from the saddle.
+
+A tall figure crept up from behind and grappled with him.  Spider
+danced away as far as the rope would permit and snorted, and two
+struggling forms squirmed away from his untrustworthy heels.
+
+"Aw, leggo!" cried Happy Jack when he could breathe again.
+
+"I won't.  You've got to come back and square yourself with Annie.  How
+do yuh reckon she's feeling at the trick yuh played on her, yuh
+lop-eared--"
+
+Happy Jack jerked loose and stood grinning in the moonlight.  "Aw,
+gwan.  Annie knowed I was goin' to do it," he retorted, loftily.
+"Annie and me's engaged."  He got into the saddle and rode off,
+shouting back taunts.
+
+Weary stood bareheaded in the cold and stared after him blankly.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE COOK FELL ILL
+
+It was four o'clock, and there was consternation in the round-up camp
+of the Flying U; when one eats breakfast before dawn--July dawn at
+that--covers thirty miles of rough country before eleven o'clock dinner
+and as many more after, supper seems, for the time being, the most
+important thing in the life of a cowboy.
+
+Men stood about in various dejected attitudes, their thumbs tucked
+inside their chap-belts, blank helplessness writ large upon their
+perturbed countenances--they were the aliens, hired but to make a full
+crew during round-up.  Long-legged fellows with spurs a-jingle hurried
+in and out of the cook-tent, colliding often, shouting futile
+questions, commands and maledictions--they were the Happy Family:
+loyal, first and last to the Flying U, feeling a certain degree of
+proprietorship and a good deal of responsibility.
+
+Happy Jack was fanning an incipient blaze in the sheet-iron stove with
+his hat, his face red and gloomy at the prospect of having to satisfy
+fifteen outdoor appetites with his amateur attempts at cooking.  Behind
+the stove, writhing bulkily upon a hastily unrolled bed, lay Patsy,
+groaning most pitiably.
+
+"What the devil's the matter with that hot water?" Cal Emmett yelled at
+Happy Jack from the bedside, where he was kneeling sympathetically.
+
+Happy Jack removed his somber gaze from the licking tongue of flame
+which showed in the stove-front.  "Fire ain't going good, yet," he said
+in a matter-of-fact tone which contrasted sharply with Cal's
+excitement.  "Teakettle's dry, too.  I sent a man to the crick for a
+bucket uh water; he'll be back in a minute."
+
+"Well, _move_!  If it was you tied in a knot with cramp, yuh wouldn't
+take it so serene."
+
+"Aw, gwan.  I got troubles enough, cooking chuck for this here layout.
+I got to have some help--and lots of it.  Patsy ain't got enough stuff
+cooked up to feed a jack-rabbit.  Somebody's got to mosey in here and
+peel the spuds."
+
+"That's your funeral," said Cal, unfeelingly.
+
+Chip stuck his head under the lifted tent-flap.  "Say, I can't find
+that cussed Three-H bottle," he complained.  "What went with it, Cal?"
+
+"Ask Slim; he had it last.  Ain't Shorty here, yet?" Cal turned again
+to Patsy, whose outcries were not nice to listen to,  "Stay with it,
+old-timer; we'll have something hot to pour down yuh in a minute."
+
+Patsy replied, but pain made him incoherent.  Cal caught the word
+"poison", and then "corn"; the rest of the sentence was merely a
+succession of groans.
+
+The face of Cal lengthened perceptibly.  He got up and went out to
+where the others were wrangling with Slim over the missing bottle of
+liniment.
+
+"I guess the old boy's up against it good and plenty," he announced
+gravely.  "He says he's poisoned; he says it was the corn."
+
+"Well he had it coming to him," declared Jack Pates.  "He's stuck that
+darned canned corn under our noses every meal since round-up started.
+He--"
+
+"Oh, shut up," snarled Cal.  "I guess it won't be so funny if he cashes
+in on the strength of it.  I've known two or three fellows that was
+laid out cold with tin-can poison.  It's sure fierce."
+
+The Happy Family shifted uneasily before the impending tragedy, and
+their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads
+ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler.  One can kill a
+rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can
+tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned
+goods.  But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and
+away better than no vegetables at all, the Happy Family ate and took
+their chance--only they did not eat canned corn, and they had discussed
+the matter profanely and often with Patsy.
+
+Patsy was a slave of precedent.  Many seasons had he cooked beneath a
+round-up tent, and never had he stocked the mess-wagon for a long trip
+and left canned corn off the list.  It was good to his palate and it
+was easy to prepare, and no argument could wean him from imperturbably
+opening can after can, eating plentifully of it himself and throwing
+the rest to feed the gophers.
+
+"Ain't there anything to give him?" asked Jack, relenting.  "That
+Three-H would fix him up all right--"
+
+"Dig it up, then," snapped Cal.  "There's sure something got to be
+done, or we'll have a dead cook on our hands."
+
+"Not even a drop uh whisky in camp!" mourned Weary.  "Slim, you ought
+to be killed for getting away with that liniment."
+
+Slim was too downhearted to resent the tone.  "By golly, I can't think
+what I done with it after I used it on Banjo.  Seems like I stood it on
+that rock--"
+
+"Oh, hell!" snorted Cal.  "That's forty miles back."
+
+"Say, it's sure a fright!" sympathized Jack Bates as a muffled shriek
+came through the cloth wall of the tent.  "What's good for tincaneetis,
+I wonder?"
+
+"A rattling good doctor," retorted Chip, throwing things recklessly
+about, still searching.  "There goes the damn butter--pick it up, Cal."
+
+"If old Dock was sober, he could do something," suggested Weary.  "I
+guess I'd better go after him; what do yuh think?"
+
+"He could send out some stuff--if he was sober enough; he's sure wise
+on medicine."
+
+Weary made him a cigarette.  "Well, it's me for Dry Lake," he said,
+crisply.  "I reckon Patsy can hang on till I get back; can poison
+doesn't do the business inside several hours, and he hasn't been sick
+long.  He was all right when Happy Jack hit camp about two o'clock.
+I'll be back by dark--I'll ride Glory."  He swung up on the nearest
+horse, which happened to be Chip's and raced out to the saddle bunch a
+quarter of a mile away.  The Happy Family watched him go and called
+after him, urging him unnecessarily to speed.
+
+Weary did not waste time having the bunch corralled but rode in among
+the horses, his rope down and ready for business.  Glory stared
+curiously, tossed his crimpled, silver mane, dodged a second too late
+and found himself caught.
+
+It was unusual, this interruption just when he was busy cropping sweet
+grasses and taking his ease, but he supposed there was some good reason
+for it; at any rate he submitted quietly to being saddled and merely
+nipped Weary's shoulder once and struck out twice with an ivory-white,
+daintily rounded hoof--and Weary was grateful for the docile mood he
+showed.
+
+He mounted hurriedly without a word of praise or condemnation, and his
+silence was to Glory more unusual than being roped and saddled on the
+range.  He seemed to understand that the stress was great, and fairly
+bolted up the long, western slope of the creek bottom straight toward
+the slant of the sun.
+
+For two miles he kept the pace unbroken, though the way was not of the
+smoothest and there was no trail to follow.  Straight away to the west,
+with fifteen miles of hills and coulees between, lay Dry Lake; and in
+Dry Lake lived the one man in the country who might save Patsy.
+
+"Old Dock" was a land-mark among old-timers.  The oldest pioneer found
+Dock before him among the Indians and buffalo that ran riot over the
+wind-brushed prairie where now the nation's beef feeds quietly.  Why he
+was there no man could tell; he was a fresh-faced young Frenchman with
+much knowledge of medicine and many theories, and a reticence
+un-French.  From the Indians he learned to use strange herbs that
+healed almost magically the ills of man; from the rough out-croppings
+of civilization he learned to swallow vile whiskey in great gulps, and
+to thirst always for more.
+
+So he grew old while the West was yet young, until Dry Lake, which grew
+up around him, could not remember him as any but a white-bearded,
+stooped, shuffling old man who spoke a queer jargon and was always just
+getting drunk or sober.  When he was sober his medicines never failed
+to cure; when he was drunk he could not be induced to prescribe, so
+that men trusted his wisdom at all times and tolerated his infirmities,
+and looked upon him with amused proprietorship.
+
+When Weary galloped up the trail which, because a few habitations are
+strewn with fine contempt of regularity upon either side, is called by
+courtesy a street, his eyes sought impatiently for the familiar,
+patriarchal figure of Old Dock.  He felt that minutes were worth much
+and that if he would save Patsy he must cut out all superfluities, so
+he resolutely declined to remember that cold, foamy beer refreshes one
+amazingly after a long, hot ride in the dust and the wind.
+
+Upon the porch of Rusty Brown's place men were gathered, and it was
+evident even at a distance that they were mightily amused.  Weary
+headed for the spot and stopped beside the hitching pole.  Old Dock
+stood in the center of the group and his bent old figure was trembling
+with rage.  With both hands he waved aloft his coat, on which was
+plastered a sheet of "tangle-foot" fly-paper.
+
+"Das wass de mean treeck!" he was shouting.  "I don'd do de harm wis no
+mans.  I tend mine business, I buy me mine clothes.  De mans wass do
+dees treeck, he buy me new clothes--you bet you!  Dass wass de mean--"
+
+"Say, Dock," broke in Weary, towering over him, "you dig up some dope
+for tin-can poison, and do it quick.  Patsy's took bad."
+
+Old Dock looked up at him and shook his shaggy, white beard.  "Das wass
+de mean treeck," he repeated, waving the coat at Weary.  "You see dass?
+Mine coat, she ruint; dass was new coat!"
+
+"All right--I'll take your word for it, Dock.  Tell me what's good for
+tin--"
+
+"Aw, I knows you fellers.  You t'inke Ole Dock, she Dock, she don'd
+know nothings!  You t'ink--"
+
+Weary sighed and turned to the crowd.  "Which end of a jag is this?" he
+wanted to know.  "I've got to get some uh that dope-wisdom out uh him,
+somehow.  Patsy's a goner, sure, if I don't connect with some medicine."
+
+The men crowded close and asked questions which Weary felt bound to
+answer; everyone knew Patsy, who was almost as much a part of Dry Lake
+scenery as was Old Dock, and it was gratifying to a Flying-U man to see
+the sympathy in their faces.  But Patsy needed something more potent
+than sympathy, and the minutes were passing.
+
+Old Dock still discoursed whimperingly upon the subject of his ruined
+coat and the meanness of mankind, and there was no weaning his interest
+for a moment, try as Weary would.  And fifteen miles away in a
+picturesque creek-bottom a man lay dying in great pain for want of one
+little part of the wisdom stored uselessly away in the brain of this
+drunken, doddering old man.
+
+Weary's gloved hand dropped in despair from Old Dock's bent shoulder.
+"Damn a drunkard!" he said bitterly, and got into the saddle.  "Rusty,
+I'll want to borrow that calico cayuse uh yours.  Have him saddled up
+right away, will yuh?  I'll be back in a little bit."
+
+He jerked his hat down to his eyebrows and struck Glory with the quirt;
+but the trail he took was strange to Glory and he felt impelled to stop
+and argue--as only Glory could argue--with his master.  Minutes passed
+tumultuously, with nothing accomplished save some weird hoof-prints in
+the sod.  Eventually, however, Glory gave over trying to stand upon his
+head and his hind feet at one and the same instant, and permitted
+himself to be guided toward a certain tiny, low-eaved cabin in a meadow
+just over the hill from the town.
+
+Weary was not by nature given to burglary, but he wrenched open the
+door of the cabin and went in with not a whisper of conscience to say
+him nay.  It was close and ill-smelling and very dirty inside, but
+after the first whiff Weary did not notice it.  He went over and
+stopped before a little, old-fashioned chest; it was padlocked, so he
+left that as a last resort and searched elsewhere for what he
+wanted--medicine.  Under the bed he found a flat, black case, such as
+old-fashioned doctors carried.  He drew it out and examined if
+critically.  This, also, was locked, but he shook it tentatively and
+heard the faintest possible jingle inside.
+
+"Bottles," he said briefly, and grinned satisfaction.  Something
+brushed against his hat and he looked up into a very dusty bunch of
+herbs.  "You too," he told them, breaking the string with one yank.
+"For all I know, yuh might stand ace-high in this game.  Lord! if I
+could trade brains with the old devil, just for to-night!"
+
+He took a last look around, decided that he had found all he wanted,
+and went out and pulled the door shut.  Then he tied the black medicine
+case to the saddle in a way that would give it the least jar, stuffed
+the bunch of dried herbs into his pocket and mounted for the homeward
+race.  As he did so the sun threw a red beam into his eyes as though
+reminding him of the passing hours, and ducked behind the ridge which
+bounds Lonesome Prairie on the east.
+
+The afterglow filled sky and earth with a soft, departing radiance when
+he stopped again in front of the saloon.  Old Doc was still
+gesticulating wildly, and the sheet of fly-paper still clung to the
+back of his coat.  The crowd had thinned somewhat and displayed less
+interest; otherwise the situation had not changed, except that a pinto
+pony stood meekly, with head drooping, at the hitching-pole.
+
+"There's your horse," Rusty Brown called to Weary.  "Yours played out?"
+
+"Not on your life," Weary denied proudly.  "When yuh see Glory played
+out, you'll see him with four feet in the air."
+
+"I seen him that way half an hour ago, all right," bantered Bert Rogers.
+
+Weary passed over the joke.  "Mamma!  Has it been that long?" he cried
+uneasily.  "I've got to be moving some.  Here, Dock, you put on that
+coat--and never mind the label; it's got to go--and so have you."
+
+"Aw, he's no good to yuh, Weary," they protested.  "He's too drunk to
+tell chloroform from dried apricots."
+
+"That'll be all right," Weary assured them confidently.  "I guess he'll
+be some sober by the time we hit camp.  I went and dug up his dope-box,
+so he can get right to work when he arrives.  Send him out here."
+
+"Say, he can't never top off Powderface, Weary.  I thought yuh was
+going to ride him yourself.  It's plumb wicked to put that old
+centurion on him.  He wouldn't be able to stay with him a mile."
+
+"That's a heap farther than he could get with Glory," said Weary,
+unmoved.  "Yuh don't seem to realize that Patsy's just next thing to a
+dead man, and Dock has got the name of what'll cure him sloshing around
+amongst all that whiskey in his head.  I can't wait for him to sober
+up--I'm just plumb obliged to take him along, jag and all.  Come on,
+Dock; this is a lovely evening for a ride."
+
+Dock objected emphatically with head, arms, legs and much mixed
+dialect.  But Weary climbed down and, with the help of Bert Rogers,
+carried him bodily and lifted him into the saddle.  When the pinto
+began to offer some objections, strong hands seized his bridle and held
+him angrily submissive.
+
+"He'll tumble off, sure as yuh live," predicted Bert; but Weary never
+did things by halves; he shook his head and untied his coiled rope.
+
+"By the Lord!  I hate to see a man ride into town and pack off the only
+heirloom we got," complained Rusty Brown.  "Dock's been handed down
+from generation to Genesis, and there ain't hardly a scratch on him.
+If yuh don't bring him back in good order Weary Davidson, there'll be
+things doing."
+
+Weary looked up from taking the last half-hitch around the saddle horn.
+"Yuh needn't worry," he said.  "This medical monstrosity is more
+valuable to me than he is to you, right now.  I'll handle him careful."
+
+"Das wass de mean treeck!" cried Dock, for all the world like a parrot.
+
+"It sure is, old boy," assented Weary cheerfully, and tied the pinto's
+bridle-reins into a hard knot at the end.  With the reins in his hand
+he mounted Glory.  "Your pinto'll lead, won't he?" he asked Rusty then.
+It was like Weary to take a thing for granted first, and ask questions
+about it afterward.
+
+"Maybe he will--he never did, so far," grinned Rusty.  "It's plumb
+insulting to a self-respecting cow-pony to make a pack-horse out uh
+him.  I wouldn't be none surprised if yuh heard his views on the
+subjects before yuh git there."
+
+"It's an honor to pack heirlooms," retorted Weary.  "So-long, boys."
+
+Old Dock made a last, futile effort to free himself and then settled
+down in the saddle and eyed the world sullenly from under frost-white
+eyebrows heavy as a military mustache.  He did not at that time look
+particularly patriarchal; more nearly he resembled a humbled, entrapped
+Santa Claus.
+
+They started off quite tamely.  The pinto leaned far back upon the
+bridle-reins and trotted with stiff, reluctant legs that did not
+promise speed; but still h went, and Weary drew a relieved breath.  His
+arm was like to ache frightfully before they covered a quarter of the
+fifteen miles, but he did not mind that much; besides, he guessed
+shrewdly that the pinto would travel better once they were well out of
+town.
+
+The soft, warm dusk of a July evening crept over the land and a few
+stars winked at them facetiously.  Over by the reedy creek, frogs
+_cr-ek-ek-ekked_ in a tuneless medley and night-hawks flapped silently
+through the still air, swooping suddenly with a queer, whooing rush
+like wind blowing through a cavern.  Familiar sounds they were to
+Weary--so familiar that he scarce heard them; though he would have felt
+a vague, uneasy sense of something lost had they stilled unexpectedly.
+Out in the lane which leads to the open range-land between wide reaches
+of rank, blue-joint meadows, a new sound met them--the faint, insistent
+humming of millions of mosquitoes.  Weary dug Glory with his spurs and
+came near having his arm jerked from its socket before he could pull
+him in again.  He swore a little and swung round in the saddle.
+
+"Can't yuh dig a little speed into that cayuse with your heels, Dock?"
+he cried to the resentful heirloom.  "We're going to be naturally
+chewed up if we don't fan the breeze along here."
+
+"Ah don'd care--das wass de mean treeck!" growled Dock into his beard.
+
+Weary opened his mouth, came near swallowing a dozen mosquitoes alive,
+and closed it again.  What would it profit him to argue with a drunken
+man?  He slowed till the pinto, still moving with stiff, reluctant
+knees, came alongside, and struck him sharply with his quirt; the pinto
+sidled and Dock lurched over as far as Weary's rope would permit.
+
+"Come along, then!" admonished Weary, under his breath.
+
+The pinto snorted and ran backward until Weary wished he had been
+content with the pace of a snail.  Then the mosquitoes swooped down
+upon them in a cloud and Glory struck out, fighting and kicking
+viciously.  Presently Weary found himself with part of the pinto's
+bridle-rein in his hand, and the memory of a pale object disappearing
+into the darkness ahead.
+
+For the time being he was wholly occupied with his own horse; but when
+Glory was minded to go straight ahead instead of in a circle, he gave
+thought to his mission and thanked the Lord that Dock was headed in the
+right direction.  He gave chase joyfully; for every mile covered in
+that fleet fashion meant an added chance for Patsy's life.  Even the
+mosquitoes found themselves hopelessly out of the race and beat up
+harmlessly in the rear.  So he galloped steadily upon the homeward
+trail; and a new discomfort forced itself upon his consciousness--the
+discomfort of swift riding while a sharp-cornered medicine-case of
+generous proportions thumped regularly against his leg.  At first he
+did not mind it so much, but after ten minutes of riding so, the thing
+grew monotonously painful and disquieting to the nerves.
+
+Five miles from the town he sighted the pinto; it was just disappearing
+up a coulee which led nowhere--much less to camp.  Weary's
+self-congratulatory mood changed to impatience; he followed after.  Two
+miles, and he reached the unclimbable head of the coulee--and no pinto.
+He pulled up and gazed incredulously at the blank, sandstone walls;
+searched long for some hidden pathway to the top and gave it up.
+
+He rode back slowly under the stars, a much disheartened Weary.  He
+thought of Patsy's agony and gritted his teeth at his own impotence.
+After awhile he thought of Old Dock lashed to the pinto's saddle, and
+his conscience awoke and badgered him unmercifully for the thing he had
+done and the risk he had taken with one man's life that he might save
+the life of another.
+
+Down near the mouth of the coulee he came upon a cattle trail winding
+up toward the stars.  For the lack of a better clue he turned into it
+and urged Glory faster than was wise if he would save the strength of
+his horse; but Glory was game as long as he could stand, and took the
+hill at a lope with never a protest against the pace.
+
+Up on the top the prairie stretched mysteriously away to the sky-line,
+with no sound to mar the broody silence, and with never a movement to
+disturb the deep sleep of the grass-land.  All day had the hills been
+buffeted by a sweeping West wind; but the breeze had dropped with the
+sun, as though tired with roistering and slept without so much as a
+dream-puff to shake the dew from the grasses.
+
+Weary stopped to wind his horse and to listen, but not a hoof-beat came
+to guide him in his search.  He leaned and shifted the medicine case a
+bit to ease his bruised leg, and wished he might unlock the healing
+mysteries and the magic stored within.  It seemed to him a cruel world
+and unjust that knowledge must be gleaned slowly, laboriously, while
+men died miserably for want of it.  Worse, that men who had gleaned
+should be permitted to smother such precious knowledge in the
+stupefying fumes of whiskey.
+
+If he could only have appropriated Dock's brain along with his
+medicines, he might have been in camp by now, ministering to Patsy
+before it was too late to do anything.  Without a doubt the boys were
+scanning anxiously the ridge, confident that he would not fail them
+though impatient for his coming.  And here he sat helplessly upon a
+hilltop under the stars, many miles from camp, with much medicine just
+under his knee and a pocket crammed with an unknown, healing herb, as
+useless after all his effort as he had been in camp when they could not
+find the Three-H liniment.
+
+Glory turned his head and regarded him gravely out of eyes near human
+in their questioning, and Weary laid caressing hand upon his silvery
+mane, grateful for the sense of companionship which it gave.
+
+"You're sure a wise little nag." he said wistfully, and his voice
+sounded strange in the great silence.  "Maybe you can find 'em--and it
+you can, I'll sure be grateful; you can paw the stars out uh high
+heaven and I won't take my quirt off my saddle-horn; hope I may die if
+I do!"
+
+Glory stamped one white hoof and pointed both ears straight forward,
+threw up his head and whinnied a shrill question into the night.  Weary
+hopefully urged him with his knees.  Glory challenged once again and
+struck out eagerly, galloping lightly in spite of the miles he had
+covered.  Far back on the bench-land came faint answer to his call, and
+Weary laughed from sheer relief.  By the stars the night was yet young,
+and he grew hopeful--almost complacent.
+
+Glory planted both forefeet deep in the prairie sod and skidded on the
+brink of a deep cut-bank.  It was a close shave, such as comes often to
+those who ride the range by night.  Weary looked down into blackness
+and then across into gloom.  The place was too deep and sheer to ride
+into, and too wide to jump; clearly, they must go around it.
+
+Going around a gulley is not always the simple thing it sounds,
+especially when one is not sure as to the direction it takes.  To find
+the head under such conditions requires time.
+
+Weary thought he knew the place and turned north secure in the belief
+that the gulley ran south into the coulee he had that evening
+fruitlessly explored.  As a matter of fact it opened into a coulee
+north of them, and in that direction it grew always deeper and more
+impassable even by daylight.
+
+On a dark night, with only the stars to guide one and to accentuate the
+darkness, such a discovery brings with it confusion of locality.  Weary
+drew up when he could go no farther without plunging headlong into
+blackness, and mentally sketched a map of that particular portion of
+the globe and tried to find in it a place where the gulch might
+consistently lie.  After a minute he gave over the attempt and admitted
+to himself that, according to his mental map, it could not consistently
+lie anywhere at all.  Even Glory seemed to have lost interest in the
+quest and stood listlessly with his head down.  His attitude irritated
+Weary very much.
+
+"Yuh damn', taffy colored cayuse!" he said fretfully.  "This is as much
+your funeral as mine--seeing yuh started out all so brisk to find that
+pinto.  Do yah suppose yuh could find a horse if he was staked ten feet
+in front of your nose?  Chances are, yuh couldn't.  I reckon you'd have
+trouble finding your way around the little pasture at the ranch--unless
+the sun shone real bright and yuh had somebody to lead yuh!"
+
+This was manifestly unjust and it was not like Weary; but this night's
+mission was getting on his nerves.  He leaned and shifted the
+medicine-case again, and felt ruefully of his bruised leg.  That also
+was getting upon his nerves.
+
+"Oh, Mamma!" he muttered disgustedly.  "This is sure a sarcastic
+layout; dope enough here to cure all the sickness in Montana--if a
+fellow knew enough to use it--battering a hole in my leg you could
+throw a yearling calf into, and me wandering wild over the hills like a
+locoed sheepherder!  Glory, you get a move on yuh, you knock-kneed,
+buzzard-headed--"  He subsided into incoherent grumbling and rode back
+whence he came, up the gully's brim.
+
+When the night was far gone and the slant of the Great Dipper told him
+that day-dawn was near, he heard a horse nicker wistfully, away to the
+right.  Wheeling sharply, his spurs raking the roughened sides of
+Glory, he rode recklessly toward the sound, not daring to hope that it
+might be the pinto and yet holding his mind back from despair.
+
+When he was near the place--so near that he could see a dim, formless
+shape outlined against the sky-line,--Glory stumbled over a sunken rock
+and fell heavily upon his knees.  When he picked himself up he hobbled
+and Weary cursed him unpityingly.
+
+When, limping painfully, Glory came up with the object, the heart of
+Weary rose up and stuck in his throat; for the object was a pinto horse
+and above it bulked the squat figure of an irate old man.
+
+"Hello, Dock," greeted Weary.  "How do yuh stack up?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, Weary Davitson, I feex yous plandy.  What for do you dees
+t'ing?  I not do de harrm wis you.  I not got de mooney wort' all dees
+troubles what you makes.  Dees horse, she lak for keel me also.  She
+buck, en keeck, en roon--_mon Dieu_, I not like dees t'ing."
+
+"Sober, by thunder!" ejaculated Weary in an ecstatic half-whisper.
+"Dock, you've got a chance to make a record for yourself to-night--if
+we ain't too late," he added bodefully.  "Do yuh know where we're
+headed for?"
+
+"I t'ink for de devil," retorted Old Dock peevishly.
+
+"No sir, we aren't.  We're going straight to camp, and you're going to
+save old Patsy--you like Patsy, you know; many's the time you've tanked
+up together and then fell on each other's necks and wept because the
+good old times won't come again.  He got poisoned on canned corn; the
+Lord send he ain't too dead for you to cure him.  Come on--we better
+hit the breeze.  We've lost a heap uh time."
+
+"I not like dees rope; she not comforte.  I have ride de bad horse when
+you wass in cradle."
+
+Weary got down and went over to him.  "All right, I'll unwind yuh.
+When we started, yuh know, yuh couldn't uh rode a rocking chair.  I was
+plumb obliged to tie yuh on.  Think we'll be in time to help Patsy?  He
+was taken sick about four o'clock."
+
+Old Dock waited till he was untied and the remnant of bridle-rein was
+placed in his hand, before he answered ironically: "I not do de mageec,
+_mon cher_ Weary.  I mos' have de medicine or I can do nottings, I not
+wave de fingaire an' say de vord."
+
+"That's all right--I've got the whole works.  I broke into your shack
+and made a clean haul uh dope.  And I want to tell yuh that for a
+doctor you've got blame poor ventilation to your house.  But I found
+the medicine."
+
+"Mon Dieu!" was the astonished comment, and after that they rode in
+silence and such haste as Glory's lameness would permit.
+
+The first beams of the sun were touching redly the hilltops and the
+birds were singing from swaying weeds when they rode down the last
+slope into the valley where camped the Flying-U.
+
+The night-hawk had driven the horses into the rope-corral and men were
+inside watching, with spread loop, for a chance to throw.  Happy Jack,
+with the cook's apron tied tightly around his lank middle, stood
+despondently in the doorway of the mess-tent and said no word as they
+approached.  In his silence--in his very presence there--Weary read
+disaster.
+
+"I guess we're too late," he told Dock, in hushed tones; for the minute
+he hated the white-bearded old man whose drunkenness had cost the
+Flying-U so dear.  He slipped wearily from the saddle and let the reins
+drop to the ground.  Happy Jack still eyed them silently.
+
+"Well?" asked Weary, when his nerves would bear no more.
+
+"When I git sick," said Happy Jack, his voice heavy with reproach,
+"I'll send you for help--if I want to die."
+
+"Is he dead?" questioned Weary, in hopeless fashion.
+
+"Well," said Happy Jack deliberately, "no, he ain't dead yet--but it's
+no thanks to you.  Was it poker, or billiards? and who won?"
+
+Weary looked at him dully a moment before he comprehended.  He had not
+had any supper or any deep, and he had ridden many miles in the long
+hours he had been away.  He walked, with a pronounced limp on the leg
+which had been next the medicine-case, to where Dock stood leaning
+shakily against the pinto.
+
+"Maybe we're in time, after all," he said slowly.  "Here's some kind uh
+dried stuff I got off the ceiling; I thought maybe yuh might need
+it--you're great on Indian weeds."  He pulled a crumpled, faintly
+aromatic bundle of herbs from his pocket.
+
+Dock took it and sniffed disgustedly, and dropped the herbs
+contemptuously to the ground.  "Dat not wort' notting--she what you
+call--de--cat_neep_."  He smiled sourly.
+
+Weary cast a furtive glance at Happy Jack, and hoped he had not
+overheard.  Catnip!  Still, how could he be expected to know what the
+blamed stuff was?  He untied the black medicine-case and brought it and
+put it at the feet of Old Dock.  "Well, here's the joker, anyhow," he
+said.  "It like to wore a hole clear through my leg, but I was careful
+and I don't believe any uh the bottles are busted."
+
+Dock looked at it and sat heavily down upon a box.  He looked at the
+case queerly, then lifted his shaggy head to gaze up at Weary.  And
+behind the bleared gravity of his eyes was something very like a
+twinkle.  "Dis, she not cure seek mans, neider.  She--"  He pressed a
+tiny spring which Weary had not discovered and laid the case open upon
+the ground.  "You see?" he said plaintively.  "She not good for
+Patsy--she tree-dossen can-openaire."
+
+Weary stared blankly.  Happy Jack came up, looked and doubled
+convulsively.  Can-openers!  Three dozen of them.  Old Dock was
+explaining in his best English, and he was courteously refraining from
+the faintest smile.
+
+"Dey de new, bettaire kind.  I send for dem, I t'ink maybe I sell.  I
+put her in de grip--so--I carry dem all togedder.  My mediceen, she in
+de beeg ches'."
+
+Weary had sat down and his head was dropped dejectedly into his hands.
+He had bungled the whole thing, after all.  "Well," he said
+apathetically.  "The chest was locked; I never opened it."
+
+Old Dock nodded his head gravely.  "She lock," he assented, gently.
+"She mooch mediceen--she wort' mooch mooney.  De key, she in mine
+pocket--" "Oh, I don't give a damn where the key is--now," flared
+Weary.  "I guess Patsy'll have to cash in; that's all."
+
+"Aw, gwan!" cried Happy Jack.  "A sheepman come along just after you
+left, and he had a quart uh whisky.  We begged it off him and give
+Patsy a good bit jolt.  That eased him up some, and we give him
+another--and he got to hollerin' so loud for more uh the same, so we
+just set the bottle in easy reach and let him alone.  He's in there
+now, drunk as a biled owl--the lazy old devil.  I had to get supper and
+breakfast too--and looks like I'd have to cook dinner.  Poison--hell!
+I betche he never had nothing but a plain old belly-ache!"
+
+Weary got up and went to the mess-tent, lifted the flap and looked in
+upon Patsy lying on the flat of his back, snoring comfortably.  He
+regarded him silently a moment, then looked over his shoulder to where
+Old Dock huddled over the three dozen can-openers.
+
+"Oh, mamma!" he whispered, and poured himself a cup of coffee.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMB
+
+When came the famine in stock-cars on the Montana Central, and the
+Flying U herd had grazed for two days within five miles of Dry Lake,
+waiting for the promised train of empties, Chip Bennett, lately
+promoted foreman, felt that he had trouble a-plenty.  When,
+short-handed as he was, two of his cowboys went a-spreeing and
+a-leisuring in town, with their faces turned from honest toil and their
+hands manipulating pairs and flushes and face-cards, rather than good
+"grass" ropes, he was positive that his cup was dripping trouble all
+round the rim.
+
+The delinquents were not "top hands," it is true.  They--the Happy
+Family, of which Jim Whitmore was inordinately proud--would sooner
+forswear their country than the Flying U.  But even two transients of
+very ordinary ability are missed when they suddenly vanish in shipping
+time, and Chip, feeling keenly his responsibilities, rode disgustedly
+into town to reclaim the recreants or pay them off and hire others in
+their places.
+
+With his temper somewhat roughened by the agent's report that no cars
+were yet on the way, he clanked into Rusty Brown's place after his
+deserters.  One was laid blissfully out in the little back room,
+breathing loudly, dead to the world and the exigencies of life; him
+Chip passed up with a snort of disgust.  The other was sitting in a
+corner, with his hat balanced precariously over his left ear, gazing
+superciliously upon his fellows and, incidentally, winning everything
+in sight.  He leered up at Chip and fingered ostentatiously his three
+stacks of blues.
+
+"What'n thunder do I want to go t' camp for?" he demanded, in answer to
+Chip's suggestion.  "Forty dollars a month following your trail don't
+look good t' me no more.  I'm four hundred dollars t' the good sence
+last night, and takin' all comers.  Good money's just fallin' my way.
+I don't guess I hanker after any more night guardin', thank ye."
+
+"Suit yourself," said Chip coldly, and turned away.
+
+Argument was useless and never to his liking.  The problem now was to
+find two men who could take their places, and that was not so easily
+solved.  A golden-haired, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed young fellow in
+dainty silk negligee, gray trousers, and russet leather belt, with a
+panama hat and absurdly small tan shoes, followed him outside.
+
+"If you're looking for men," he announced musically, "I'm open for
+engagements."
+
+Chip looked down at him tolerantly.  "Much obliged, but I'm not getting
+up a garden-party," he informed him politely, and took a step.  He was
+not in the mood to find amusement in the situation.
+
+The immaculate one showed some dimples that would have been distracting
+in the face of a woman.  "And I ain't looking for a job leading cows to
+water," he retorted.  "Yuh shouldn't judge a man by his clothes,
+old-timer."
+
+"I don't--a man!" said Chip pointedly.  "Run away and play.  I'll tell
+you what, sonny, I'm not running a kindergarten.  Every man I hire has
+got man's work to do.  Wait till you're grown up; as it is, you'd last
+quick on round-up, and that's a fact."
+
+"Oh! it is, eh?  Say, did yuh ever hear uh old Eagle Creek Smith, of
+the Cross L, or Rowdy Vaughan, or a fellow up on Milk River they call
+Pink?"
+
+"I'd tell a man!" Chip turned toward him again.  "At least I've heard
+of Eagle Creek Smith, and of Pink--bronco-fighter, they say, and a
+little devil.  Why?"
+
+The immaculate one lifted his panama, ran his fingers through his
+curls, and smiled demurely.  "Nothing in particular--only, I'm Pink!"
+
+Chip stared frankly, and measured the slender figure from accurately
+dented hat-crown to tiny shoe-tips.  "Well, yuh sure don't look it," he
+said bluntly, at length.  "Why that elaborate disguise of
+respectability?"
+
+Pink sat him down on an empty beer case in the shade of the saloon and
+daintily rolled a cigarette.
+
+"Yuh see, it's like this," he began, in his soft voice.  "When the
+Cross L moved their stock across the line Rowdy Vaughan had charge uh
+the outfit; and, seeing we're pretty good friends, uh course I went
+along.  I hadn't been over there a month till I had occasion t' thump
+the daylights out uh one uh them bone-headed grangers that vitiates the
+atmosphere up there; and I put him all to the bad.  So a bunch uh them
+gaudy buck-policemen rose up and fogged me back across the line; a man
+has sure got t' turn the other cheek up there, or languish in _ga_-ol."
+
+Pink brought the last word out as if it did not taste good.
+
+"I hit for the home range, which is Upper Milk River.  But it was
+cussed lonesome with all the old bunch gone; so I sold my outfit and
+quit cow-punching for good.  I wonder if the puncher lives that didn't
+sell his saddle and bed, and reform at least once in his checkered
+career!
+
+"I had a fair-sized roll so I took the home trail back to Minnesota,
+and chewed on the fatted calf all last winter and this summer.  It
+wasn't bad, only the girls run in bunches and are dead anxious to tie
+up to some male human.  I dubbed around and dodged the loop long as I
+could stand it, and then I drifted.
+
+"I kinda got hungry for the feel of a good horse between m' legs once
+more.  It made me mad to see houses on every decent bed-ground, and
+fences so thick yuh couldn't get out and fan the breeze if yuh tried.
+I tell yuh straight, old-timer, last month I was home I plumb wore out
+mother's clothes-line roping the gate-post.  For the Lord's sake, stake
+me to a string! and I don't give a damn how rough a one it is!"
+
+Chip sat down on a neighboring case and regarded the dapper little
+figure curiously.  Such words, coming from those girlishly rosy lips,
+with the dimples dodging in and out of his pink cheeks, had an odd
+effect of unreality.  But Pink plainly was in earnest.  His eyes behind
+the dancing light of harmless deviltry, were pleading and wistful as a
+child.
+
+"You're it!" said Chip relievedly.  "You can go right to work.  Seems
+you're the man I've been looking for, only I will say I didn't
+recognize yuh on sight.  We've got a heap of work ahead, and only five
+decent men in the outfit.  It's the Flying U; and these five have
+worked for the outfit for years."
+
+"I sure savvy that bunch," Pink declared sweetly.  "I've heard uh the
+Happy Family before.  Ain't you one uh them?"
+
+Chip grinned reminiscently.  "I was," he admitted, a shade of regret in
+his voice.  "Maybe I am yet; only I went up a notch last spring.  Got
+married, and settled down.  I'm one of the firm now, so I had to reform
+and cut out the foolishness.  Folks have got to calling the rest the
+Frivolous Five.  They're a pretty nifty bunch, but you'll get on, all
+right, seeing you're not the pilgrim you look to be.  If you were, I'd
+say: 'The Lord help you!'  Got an outfit?"
+
+"Sure.  Bought one, brand new, in the Falls.  It's over at the hotel
+now, with a haughty, buckskin-colored suitcase that fair squeals with
+style and newness."  Pink pulled his silver belt-buckle straight and
+patted his pink-and-blue tie approvingly.
+
+"Well, if you're ready, I'll get the horses these two hoboes rode in,
+and we'll drift.  By the way, how shall I write you on the book?"
+
+Pink stooped and with his handkerchief carefully, wiped the last speck
+of Dry Lake dust from his shiny toes.  "Yuh won't crawfish on me, if I
+tell yuh?" he inquired anxiously, standing up and adjusting his belt
+again.
+
+"Of course not."  Chip looked his surprise at the question.
+
+"Well, it ain't _my_ fault, but my lawful, legal name is Percival
+Cadwallader Perkins."
+
+"Wha-at?"
+
+"Percival Cad-_wall_-ader Perkins.  Shall I get yuh something to take
+with it?"
+
+Chip, with his pencil poised in air, grinned sympathetically.  "It's
+sure a heavy load to carry," he observed solemnly.  "How do you spell
+that second shift?"
+
+Pink told him, spelling the word slowly, syllable by syllable.  "Ain't
+it fierce?" he wanted to know.  "My mother must have sure been
+frivolous and light-minded when I was born.  I'm the only boy she ever
+had, and there was two grandfathers that wanted a kid named after 'em;
+they sure make a hot combination.  Yuh know what Cadwallader means, in
+the dictionary?"
+
+"Lord, no!" said Chip, putting away his book.
+
+"Battle arranger," Pink told him sadly.  "Now, wouldn't that jostle
+yuh?  It's true, too; it has sure arranged a lot uh battles for me.  It
+caused me to lick about six kids a day, and to get licked by a dozen,
+when I went to school.  So, seeing the name was mine, and I couldn't
+chuck it, I went and throwed in with an ex-pugilist and learned the
+trade thorough.  Since then things come easier.  Folks don't open up
+the subject more'n a dozen times before they take the hint.  And this
+summer I fell in with a ju-jutsu sharp--a college-fed Jap that sure
+savvied things a white man never dreams except in nightmares.  I set at
+his feet all summer learning wisdom.  I ain't afraid now to wear my
+name on my hatband."
+
+"Still, I wouldn't," said Chip dryly.  "Hike over and get the haughty
+new war-bag, and we'll hit the sod.  I've got to be in camp by
+dinner-time."
+
+A mile out Pink looked down at his festal garments and smiled.  "I
+expect I'll be pickings for your Happy Family when they see me in these
+war-togs," he remarked.
+
+Chip turned and regarded him meditatively for a minute.  "I was just
+wondering," he said slowly, "if the Happy Family wouldn't be pickings
+for _you_."
+
+Pink dimpled wickedly and said nothing.
+
+The Happy Family were at dinner when Chip and Pink rode up and
+dismounted by the bed-tent.  Chip and Pink went over to where the
+others were sitting in various places and attitudes, and the Happy
+Family received them, not with the nudges and winks one might justly
+expect, but with decorous silence.
+
+Chip got plate, knife, fork, and spoon and started for the stove.
+
+"Help yourself to the tools, and then come over here and fill up," he
+invited Pink, over his shoulder.  "We don't stand on ceremony here.
+May look queer to you at first, but you'll get used to it."
+
+The Happy Family pricked up its ears and looked guardedly at one
+another.  This wasn't a chance visitor, then; he was going to work!
+
+Weary, sitting cross-legged in the shade of a wagon-wheel looked up at
+Pink, fumbling shyly among the knives and forks, and with deceitful
+innocence he whistled absently:
+
+  Oh, tell me, pretty maiden,
+  Are there any more at home like you?
+
+Pink glanced at him quickly, then at the solemn faces of the others,
+and retreated hastily inside the tent, where was Chip; and every man of
+them knew the stranger had caught Weary's meaning.  They smiled
+discreetly at their plates and said nothing.
+
+Pink came out with heaped plate and brimming cup, and retired
+diffidently to the farthest bit of shade he could find, which brought
+him close to Cal Emmett.  He sat down gingerly so as not to spill
+anything.
+
+"Going to work for the outfit?" asked Cal politely.
+
+"Yes, sir; the overseer gave me a position," answered Pink sweetly, in
+his soft treble.  "I just came to town this morning.  Is it very hard
+work?"
+
+"Yeah, it sure is," said Cal plaintively, between bites.  "What with
+taming wild broncos and trying to keep the cattle from stampeding, our
+shining hours are sure improved a lot.  It's a hard, hard life."  He
+sighed deeply and emptied his cup of coffee.
+
+"I--I thought I'd like it," ventured Pink wistfully.
+
+"It's dead safe to prognosticate yuh won't a little bit.  None of us
+like it.  I never saw a man with soul so vile that he did."
+
+"Why don't you give it up, then, and get a position at something else?"
+Pink's eyes looked wide and wistful over the rim of his cup.
+
+"Can't.  We're most of us escaped desperadoes with a price on our
+heads."  Cal shook his own lugubriously.  "We're safer here than we
+would be anywhere else.  If a posse showed up, or we got wind of one
+coming, there's plenty uh horses and saddles to make a getaway.  We'd
+just pick out a drifter and split the breeze.  We can keep on the dodge
+a long time, working on round-up, and earn a little money at the same
+time, so when we do have to fly we won't be dead broke."
+
+"Oh!"  Pink looked properly impressed.  "If it isn't too
+personal--er--is there a--that is, are you----"
+
+"An outlaw?" Cal assisted.  "I sure am--and then some.  I'm wanted for
+perjury in South Dakota, manslaughter in Texas, and bigamy in Utah.
+I'm all bad."
+
+"Oh, I hope not!" Pink looked distressed.  "I'm very sorry," he added
+simply, "and I hope the posses won't chase you."
+
+Cal shook his head very, very gravely.  "You can't most always tell,"
+he declared gloomily.  "I expect I'll have  an invite to a
+necktie-party some day."
+
+"I've been to necktie-parties myself."  Pink brightened visibly.  "I
+don't like them; you always get the wrong girl."
+
+"I don't like 'em, either," agreed Cal.  "I'm always afraid the wrong
+necktie will be mine.  Were you ever lynched?"
+
+Pink moved uneasily.  "I--I don't remember that I ever was," he
+answered guardedly.
+
+"I was.  My gang come along and cut me down just as I was about all in.
+I was leading a gang----"
+
+"Excuse me a minute," Pink interrupted hurriedly.  "I think the
+overseer is motioning for me."
+
+He hastened over to where Chip was standing alone, and asked if he
+should change his clothes and get ready to go to work.
+
+Chip told him it wouldn't be a bad idea, and Pink, carrying his haughty
+suit-case and another bulky bundle, disappeared precipitately into the
+bed-tent.
+
+"By golly!" spoke up Slim, "it looks good enough to eat."
+
+"Where did yuh pluck that modest flower, Chip?" Jack Bates wanted to
+know.
+
+Chip calmly sifted some tobacco in a paper.  "I picked it in town," he
+told them.  "I hired it to punch cows, and its name is--wait a minute."
+He put away the tobacco sack, got out his book, and turned the leaves.
+"Its name is Percival Cadwallader Perkins."
+
+"Oh, mamma!  Percival Cadwolloper--what?" Weary looked utterly at sea.
+
+"Perkins," supplied Chip.
+
+"Percival--Cad-wolloper--Perkins," Weary mused aloud.  "Yuh want to
+double the guard to-night, Chip; that name'll sure stampede the bunch."
+
+"He's sure a sweet young thing--mamma's precious lamb broke out uh the
+home corral!" said Jack Bates.  "I'll bet yuh a tall, yellow-haired
+mamma with flowing widow's weeds'll be out here hunting him up inside a
+week.  We got to be gentle with him, and not rub none uh the bloom uh
+innocence off his rosy cheek.  Mamma had a little lamb, his cheeks were
+red and rosy.  And everywhere that mamma went--er--everywhere--that
+mamma--went----"
+
+"The lamb was sure to mosey," supplied Weary.
+
+"By golly!  yuh got that backward," Slim objected.  "It ought uh be:
+Everywhere the lambie went; his mamma was sure to mosey."
+
+The reappearance of Pink cut short the discussion.  Pink as he had
+looked before was pretty as a poster.  Pink as he reappeared would have
+driven a matinee crowd wild with enthusiasm.  On the stage he would be
+in danger of being Hobsonized; in the Flying U camp the Happy Family
+looked at him and drew a long breath.  When his back was turned, they
+shaded their eyes ostentatiously from the blaze of his splendor.
+
+He still wore his panama, and the dainty pink-and-white striped silk
+shirt, the gray trousers, and russet-leather belt with silver buckle.
+But around his neck, nestling under his rounded chin, was a gorgeous
+rose-pink silk handkerchief, of the hue that he always wore, and that
+had given him the nickname of "Pink."
+
+His white hands were hidden in a pair of wonderful silk-embroidered
+buckskin gauntlets.  His gray trousers were tucked into number four tan
+riding-boots, high as to heel--so high that they looked two sizes
+smaller--and gorgeous as to silk-stitched tops.  A shiny, new pair of
+silver-mounted spurs jingled from his heels.
+
+He smiled trustfully at Chip, and leaned, with the studiously graceful
+pose of the stage, against a hind wheel of the mess-wagon.  Then he got
+papers and tobacco from a pocket of the silk shirt and began to roll a
+cigarette.  Inwardly he hoped that the act would not give him away to
+the Happy Family, whom he felt in honor bound to deceive, and bewailed
+the smoke-hunger that drove him to take the risk.
+
+The Happy Family, however, was unsuspicious.  His pink-and-white
+prettiness, his clothes, and the baby innocence of his dimples and his
+long-lashed blue eyes branded him unequivocally in their eyes as the
+tenderest sort of tenderfoot.
+
+"Get onto the way he rolls 'em--backward!" murmured Weary into Cal's
+ear.
+
+"If there's anything I hate," Cal remarked irrelevantly to the crowd,
+"it's to see a girl chewing a tutti-frutti cud--or smoking a cigarette!"
+
+Pink looked up from under his thick lashes and opened his lips to
+speak, then thought better of it.  The jingling of the cavvy coming in
+cut short the incipient banter, and Pink turned and watched intently
+the corralling process.  To him the jangling bells were sweetest music,
+for which ears and heart had hungered long, and which had come to him
+often in dreams.  His blood tingled as might a lover's when his
+sweetheart approaches.
+
+"Weary, you and Cal better relieve the boys on herd," Chip called.
+"I'll get you a horse, P--Perkins"--he had almost said "Pink"--"and you
+can go along.  Then to-night you'll go on guard with Cal."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pink, with a docility that would have amazed any who
+knew him well, and followed Chip out to the corral, where Cal and Weary
+were already inside with their ropes, among the circling mass.
+
+Chip led out a gentle little cow-pony that could almost day-herd
+without a rider of any sort, and Pink bridled him before the covertly
+watching crew.  He did not do it as quickly as he might have done, for
+he "played to the gallery" and deliberately fumbled the buckle and
+pinned one ear of the pony down flat with the head-stall.
+
+A new saddle, stiff and unbroken, is ever a vexation unto its proud
+owner, and its proper adjustment requires time and much language.  Pink
+omitted the language, so that the process took longer than it would
+naturally have done; but Cal and Weary, upon their mounts, made
+cigarettes and waited, with an air of endurance, and gave Pink much
+advice.  Then he got somehow into the saddle and flapped elbows beside
+them, looking like a gorgeous-hued canary with wings a-flutter.
+
+Happy Jack, who had been standing herd disconsolately with two aliens,
+stared open-mouthed at Pink's approach and rode hastily to camp, fair
+bursting with questions and comments.
+
+The herd, twelve hundred range-fattened steers, grazed quietly on a
+side hill half a mile or more from camp.  Pink ran a quick, appraising
+eye over the bunch estimating correctly the number, and noting their
+splendid condition.
+
+"Never saw so many cattle in one bunch before, did yuh?" queried Cal,
+misinterpreting the glance.
+
+Pink shook his head vaguely.  "Does one man own all those cows?" he
+wanted to know, with just the proper amount of incredulous wonder.
+
+"Yeah--and then some.  This ain't any herd at all; just a few that
+we're shipping to get 'em out uh the way uh the real herds."
+
+"About how many do you think there are here?" asked Pink.
+
+Cal turned his back upon his conscience and winked at Weary.  "Oh,
+there's only nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one," he lied
+boldly.  "Last bunch we gathered was fifty-one thousand six hundred and
+twenty-nine and a half.  Er--the half," he explained hastily in answer
+to Pink's look of unbelief, "was a calf that we let in by mistake.  I
+caught it, after we counted, and took it back to its mother."
+
+"I should think," Pink ventured hesitatingly, "it would be hard to find
+its mother.  I don't see how you could tell."
+
+"Well," said Cal gravely, sliding sidewise in the saddle, "it's this
+way.  A calf is always just like its mother, hair for hair.  This calf
+had white hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh diamonds on its
+left side.  All I had to do was ride the range till I found the cow
+that matched."
+
+"Oh!"  Pink looked thoughtful and convinced.
+
+Weary, smiling to himself, rode off to take his station at the other
+side of the herd.  Even the Happy Family must place duty a pace before
+pleasure, and Cal, much as he would liked to have continued the
+conversation, resisted temptation and started down along the nearest
+edge of the bunch.  Pink showed inclination to follow.
+
+"You stay where you're at, sonny," Cal told him, over his shoulder.
+
+"What must I do?" Pink straightened his tie and set his panama more
+firmly on his yellow curls, for a brisk wind was blowing.
+
+Cal's voice came back to him faintly: "Just dub around here and don't
+do a darn thing; and don't bother the cattle."
+
+"Good advice, that," Pink commented amusedly.  "Hits day-herding off to
+a T."  He prepared for a lazy afternoon, and enjoyed every minute.
+
+On his way back to camp at suppertime, Pink rode close to Cal and
+looked as if he had something on his mind.  Cal and Weary exchanged
+glances.
+
+"I'd like to ask," Pink began timidly, "how you fed that calf--before
+you found his mother.  Didn't he get pretty hungry?"
+
+"Why, I carried a bottle uh milk along," Cal lied fluently.  "When the
+bottle went empty I'd catch a cow and milk it."
+
+"Would it stand without being tied?"
+
+"Sure.  All range cows'll gentle right down, if yuh know the right way
+to approach 'em, and the words to say.  That's a secret that we don't
+tell anybody that hasn't been a cowboy for a year, and rode fourteen
+broncos straight up.  Sorry I can't tell yuh."
+
+Pink went diplomatically back to the calf.  "Did you carry it in your
+arms, or--"
+
+"The calf?  Sure.  How else would I carry it?"  Cal's big, baby-blue
+eyes matched Pink's for innocence.  "I carried that bossy in my arms
+for three days," he declared solemnly, "before I found a cow with white
+hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh--er--clubs----"
+
+"Diamonds" corrected Pink, drinking in each word greedily.
+
+"That's it: diamonds, on its right hind--er--shoulders----"
+
+"The calf's was on its left side," reminded Pink reproachfully.  "I
+don't believe you found the right mother, after all!"
+
+"Yeah, I sure did, all right," contended Cal earnestly.  "I know,
+'cause she was that grateful, when she seen me heave in sight over a
+hill a mile away, she come up on the gallop, a-bawling, and--er--licked
+my hand!"
+
+That settled it, of course.  Pink dismounted stiffly and walked
+painfully to the cook-tent.  Ten months out of saddle--with a new,
+unbroken one to begin on again--told, even upon Pink, and made for
+extreme discomfort.
+
+When he had eaten, hungrily and in silence, responding to the mildly
+ironical sociability of his fellows with a brevity which only his soft
+voice saved from bruskness, he unrolled his new bed and lay down with
+not a thought for the part he was playing.  He heard with absolute
+indifference Weary's remark outside, that "Cadwolloper's about all in;
+day-herding's too strenuous for him."  The last that came to him, some
+one was chanting relishfully:
+
+  Mamma had a precious lamby his cheeks were red and rosy;
+  And when he rode the festive bronk, he tumbled on his nosey.
+
+There was more; but Pink had gone to sleep, and so missed it.
+
+At sundown he awoke and went out to saddle the night horse Chip had
+caught for him, and then went to bed again.  When shaken gently for
+middle guard, he dressed sleepily, added a pair of white Angora chaps
+to his afternoon attire, and stumbled out into the murky moonlight.
+
+Guided and coached by Cal, he took his station and began that
+monotonous round which had been a part of the life he loved best.
+Though stiff and sore from unaccustomed riding, Pink felt quite content
+to be where he was; to watch the quiet land and the peaceful,
+slumbering herd; with the drifting gray clouds above, and the moon
+swimming, head under, in their midst.  Twice in a complete round he met
+Cal, going in opposite direction.  At the second round Cal stopped him.
+
+"How yuh coming?" he queried cheerfully.
+
+"All right, thank you," said Pink.
+
+"Yuh want to watch out for a lop-horned critter over on the other
+side," Cal went on, in confidential tone.  "He keeps trying to sneak
+out uh the bunch.  Don't let him get away; if he goes, take after him
+and fog him back."
+
+"He won't get away from me, if I can help it," Pink promised, and Cal
+rode on, with Pink smiling maliciously after him.
+
+As he neared the opposite side, a dim shape angled slowly out before
+him, moving aimlessly away from the sleeping herd.  Pink followed.
+Farther they went, and faster.  Into a little hollow went the
+"critter", and circled.  Pink took down his rope, let loose a good ten
+feet of it, and spurred unexpectedly close to it.
+
+Whack!  The rope landed with precision on the bowed shoulders of Cal.
+"Yuh will try to fool your betters, will yuh?"  Whack!  "I guess I can
+point out a critter that won't stray out uh the bunch again fer a
+spell!"  Whack!
+
+Cal straightened, gasping astonishment, in the saddle, pulled up with a
+jerk, and got off, in unlovely mood.
+
+"And I can point to a little mamma's lamb that won't take down his rope
+to his betters again, either!" he cried angrily.  "Climb down and get
+your ears cuffed proper, yuh darned, pink little smart Aleck; or them
+shiny heels'll break your pretty neck.  Thump me with a rope, will yuh?"
+
+Pink got down.  Immediately after, to use a slang term, they "mixed."
+Presently Cal, stretched the long length of him in the grass, with Pink
+sitting comfortably upon his middle, looked up at the dizzying swim of
+the moon, saw new and uncharted stars, and nearer, dimly revealed in
+the half-light, the self-satisfied, cherubic face of Pink.
+
+He essayed to rise and continue the discussion, and discovered a quite
+surprising state of affairs.  He could scarcely move: and the more he
+tried the more painful became Pink's diabolical hold of him.  He
+blinked and puzzled over the mystery.
+
+"Of all the bone-headed, feeble-minded sons-uh-guns it's ever been my
+duty and pleasure to reconstruct," announced Pink melodiously, "you
+sure take the sour-dough biscuit.  You're a song that's been tried on
+the cattle and failed t' connect.  You're the last wail of a coyote
+dying in the dim distance.  For a man that's been lynched and cut down
+and waiting for another yank, you certainly--are--mild!  You're the
+tamest thing that ever happened.  A lady could handle yuh with safety
+and ease.  You're a children's playmate.  For a deep-dyed desperado
+that's wanted for manslaughter in Texas, perjury in South Dakota, and
+bigamy in Utah, you're the last feeble whisper of a summer breeze.
+_You_ cuff my ears proper?  Oh, my! and oh, fudge!  It is to laugh!"
+
+Cat, battered as to features and bewildered as to mind, blinked again
+and grinned feebly.
+
+"Yuh try an old gag that I wore out on humans of your ilk in Wyoming,"
+went on Pink, warming to the subject.  "Yuh load me with stuff that
+would bring the heehaw from a sheep-herder.  Yuh can't even lie
+consistent to a pilgrim.  You're a story that's been told and
+forgotten, a canto that won't rhyme, blank verse with club feet.
+You're the last, horrible example of a declining race.  You're extinct."
+
+"Say"--Pink's fists kneaded energetically Cal's suffering
+diaphragm.--"are yuh--all--ba-a-d?"
+
+"Oh, Lord!  No.  I'm dead gentle.  Lemme up."
+
+"D'yuh think that critter will quit the bunch ag'in to-night?"
+
+"He ain't liable to," Cal assured him meekly.  "Say, who the devil are
+yuh anyhow?"
+
+"I'm Percival Cadwallader Perkins.  Do yuh like that name?  Do yuh
+think it drips sweetness and poetry, like a card uh honey?"
+
+"_Ouch_!  It--it's _swell_!"
+
+"You're a dam' liar," declared Pink, getting up.  "Furthermore, yuh old
+chuckle-head, yuh ought t' know better than try t' run any ranikaboos
+on me.  I've got your pedigree, right back to the Flood; and it's safe
+betting yuh got mine, and don't know it.  Your best girl happens to be
+my cousin."
+
+Cal scrambled slowly and painfully to his feet.  "Then you're Milk
+River Pink.  I might uh guessed it," he sighed.
+
+"I cannot tell a lie," Pink averred.  "Only, plain Pink'll do for me.
+Where d'yuh suppose the bunch is by this time?"
+
+They mounted and rode back together.  Cal was deeply thoughtful.
+
+"Say," he said suddenly, just as they parted to ride their rounds, "the
+boys'll be tickled plumb to death.  We've been wishing you'd blow in
+here ever since the Cross L quit the country."
+
+Pink drew rein and looked back, resting one hand on the cantle.  "My
+gentle friend," he warned, "yuh needn't break your neck spreading the
+glad tidings.  Yuh better let them frivolous youths wise-up in their
+own playful way, same as you done."
+
+"Sure," agreed Cal, passing his fingers gingerly over certain portions
+of his face.  "I ain't a hog.  I'm willing they should have some sport
+with yuh, too."
+
+Next morning, when Cal appeared at breakfast with a slight limp and
+several inches of cuticle missing from his features, the Happy Family
+learned that his horse had fallen down with him as he was turning a
+stray back into the herd.
+
+Chip looked up quizzically and then hid a smile behind his coffee-cup.
+
+It was Weary that afternoon on dayherd who indulged his mendacity for
+the benefit of Pink; and his remarks were but paving-stones for a
+scheme hatched overnight by the Happy Family.
+
+Weary began by looking doleful and emptying his lungs in sighs deep and
+sorrowful.  When Pink, rising obligingly to the bait, asked him if he
+felt bad.  Weary only sighed the more.  Then, growing confidential, he
+told how he had dreamed a dream the night before.  With picturesque
+language, he detailed the horror of it.  He was guilty of murder, he
+confessed, and the crime weighed heavily on his conscience.
+
+"Not only that," he went on, "but I know that death is camping on my
+trail.  That dream haunts me.  I feel that my days are numbered in
+words uh one syllable.  That dream'll come true; you see if it don't!"
+
+"I--I wouldn't worry over just a bad dream, Mr. Weary," comforted Pink.
+
+"But that ain't all.  I woke up in a cold sweat, and went outside.  And
+there in the clouds, perfect as life, I seen a posse uh men galloping
+up from the South.  Down South," he explained sadly, "sleeps my
+victim--a white-headed, innocent old man.  That posse is sure headed
+for me, Mr. Perkins."
+
+"Still, it was only clouds."
+
+"Wait till I tell yuh," persisted Weary, stubbornly refusing comfort.
+"When I got up this morning I put my boots on the wrong feet; that's a
+sure sign that your dream'll come true.  At breakfast I upset the can
+uh salt; which is bad luck.  Mr. Perkins, I'm a lost man."
+
+Pink's eyes widened; he looked like a child listening to a story of
+goblins.  "If I can help you, Mr. Weary, I will," he promised
+generously.
+
+"Will yuh be my friend?  Will yuh let me lean on yuh in my dark hours?"
+Weary's voice shook with emotion.
+
+Pink said that he would, and he seemed very sympathetic and anxious for
+Weary's safety.  Several times during their shift Weary rode around to
+where Pink was sitting uneasily his horse, and spoke feelingly of his
+crime and the black trouble that loomed so closer and told Pink how
+much comfort it was to be able to talk confidentially with a friend.
+
+When Pink went out that night to stand his shift, he found Weary at his
+side instead of Cal.  Weary explained that Cal was feeling pretty bum
+on account of that fall he had got, and, as Weary couldn't sleep,
+anyway, he had offered to stand in Cal's place.  Pink scented mischief.
+
+This night the moon shone brightly at intervals, with patches of
+silvery clouds racing before the wind and chasing black splotches of
+shadows over the sleeping land.  For all that, the cattle lay quiet,
+and the monotony of circling the herd was often broken by Weary and
+Pink with little talks, as they turned and rode together.
+
+"Mr. Perkins, fate's a-crowding me close," said Weary gloomily, when an
+hour had gone by.  "I feel as if--what's that?"
+
+Voices raised in excited talk came faintly and fitfully on the wind.
+Weary turned his horse, with a glance toward the cattle, and, beckoning
+Pink to follow, rode out to the right.
+
+"It's the posse!" he hissed.  "They'll go to the herd so look for me.
+Mr. Perkins, the time has come to fly.  If only I had a horse that
+could drift!"
+
+Pink thought he caught the meaning.  "Is--is mine any good, Mr. Weary?"
+he quavered.  "If he is, you--you can have him.  I--I'll stay and--and
+fool them as--long as I can."
+
+"Perkins," said Weary solemnly, "you're sure all right!  Let that posse
+think you're the man they want for half an hour, and I'm safe.  I'll
+never forget yuh!"
+
+He had not thought of changing horses, but the temptation mastered him.
+He was riding a little sorrel, Glory by name, that could beat even the
+Happy Family itself for unexpected deviltry.  Yielding to Pink's
+persuasions, he changed mounts, clasped Pink's hand affectionately, and
+sped away just as the posse appeared over a rise, riding furiously.
+
+Pink, playing his part, started toward them, then wheeled and sped away
+in the direction that would lead them off Weary's trail.  That is, he
+sped for ten rods or so.  After that he seemed to revolve on an axis,
+and there was an astonishing number of revolutions to the minute.
+
+The stirrups were down in the dark somewhere below the farthest reach
+of Pink's toes--he never once located them.  But Pink was not known all
+over Northern Montana as a "bronco-peeler" for nothing.  He surprised
+Glory even more than that deceitful bit of horseflesh had surprised
+Pink.  While his quirt swung methodically, he looked often over his
+shoulder for the posse, and wondered that it did not appear.
+
+The posse, however, was at that moment having troubles of its own.
+Happy Jack, not having a night horse saddled, had borrowed one not
+remarkable for its sure-footedness.  No sooner had they sighted their
+quarry than Jack's horse stepped in a hole and went head-long--which
+was bad enough.  When he got up he planted a foot hastily on Jack's
+diaphragm and then bolted straight for the peacefully slumbering
+herd--which was worse.
+
+With stirrup-straps snapping like pistol-shots, he tore down through
+the dreaming cattle, with none to stop him or say him nay.  The herd
+did not wait for explanations; as the posse afterward said, it quit the
+earth, while they gathered around the fallen Jack and tried to discover
+if it was a doctor or coroner that was needed.
+
+When Jack came up sputtering sand and profane words, there was no herd,
+no horse and no Pink anywhere in that portion of Chouteau County.
+Weary came back, laughing at the joke and fully expecting to see Pink a
+prisoner.  When he saw how things stood, he said "Mamma mine!" and
+headed for camp on a run.  The others deployed to search the range for
+a beef-herd, strayed, and with no tag for its prompt delivery.
+
+Weary crept into the bed-tent and got Chip by the shoulder.  Chip sat
+up, instantly wide-awake.  "What's the matter?" he demanded sharply.
+
+"Chip, we--we've lost Cadwolloper!"  Weary's voice was tragic.
+
+"Hell!" snapped Chip, lying down again.  "Don't let that worry yuh."
+
+"And we've lost the herd, too," added Weary mildly.
+
+Chip got up and stayed up, and some of his remarks, Weary afterward
+reported, were scandalous.
+
+There was another scene at sunrise that the Happy Family voted
+scandalous--and that was when they rode into a little coulee and came
+upon the herd, quietly grazing, and Pink holding them, with each blue
+eye a volcano shooting wrath.
+
+"Yuh knock-kneed bunch uh locoed sheep-herders!" he greeted spitefully,
+"if yuh think yuh can saw off on your foolery and hold this herd, I'll
+go and get something to eat.  When I come to this outfit t' work, I
+naturally s'posed yuh was cow-punchers.  Yuh ain't.  Yuh couldn't hold
+a bunch uh sick lambs inside a high board corral with the gate shut and
+locked on the outside.  When it comes t' cow-science, you're the limit.
+Yuh couldn't earn your board on a ten-acre farm in Maine, driving one
+milk-cow and a yearling calf t' pasture and back.  You're a hot bunch
+uh rannies--I don't think!  Up on Milk River they'd put bells on every
+dam' one uh yuh t' keep yuh from getting lost going from the mess-house
+t' the corral and back.  And, Mr. Weary, next time yuh give a man a
+horse t' fall off from, for the Lord's sake don't put him on a gentle
+old skate that would be pickings for a two-year-old kid.  I thought
+this here Glory'd give a man something to do, from all the yawping I've
+heard done about him.  I heard uh him when I was on the Cross L; and I
+will say right now that he's the biggest disappointment I've met up
+with in many a long day.  He's punk.  Come and get him and let me have
+something alive.  I'm weary uh trying to delude myself into thinking
+that this red image is a horse."
+
+The Happy Family, huddled ten paces before him, stared.  Pink slid out
+of the saddle and came forward, smiling, and dimpling.  He held out a
+gloved hand to the first man he came to, which was Weary himself.  "Are
+yuh happy to meet Milk River Pink?" he wanted to know.
+
+The Happy Family, grinning sheepishly, crowded close to shake him by
+the hand.
+
+
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE RANGE
+
+Cal Emmett straightened up with his gloved hand pressed tight against
+the small of his back, sighed "Hully Gee!" at the ache of his muscles
+and went over to the water bucket and poured a quart or so of cool,
+spring water down his parched throat.  The sun blazed like a furnace
+with the blower on, though it was well over towards the west; the air
+was full of smoke, dust and strong animal odors, and the throaty
+bawling of many cattle close-held.  For it was nearing the end of
+spring round-up, and many calves were learning, with great physical
+and mental distress, the feel of a hot iron properly applied.  Cal
+shouted to the horse-wrangler that the well had gone dry--meaning the
+bucket--and went back to work.
+
+"I betche we won't git through in time for no picnic," predicted
+Happy Jack gloomily, getting the proper hold on the hind leg of a
+three-months-old calf.  "They's three hundred to decorate yet, if
+they's one; and it'll rain--"
+
+"You're batty," Cal interrupted.  "Uh course we'll get through--we've
+_got_ to; what d'yuh suppose we've been tearing the bone out for the
+last three weeks for?"
+
+Chip, with a foot braced against the calf's shoulder, ran a U on its
+ribs with artistic precision.  Chip's Flying U's were the pride of
+the whole outfit; the Happy Family was willing at any time, to bet
+all you dare that Chip's brands never varied a quarter-inch in
+height, width or position.  The Old Man and Shorty had been content
+to use a stamp, as prescribed by law; but Chip Bennett scorned so
+mechanical a device and went on imperturbably defying the law with
+his running iron--and the Happy Family gloated over his independence
+and declared that they would sure deal a bunch of misery to the man
+that reported him.  His Flying U's were better than a stamp, anyhow,
+they said, and it was a treat to watch the way he slid them on, just
+where they'd do the most good.
+
+"I'm going home, after supper," he said, giving just the proper width
+to the last curve of the two-hundredth U he had made that afternoon.
+"I promised Dell I'd try and get home to-night, and drive over to the
+picnic early to-morrow.  She's head push on the grub-pile, I believe,
+and wants to make sure there's enough to go around.  There's about
+two hundred and fifty calves left.  If you can't finish up to-night,
+it'll be your funeral."
+
+"Well, I betche it'll rain before we git through--it always does,
+when you don't want it to," gloomed Happy, seizing another calf.
+
+"If it does," called Weary, who was branding--with a stamp--not far
+away, "if it does, Happy, we'll pack the bossies into the cook-tent
+and make Patsy heat the irons in the stove.  Don't yuh cry, little
+boy--we'll sure manage _somehow_."
+
+"Aw yes--_you_ wouldn't see nothing to worry about, not if yuh was
+being paid for it.  They's a storm coming--any fool can see that; and
+she's sure going to come down in large chunks.  We ain't got this
+amatoor hell for nothing!  Yuh won't want to do no branding in the
+cook-tent, nor no place else.  I betche--"
+
+"Please," spoke up Pink, coiling afresh the rope thrown off a calf he
+had just dragged up to Cal and Happy Jack, "won't somebody lend me a
+handkerchief?  I want to gag Happy; he's working his hoodoo on us
+again."
+
+Happy Jack leered up at him, consciously immune--for there was no
+time for strife of a physical nature, and Happy knew it.  Everyone
+was working his fastest.
+
+"Hoodoo nothing!  I guess maybe yuh can't see that bank uh
+thunderheads.  I guess your sight's poor, straining your eyes towards
+the Fourth uh July ever since Christmas.  If yuh think yuh can come
+Christian Science act on a storm, and bluff it down jest by sayin' it
+ain't there, you're away off.  I ain't that big a fool; I--" he
+trailed into profane words, for the calf he was at that minute
+holding showed a strong inclination to plant a foot in Happy's
+stomach.
+
+Cal Emmett glanced over his shoulder, grunted a comprehensive
+refutation of Happy Jack's fears and turned his whole attention to
+work.  The branding proceeded steadily, with the hurry of skill that
+makes each motion count something done; for though not a man of them
+except Happy Jack would have admitted it, the Happy Family was
+anxious.  With two hundred and fifty calves to be branded in the open
+before night, on the third day of July; with a blistering sun sapping
+the strength of them and a storm creeping blackly out of the
+southwest; with a picnic tugging their desires and twenty-five long
+prairie miles between them and the place appointed, one can scarce
+wonder that even Pink and Weary--born optimists, both of them--eyed
+the west anxiously when they thought no one observed them.  Under
+such circumstances, Happy Jack's pessimism came near being
+unbearable; what the Happy Family needed most was encouragement.
+
+The smoke hung thicker in the parched air and stung more sharply
+their bloodshot, aching eyeballs.  The dust settled smotheringly upon
+them, filled nostrils and lungs and roughened their patience into
+peevishness.  A calf bolted from the herd, and a "hold-up" man
+pursued it vindictively, swearing by several things that he would
+break its blamed neck--only his wording was more vehement.  A cinder
+got in Slim's eye and one would think, from his language, that such a
+thing was absolutely beyond the limit of man's endurance, and a blot
+upon civilization.  Even Weary, the sweet-tempered, grew irritable
+and heaped maledictions on the head of the horse-wrangler because he
+was slow about bringing a fresh supply of water.  Taken altogether,
+the Happy Family was not in its sunniest mood.
+
+When Patsy shouted that supper was ready, they left their work
+reluctantly and tarried just long enough to swallow what food was
+nearest.  For the branding was not yet finished, and the storm
+threatened more malignantly.
+
+Chip saddled Silver, his own particular "drifter," eyed the clouds
+appraisingly and swung into the saddle for a fifteen-mile ride to the
+home ranch and his wife, the Little Doctor.  "You can make it, all
+right, if yuh half try," he encouraged.  "It isn't going to cut loose
+before dark, if I know the signs.  Better put your jaw in a sling,
+Happy--you're liable to step on it.  Cheer up! to-morrow's the Day we
+Celebrate in letters a foot high.  Come early and stay late, and
+bring your appetites along.  Fare-you-well, my brothers."  He rode
+away in the long lope that eats up the miles with an ease astonishing
+to alien eyes, and the Happy Family rolled a cigarette apiece and
+went back to work rather more cheerful than they had been.
+
+Pleasure, the pleasure of wearing good clothes, dancing
+light-footedly to good music and saying nice things that bring smiles
+to the faces of girls in frilly dresses and with brown, wind-tanned
+faces and eyes ashine, comes not often to the veterans of the
+"Sagebrush Cavalry."  They were wont to count the weeks and the days,
+and at last the hours until such pleasure should come to them.  They
+did not grudge the long circles, short sleeps and sweltering hours at
+the branding, which made such pleasures possible--only so they were
+not, at the last, cheated of their reward.
+
+Every man of them--save Pink--had secret thoughts of some particular
+girl.  And more than one girl, no doubt, would be watching, at the
+picnic, for a certain lot of white hats and sun-browned faces to
+dodge into sight over a hill, and looking for one face among the
+group; would be listening for a certain well-known, well-beloved
+chorus of shouts borne faintly from a distance--the clear-toned,
+care-naught whooping that heralded the coming of Jim Whitmore's Happy
+Family.
+
+To-morrow they would be simply a crowd of clean-hearted, clean-limbed
+cowboys, with eyes sunny and untroubled as a child's, and laughs that
+were good to hear and whispered words that were sweet to dream over
+until the next meeting.  (If you ask the girls of the range-land, and
+believe their verdict, cowboys make the very best and most piquant of
+lovers.) Tomorrow there would be no hint of the long hours in the
+saddle, or the aching muscles and the tired, smarting eyes.  They
+might, if pressed, own that they burnt the earth getting there, but
+the details of that particular conflagration would be far, far behind
+them--forgotten; no one could guess, to-morrow, that they were ever
+hot or thirsty or tired, or worried over a threatening storm, or that
+they ever swore at one another ill-naturedly from the sheer strain of
+anxiety and muscle-ache.
+
+By sundown, so great was their industry, the last calf had scampered,
+blatting resentment, to seek his mother in the herd.  Slim kicked the
+embers of the branding fire apart and emptied the water-bucket over
+them with a satisfied grunt.
+
+"By golly, I ain't mourning because brandin's about over," he said.
+"I'm plumb tired uh the sight uh them blasted calves."
+
+"And we got through ahead of the storm," Weary sweetly reminded Happy
+Jack.
+
+Happy looked moodily up at the muttering black mass nearly over their
+heads and said nothing; Happy never did have anything to say when his
+gloomy predictions were brought to naught.
+
+"I'm going to get on the bed-ground without any red tape or argument,
+if yuh ask _me_," volunteered Cal Emmett, rubbing his aching arms.
+"We want to get an early start in the morning."
+
+"Meaning sun-up, I suppose," fleered Pink, who had no especial,
+feminine reason for looking forward with longing.  With Pink, it was
+pleasure in the aggregate that lured him; there would be horse racing
+after dinner, and a dance in the school-house at night, and a season
+of general hilarity over a collection of rockets and Roman candles.
+These things appealed more directly to the heart of Pink than did the
+feminine element; for he had yet to see the girl who could disturb
+the normal serenity of his mind or fill his dreams with visions
+beautiful.  Also, there was one thing about these girls that did not
+please him; they were prone to regard him as a sweet, amusing little
+boy whose dimples they might kiss with perfect composure (though of
+course they never did).  They seemed to be forever taking the "Isn't
+he cunning!" attitude, and refused to regard him seriously, or treat
+him with the respect they accorded to the rest of the Happy Family.
+Weary's schoolma'am had offended him deeply, at a dance the winter
+before, by patting him indulgently on the shoulder and telling him to
+"Run along and find you a partner."  Such things rankled, and he knew
+that the girls knew it, and that it amused them very much.  Worse,
+the Happy Family knew it, and it amused them even more than it amused
+the girls.  For this reason Pink would much prefer to sleep
+luxuriously late and ride over to the picnic barely in time for
+dinner and the races afterward.  He did not want too long a time with
+the girls.
+
+"Sure, we'll start at sun-up," Cal answered gravely.  "We've got to
+be there by ten o'clock, so as to help the girls cut the cake and
+round up all the ham sandwiches; haven't we, Weary?"
+
+"I should smile to remark," Weary assented emphatically.  "Sun-up
+sure sees us on the road, Cadwolloper--and yuh want to be sure and
+wear that new pink silk handkerchief, that matches the roses in your
+cheeks so nice.  My schoolma'am's got a friend visiting her, and
+she's been hearing a lot about yuh.  She's plumb wild to meet yuh.
+Chip drawed your picture and I sent it over in my last letter, and
+the little friend has gone plumb batty over your dimples (Chip drawed
+yuh with a sweet smile drifting, like a rose-leaf with the dew on it,
+across your countenance, and your hat pushed back so the curls would
+show) and it sure done the business for Little Friend.  Schoolma'am
+says she's a good-looker, herself, and that Joe Meeker has took to
+parting his hair on the dead center and wearing a four-inch,
+celluloid collar week days.  But he's all to the bad--she just looks
+at your picture and smiles sad and longing."
+
+"I hate to see a man impose on friendship," murmured Pink.  "I don't
+want to spoil your face till after the Fourth, though that ain't
+saying yuh don't deserve it.  But I will say this: You're a liar--you
+ain't had a letter for more than six weeks."
+
+"Got anything yuh want to bet on that?" Weary reached challengingly
+toward an inner pocket of his vest.
+
+"Nit.  I don't give a darn, anyway yuh look at it.  I'm going to
+bed." Pink unrolled his "sooguns" in their accustomed corner next to
+Weary's bed and went straightway to sleep.
+
+Weary thumped his own battered pillow into some semblance of
+plumpness and gazed with suspicion at the thick fringe of curled
+lashes lying softly upon Pink's cheeks.
+
+"If I was a girl," he said pensively to the others, "I'd sure be in
+love with Cadwolloper myself.  He don't amount to nothing, but his
+face 'd cause me to lose my appetite and pine away like a wilted
+vi'let.  It's straight, about that girl being stuck on his picture;
+I'd gamble she's counting the hours on her fingers, right now, till
+he'll stand before her.  Schoolma'am says it'll be a plumb sin if he
+don't act pretty about it and let her love him."  He eyed Pink
+sharply from the tail of his eye, but not a lash quivered; the breath
+came evenly and softly between Pink's half-closed lips--and if he
+heard there was nothing to betray the fact.
+
+Weary sighed and tried again.  "And that ain't the worst of it,
+either.  Mame Beckman has got an attack; she told Schoolma'am she
+could die for Pink and never bat an eye.  She said she never knowed
+what true love was till she seen him.  She says he looks just like
+the cherubs--all but the wings--that she's been working in red thread
+on some pillow shams.  She was making 'em for her sister a present,
+but she can't give 'em up, now; she calls all the cherubs 'Pink,' and
+kisses 'em night and morning, regular."  He paused and watched
+anxiously Pink's untroubled face.  "I tell yuh, boys, it's awful to
+have the fatal gift uh beauty, like Cadwolloper's got.  He means all
+right, but he sure trifles a lot with girls' affections--which ain't
+right.  Mamma! don't he look sweet, laying there so innocent?  I'm
+sure sorry for Mame, though."  He eyed him sidelong.  But Pink slept
+peacefully on, except that, after a half minute, he stirred slightly
+and muttered something about "drive that darned cow back."  Then
+Weary gave up in despair and went to sleep.  When the tent became
+silent, save for the heavy breathing of tired men.  Pink's long
+lashes lifted a bit, and he grinned maliciously up at the cloth roof.
+
+For obvious reasons he was the only one of the lot who heard with no
+misgivings the vicious swoop of the storm; so long as the tent-pegs
+held he didn't care how hard it rained.  But the others who woke to
+the roar of wind and the crash of thunder and to the swish and beat
+of much falling water, turned uneasily in their beds and hoped that
+it would not last long.  To be late in starting for that particular
+scene of merry-making which had held their desires for so long would
+be a calamity they could not reflect upon calmly.
+
+At three o'clock Pink, from long habit, opened his eyes to the dull
+gray of early morning.  The air in the tent was clammy and chill and
+filled with the audible breathing of a dozen sleeping men; overhead
+the canvas was dull yellow and sodden with the steady drip, drip,
+drop of rain.  There would be no starting out at sunrise--and perhaps
+there would be no starting at all, he thought with lazy
+disappointment, and turned on his side for another nap.  His glance
+fell upon Weary's up-turned, slumber-blank face, and his memory
+reverted revengefully to the baiting of the night before.  He would
+fix Weary for that, he told himself spitefully; mentally measured a
+perpendicular line from Weary's face to the roof, reached up and drew
+his finger firmly down along the canvas for a good ten inches--and if
+you don't know why, try it yourself some time in a tent with the rain
+pouring down upon the land.  As if that were not enough he repeated
+the operation again and again, each time in a fresh place, until the
+rain came through beautifully all over the bed of Weary.  Then he lay
+down, cuddled the blankets up to his ears, closed his eyes and
+composed himself to sleep, at peace with his conscience and the
+world--and it did not disturb his self-satisfaction when Weary
+presently awoke, moved sleepily away from one drip and directly under
+another, shifted again, swore a little in an undertone and at last
+was forced to take refuge under his tarpaulin.  After that Pink went
+blissfully off to dreamland.
+
+At four o'clock it still rained dismally--and the Happy Family,
+waking unhappily one after another, remembered that this was the
+Fourth that they had worked and waited for so long, "swore a prayer
+or two and slept again."  At six the sun was shining, and Jack Bates,
+first realizing the blessed fact, called the others jubilantly.
+
+Weary sat up and observed darkly that he wished he knew what
+son-of-a-gun got the tent to leaking over him, and eyed Pink
+suspiciously; but Pink only knuckled his eyes like a sleepy baby and
+asked if it rained in the night, and said he had been dead to the
+world.  Happy Jack came blundering under the ban by asking Weary to
+remember that he _told_ him it would rain.  As he slept beside Weary,
+his guilt was certain and his punishment, Weary promised himself,
+would be sure.
+
+Then they went out and faced the clean-washed prairie land, filled
+their lungs to the bottom with sweet, wine-like air, and asked one
+another why in the dickens the night-hawk wasn't on hand with the
+cavvy, so they could get ready to start.
+
+At nine o'clock, had you wandered that way, you would have seen the
+Happy Family--a clean-shaven, holiday-garbed, resplendent Happy
+Family--roosting disconsolately wherever was a place clean enough to
+sit, looking wistfully away to the skyline.
+
+They should, by now, have been at the picnic, and every man of them
+realized the fact keenly.  They were ready, but they were afoot; the
+nighthawk had not put in an appearance with the saddle bunch, and
+there was not a horse in camp that they might go in search of him.
+With no herd to hold, they had not deemed it necessary to keep up any
+horses, and they were bewailing the fact that they had not forseen
+such an emergency--though Happy Jack did assert that he had all along
+expected it.
+
+"By golly, I'll strike out afoot and hunt him up, if he don't heave
+in sight mighty suddent," threatened Slim passionately, after a long,
+dismal silence.  "By golly, he'll wisht I hadn't, too."
+
+Cal looked up from studying pensively his patent leathers.  "Go on,
+Slim, and round him up.  This is sure getting hilarious--a fine way
+to spend the Fourth!"
+
+"Maybe that festive bunch that held up the Lewistown Bank, day before
+yesterday, came along and laid the hawk away on the hillside so they
+could help themselves to fresh horses," hazarded Jack Bates, in the
+hope that Happy Jack would seize the opening to prophesy a new
+disaster.
+
+"I betche that's what's happened, all right," said Happy, rising to
+the bait.  "I betche yuh won't see no horses t'day--ner no
+night-hawk, neither."
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another and grinned.
+
+"Who'll stir the lemonade and help pass the sandwiches?" asked Pink,
+sadly.  "Who'll push, when the school-ma'am wants to swing?  Or Len
+Adams? or--"
+
+"Oh, saw off!"  Weary implored.  "We can think up troubles enough,
+Cadwolloper, without any help from you."
+
+"Well, I guess your troubles are about over, cully--I can hear 'em
+coming."  Pink picked up his rope and started for the horse corral as
+the belated cavvy came jingling around the nose of the nearest hill.
+The Happy Family brightened perceptibly; after all, they could be at
+the picnic by noon--if they hurried.  Their thoughts flew to the
+crowd--and to the girls in frilly dresses--under the pine trees in a
+certain canyon just where the Bear Paws reach lazily out to shake
+hands with the prairie land.
+
+Up on the high level, with the sun hot against their right cheeks and
+a lazy breeze flipping neckerchief ends against their smiling lips,
+the world seemed very good, and a jolly place to live in, and there
+was no such thing as trouble anywhere.  Even Happy Jack was betrayed
+into expecting much pleasure and no misfortune, and whistled while he
+rode.
+
+Five miles slipped behind them easily--so easily that their horses
+perked ears and tugged hard against the bits.  The next five were
+rougher, for they had left the trail and struck out across a rough
+bit of barrenness on a short cut to the ford in Sheep Coulee.  All
+the little gullies and washouts were swept clean and smooth with the
+storm, and the grass roots showed white where the soil had washed
+away.  They hoped the rain had not reached to the mountains and
+spoiled the picnic grounds, and wondered what time the girls would
+have dinner ready.
+
+So they rode down the steep trail into Sheep Coulee, galloped a
+quarter mile and stopped, amazed, at the ford.  The creek was running
+bank full; more, it was churning along like a mill-race, yellow with
+the clay it carried and necked with great patches of dirty foam.
+
+"I guess here's where we don't cross," said Weary, whistling mild
+dismay.
+
+"Now, wouldn't that jostle yuh?" asked Pink, of no one in particular.
+
+"By golly, the lemonade 'll be cold, and so'll the san'wiches, before
+we git there," put in Slim, with one of his sporadic efforts to be
+funny.  "We got t' go back."
+
+"Back nothing," chorused five outraged voices.  "We'll hunt some
+other crossing."
+
+"Down the creek a piece--yuh mind where that old sandbar runs half
+across?  We'll try that."  Weary's tone was hopeful, and they turned
+and followed him.
+
+Half a mile along the raging little creek they galloped, with no
+place where they dared to cross.  Then, loping around a
+willow-fringed bend, Weary and Pink, who were ahead, drew their
+horses back upon their haunches.  They had all but run over a huddle
+of humanity lying in the fringe of weeds and tall grasses that grew
+next the willows.
+
+"What in thunder--" began Cal, pulling up.  They slid off their
+horses and bent curiously over the figure.  Weary turned it
+investigatively by a shoulder.  The figure stirred, and groaned.
+"It's somebody hurt; take a hand here, and help carry him out where
+the sun shines.  He's wet to the skin," commanded Weary sharply.
+
+When they lifted him he opened his eyes and looked at them; while
+they carried him tenderly out from the wet tangle and into the warmth
+of the sun, he set his teeth against the groans that would come.
+They stood around him uneasily and looked down at him.  He was young,
+like themselves, and he was a stranger; also, he was dressed like a
+cowboy, in chaps, high-heeled boots and silver-mounted spurs.  The
+chaps were sodden and heavy with water, as was the rest of his
+clothing.
+
+"He must uh laid out in all that storm, last night," observed Cal, in
+a subdued voice.  "He--"
+
+"Somebody better ride back and have the bed wagon brought up, so we
+can haul him to a doctor," suggested Pink.  "He's hurt."
+
+The stranger's eyes swept the faces of the Happy Family anxiously.
+"Not on your life," he protested weakly.  "I don't want any
+doctor--in mine, thank yuh.  I--it's no use, anyhow."
+
+"The hell it ain't!"  Pink was drawing off his coat to make a pillow.
+"You're hurt, somehow, ain't yuh?"
+
+"I'm--dying," the other said, laconically.  "So yuh needn't go to any
+trouble, on my account.  From the looks--yuh was headed for
+some--blowout.  Go on, and let me be."
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another incredulously; they were so
+likely to ride on!
+
+"I guess you don't savvy this bunch, old-timer," said Weary calmly,
+speaking for the six.  "We're going to do what we can.  If yuh don't
+mind telling us where yuh got hurt--"
+
+The lips of the other curled bitterly.  "I was shot," he said
+distinctly, "by the sheriff and his bunch.  But I got away.  Last
+night I tried to cross the creek, and my horse went on down.  It was
+storming--fierce.  I got out, somehow, and crawled into the weeds.
+Laying out in the rain--didn't help me none.  It's--all off."
+
+"There ought to be _something_--" began Jack Bates helplessly.
+
+"There is.  If yuh'll just put me away--afterwards--and say
+nothing,--I'll be--mighty grateful."  He was looking at them sharply,
+as if a great deal depended upon their answer.
+
+The Happy Family was dazed.  The very suddenness of this unlooked-for
+glimpse into the somber eyes of Tragedy was unnerving.  The world had
+seemed such a jolly place; ten minutes ago--five minutes, even, their
+greatest fear had been getting to the picnic too late for dinner.
+And here was a man at their feet, calmly telling them that he was
+about to die, and asking only a hurried burial and a silence after.
+Happy Jack swallowed painfully and shifted his feet in the grass.
+
+"Of course, if yuh'd feel better handing me over--"
+
+"That'll be about enough on that subject," Pink interrupted with
+decision.  "Just because yuh happen to be down and out--for the time
+being--is no reason why yuh should insult folks.  You can take it for
+granted we'll do what we can for yuh; the question is, _what_?  Yuh
+needn' go talking about cashing in--they's no sense in it.  You'll be
+all right.--"
+
+"Huh.  You wait and see."  The fellow's mouth set grimly upon another
+groan.  "If you was shot through, and stuck to the saddle--and
+rode--and then got pummeled--by a creek at flood, and if yuh laid out
+in the rain--all night--  Hell, boys!  Yuh know I'm about all in.
+I'm hard to kill, or I'd have been--dead--  What I want to know--will
+yuh do what I--said?  Will yuh bury me--right here--and keep
+it--quiet?"
+
+The Happy Family moved uncomfortably.  They hated to see him lying
+that way, and talking in short, jerky sentences, and looking so
+ghastly, and yet so cool--as if dying were quite an everyday affair.
+
+"I don't see why yuh ask us to do it," spoke Cal Emmet bluntly.
+"What we want to do is get yuh to help.  The chances is you could
+be--cured.  We--"
+
+"Look here."  The fellow raised himself painfully to an elbow, and
+fell back again.  "I've got folks--and they don't know--about this
+scrape.  They're square--and stand at the top--And they don't--it
+would just about--  For God sake, boys!  Can't yuh see--how I feel?
+Nobody knows--about this.  The sheriff didn't know--they came up on
+me in the dusk--and I fought.  I wouldn't be taken--And it's my first
+bad break--because I got in with a bad--lot.  They'll know
+something--happened, when they find--my horse.  But they'll
+think--it's just drowning, if they don't find--me with a bullet or
+two--  Can't yuh _see_?"
+
+The Happy Family looked away across the coulee, and there were eyes
+that saw little of the yellow sunlight lying soft on the green
+hillside beyond.  The world was not a good place; it was a grim,
+pitiless place, and--a man was dying, at their very feet.
+
+"But what about the rest oh the bunch?" croaked Happy Jack, true to
+his misanthropic nature, but exceeding husky as to voice.  "They'll
+likely tell--"
+
+The dying man shook his head eagerly.  "They won't; they're
+both--dead.  One was killed--last night.  The other when we first
+tried--to make a getaway.  It--it's up to you, boys."
+
+Pink swallowed twice, and knelt beside him; the others remained
+standing, grouped like mourners around an open grave.
+
+"Yuh needn't worry about us," Pink said softly, "You can count on us,
+old boy.  If you're dead sure a doctor--"
+
+"Drop it!" the other broke in harshly.  "I don't want to live.  And
+if I did, I couldn't.  I ain't guessing--I know."
+
+They said little, after that.  The wounded man seemed apathetically
+waiting for the end, and not inclined to further speech.  Since they
+had tacitly promised to do as he wished, he lay with eyes half
+closed, watching idly the clouds drifting across to the skyline,
+hardly moving.
+
+The Happy Family sat listlessly around on convenient rocks, and
+watched the clouds also, and the yellow patches of foam racing down
+the muddy creek.  Very quiet they were--so quiet that little, brown
+birds hopped close, and sang from swaying weeds almost within reach
+of them.  The Happy Family listened dully to the songs, and waited.
+They did not even think to make a cigarette.
+
+The sun climbed higher and shone hotly down upon them.  The dying man
+blinked at the glare, and Happy Jack took off his hat and tilted it
+over the face of the other, and asked him if he wouldn't like to be
+moved into the shade.
+
+"No matter--I'll be in the shade--soon enough," he returned quietly,
+and something gripped their throats to aching.  His voice, they
+observed, was weaker than it had been.
+
+Weary took a long breath, and moved closer.  "I wish you'd let us get
+help," he said, wistfully.  It all seemed so horribly brutal, their
+sitting around him like that, waiting passively for him to die.
+
+"I know--yuh hate it.  But it's--all yuh can do.  It's all I want."
+He took his eyes from the drifting, white clouds, and looked from
+face to face.  "You're the whitest bunch--I'd like to know--who yuh
+are.  Maybe I can put in--a good word for yuh--on the new
+range--where I'm going.  I'd sure like to do--something--"
+
+"Then for the Lord's sake, don't say such things!" cried Pink,
+shakily.  "You'll have us--so damn broke up--"
+
+"All right--I won't.  So long,--boys.  See yuh later--"
+
+"Mamma!" whispered Weary, and got up hastily and walked away.  Slim
+followed him a few paces, then turned resolutely and went back.  It
+seemed cowardly to leave the rest to bear it--and somebody had to.
+They were breathing quickly, and they were staring across the coulee
+with eyes that saw nothing; their lips were shut very tightly
+together.  Weary came back and stood with his back turned.  Pink
+moved a bit, glanced furtively at the long, quiet figure beside him,
+and dropped his face into his gloved hands.
+
+Glory threw up his head, glanced across the coulee at a band of range
+horses trooping down a gully to drink at the river, and whinnied
+shrilly.  The Happy Family started and awoke to the stern necessities
+of life.  They stood up, and walked a little way from the spot,
+avoiding one another's eyes.
+
+"Somebody'll have to go back to camp," said Cal Emmett, in the hushed
+tone that death ever compels from the living.  "We've got to have a
+spade--"
+
+"It better be the handiest liar, then," Jack Bates put in hastily.
+"If that old loose-tongued Patsy ever gets next--"
+
+"Weary better go--and Pink.  They're the best liars in the bunch,"
+said Cal, trying unsuccessfully to get back his everyday manner.
+
+Pink and Weary went over and took the dragging bridle-reins of their
+mounts, caught a stirrup and swung up into the saddles silently.
+
+"And say!" Happy Jack called softly, as they were going down the
+slope.  "Yuh better bring--a blanket."
+
+Weary nodded, and they rode away, their horses stepping softly in the
+thick grasses.  When they were passed quite out of the presence of
+the dead, they spurred their horses into a gallop.
+
+The sun marked mid-afternoon when they returned, and the four who had
+waited drew long breaths of relief at sight of them.
+
+"We told Patsy we'd run onto a--den--"
+
+"Oh, shut up, can't yuh?" Jack Bates interrupted shortly.  "Yuh'll
+have plenty uh time to tell us afterwards."
+
+"We've got a place picked out," said Cal, and led them a little
+distance up the slope, to a level spot in the shadow of a huge, gray
+bowlder.  "That's his headstone," he said, soberly.  "The poor devil
+won't be cheated out uh that, if we _can't_ mark it with his name.
+It'll last as long as he'll need it."
+
+Only in the West, perhaps, may one find a funeral like that.  No
+minister stood at the head of the grave and read, "Dust to dust" and
+all the heartbreaking rest of it.  There was no singing but from a
+meadowlark that perched on a nearby rock and rippled his brief song
+when, with their ropes, they lowered the blanket wrapped form.  They
+stood, with bare heads bowed, while the meadow lark sang.  When he
+had flown, Pink, looking a choir-boy in disguise, repeated softly and
+incorrectly the Lord's prayer.
+
+The Happy Family did not feel that there was any incongruity in what
+they did.  When Pink, gulping a little over the unfamiliar words,
+said:
+
+"Thine be power and glory--Amen;" five clear, youthful voices added
+the Amen quite simply.  Then they filled the grave and stood silent a
+minute before they went down to where their horse stood waiting
+patiently, with now and then a curious glance up the hill to where
+their masters grouped.
+
+The Happy Family mounted and without a backward glance rode soberly
+away; and the trail they took led, not to the picnic, but to camp.
+
+
+
+
+THE REVELER
+
+Happy Jack, coming from Dry Lake where he had been sent for the mail,
+rode up to the Flying U camp just at dinner time and dismounted
+gloomily and in silence.  His horse looked fagged--which was unusual in
+Happy's mounts unless there was urgent need of haste or he was out with
+the rest of the Family and constrained to adopt their pace, which was
+rapid.  Happy, when riding alone, loved best to hump forward over the
+horn and jog along slowly, half asleep.
+
+"Something's hurting Happy," was Cal Emmett's verdict when he saw the
+condition of the horse.
+
+"He's got a burden on his mind as big as a haystack," grinned Jack
+Bates.  "Watch the way his jaw hangs down, will yuh?  Bet yuh
+somebody's dead."
+
+"Most likely it's something he thinks is _going_ to happen," said Pink.
+"Happy always makes me think of a play I seen when I was back home; it
+starts out with a melancholy cuss coming out and giving a sigh that
+near lifts him off his feet, and he says: 'In _soo-ooth_ I know not
+_why_ I am so sa-ad.'  That's Happy all over."
+
+The Happy Family giggled and went on with their dinner, for Happy Jack
+was too close for further comments not intended for his ears.  They
+waited demurely, but in secret mirth, for him to unburden his mind.
+They knew that they would not have long to wait; Happy, bird of ill
+omen that he was, enjoyed much the telling of bad news.
+
+"Weary's in town," he announced heavily, coming over and getting
+himself a plate and cup.
+
+The Happy Family were secretly a bit disappointed; this promised, after
+all, to be tame.
+
+"Did he bring the horses?" asked Chip, glancing up over the brim of his
+cup.
+
+"I dunno," Happy responded from the stove, where he was trying how much
+of everything he could possibly pile upon his plate without spilling
+anything.  "I didn't see no horses--but the one he was ridin'."
+
+Weary had been sent, two weeks ago, to the upper Marias country after
+three saddle horses that had strayed from the home range, and which had
+been seen near Shelby.  It was quite time for him to return, if he
+expected to catch the Flying U wagon before it pulled out on the beef
+roundup.  That he should be in town and not ride out with Happy Jack
+was a bit strange.
+
+"Why don't yuh throw it out uh yuh, yuh big, long-jawed croaker?"
+demanded Pink in a voice queerly soft and girlish.  It had been a real
+grievance to him that he had not been permitted to go with Weary, who
+was his particular chum.  "What's the matter?  Is Weary sick?"
+
+"No," said Happy Jack deliberately, "I guess he ain't what yuh could
+call _sick_."
+
+"Why didn't he come out with you, then?" asked Chip, sharply.  Happy
+did get on one's nerves so.
+
+"Well, I ast him t' come--and he took a shot at me for it."
+
+There was an instant's dead silence.  Then Jack Bates laughed uneasily.
+
+"Happy, how many horses did yuh ride out to camp?"
+
+Happy Jack had, upon one occasion, looked too long upon the wine--or
+whisky, to be more explicit.  Afterward, he had insisted that he was
+riding two horses home, instead of one.  He was not permitted to forget
+that defection.  The Happy Family had an unpleasant habit of recalling
+the incident whenever Happy Jack made a statement which they felt
+disinclined to credit--as this last statement was.
+
+Happy Jack whirled on the speaker.  "Aw, shut up!  I never kidnaped no
+girl off'n no train, and--"
+
+Jack Bates colored and got belligerently to his feet.  That hit him in
+an exceedingly tender place.
+
+"Happy, look here," Chip cut in authoritatively.  "What's wrong with
+Weary?  If he took a shot at you, it's a cinch he had some reason for
+it."
+
+Weary was even dearer to the heart of Chip than to Pink.
+
+"Ah--he never!  He's takin' shots permisc'us, lemme tell yuh.  And he
+ain't troublin' about no _reason_ fer what he's doin'.  He's plumb
+oary-eyed--that's what.  He's on a limb that beats any I ever seen.
+He's drunk--drunk as a boiled owl, and he don't give a damn.  He's lost
+his hat, and he's swapped cayuses with somebody--a measly old
+bench--and he's shootin' up the town t' beat hell!"
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another dazedly.  Weary drunk?  _Weary_?
+It was unbelieveable.  Such a thing had never been heard of before in
+the history of the Happy Family.  Even Chip, who had known Weary before
+either had known the Flying U, could not remember anything of the sort.
+The Happy Family were often hilarious; they had even, on certain
+occasions, shot up the town; but they had done it as a family and they
+had done it sober.  It was an unwritten law among the Flying U boys,
+that all riotous conduct should occur when they were together and when
+the Family could, as a unit, assume the consequences--if consequences
+there were to be.
+
+"I guess Happy must a rode the whole blame saddle-bunch home, this
+time," Cal remarked, with stinging sarcasm.
+
+"Ah, yuh can go and see fer yourselves; yuh don't need t' take _my_
+word fer nothing" cried Happy Jack, much grieved that they should doubt
+him.  "I hain't had but one drink t'day--and that wasn't nothin' but
+beer.  It's straight goods: Weary's as full as he can git and top a
+horse.  He's sure enjoyin' himself, too.  Dry Lake is all hisn--and the
+way he's misusin' the rights uh ownership is plumb scand'l'us.  He
+makes me think of a cow on the fight in a forty-foot corral; nobody
+dast show their noses outside; Dry Lake's holed up in their sullers,
+till he quits camp.
+
+"I seen him cut down on the hotel China-cook jest for tryin' t' make a
+sneak out t' the ice-house after some meat fer dinner.  He like t' got
+him, too.  Chink dodged behind the board-pile in the back yard, an'
+laid down.  He was still there when I left town, and the chances is
+somebody else 'll have t' cook dinner t'day.  Weary was so busy
+close-herdin' the Chinaman that I got a chanst t' sneak out the back
+door uh Rusty's place, climb on m' horse and take a shoot up around by
+the stockyards and pull fer camp.  I couldn't git t' the store, so I
+didn't bring out no mail."
+
+The Happy Family drew a long breath.  This was getting beyond a joke.
+
+"Looks t 'me like you fellows 'd come alive and do something about it,"
+hinted Happy, with his mouth full.  "Weary'll shoot somebody, er git
+shot, if he ain't took care of mighty quick."
+
+"Happy," said Chip bluntly, "I don't grab that yarn.  Weary may be in
+town, and he _may_ be having a little fun with Dry Lake, but he isn't
+drunk.  When you try to run a whizzer like that, you can put me down as
+being from Missouri."
+
+"Same here," put in Pink, ominously soft as to voice.  "Anybody that
+tries to make me believe Weary's performing that way has sure got his
+work cut out for him.  If it was Happy, now--"
+
+"Gee!" cried Jack Bates, laughing as a possible solution came to him.
+"I'm willing to bet money he was just stringing Happy.  I'll bet he
+done it deliberate and with malice aforethought, just to _make_ Happy
+sneak out uh town and burn the earth getting here so he could tell it
+scarey to the rest of us."
+
+"Yeah, that's about the size of it," assented Cal.
+
+The Family felt that they had a new one on Happy Jack, and showed it in
+the smiles they sent toward him.
+
+"By golly, yes!" broke out Slim.  "Weary's been layin' for Happy for a
+long while to pay off making the tent leak on him, that night; he's
+sure played a good one, this time!"
+
+Happy carefully balanced his plate on the wagon-tongue near the
+doubletrees, and stood glaring down upon his tormentors.
+
+"Aw, look here!" he began, with his voice very near to tears.  Then he
+gulped and took a more warlike tone.  "I don't set m'self up t' be a
+know-it-all--but I guess I can tell when a man's full uh booze.  And I
+ain't claimin' t' be no Jiujitsu sharp" (with a meaning glance at Pink)
+"and I know the chances I'm takin' when I stand up agin the bunch--but
+I'm ready, here and now, t' fight any damn man that says I'm a liar, er
+that Weary was jest throwin' a load into me.  Two or three uh yuh have
+licked me mor'n once--but that's all right.  I'm willing t' back up
+anything I've said, and yuh can wade right in a soon as you're a mind
+to.
+
+"I don't back down a darn inch.  Weary's in Dry Lake.  He _is_ drunk.
+And he _is_ shootin' up the town.  If yuh don't want t' believe it, I
+guess they's no law t' make yuh--but if yuh got any sense, and are any
+friends uh Weary's, yuh'll mosey in and fetch him out here if yuh have
+t' bring him the way he brung ole Dock that time Patsy took cramps.  Go
+on in and see fer yourselves, darn yuh!  But don't go shootin' off your
+faces to me till yuh got a license to."
+
+This, if unassuring, was convincing.  The Happy Family stopped smiling,
+and looked at one another uncertainly.
+
+"I guess two or three of you better ride in and see what there is to
+it," announced Chip, dryly.  "If Happy is romancing--"  His look was
+eloquent.
+
+But Happy Jack, though he stood a good deal in awe of Chip and his
+sarcasm, never flinched.  He looked him straight in the eye and
+maintained the calm of conscious innocence.
+
+"I'll go," said Pink, getting up and throwing his plate and cup into
+the dishpan.  "Mind yuh, I don't believe a word of it; Happy, if this
+is just a sell, so help me Josephine, you'll learn some brand new
+Jiujitsu right away quick."
+
+"I'll go along too," Happy boldly retorted, "so if yuh want anything uh
+_me_, after you've saw Weary, yuh won't need t' wait till yuh strike
+camp t' git it.  Weary loadin' me, was he?  Yuh'll find out, all uh
+yuh, that it's _him_ that's loaded."
+
+They caught fresh horses and started--Cal, Pink, Jack Bates and Happy
+Jack.  And Happy stood their jeers throughout the ten-mile ride with an
+equanimity that was new to them.  For the most part he rode in silence,
+and grinned knowingly when they laughed too loudly at the joke Weary
+was playing.
+
+"All right--maybe he is," he flung back, once.  "But he sure looks the
+part well enough t' keep all Dry Lake indoors--and I never knowed Weary
+t' terrorize a hull town before.  And where'd he git that horse? and
+where's Glory at? and why ain't he comin' on t' camp t' help you chumps
+giggle?  Ain't he had plenty uh time t' foller me out and enjoy his
+little joke?  And another thing, he was hard at it when I struck town.
+Now, where'd yuh get off at?"
+
+To this argument they offered several explanations--at all of which
+Happy grunted in great disdain.
+
+They clattered nonchalantly into Dry Lake, still unconvinced and still
+jeering at Happy Jack.  The town was very quiet, even for Dry Lake.  As
+they rounded the blacksmith shop, from where they could see the whole
+length of the one street which the place boasted, a yell, shrill,
+exultant, familiar, greeted them.  A long-legged figure they knew well
+dashed down the street to them, a waving six-shooter in one hand, the
+reins held aloft in the other.  His horse gave evidence of hard usage,
+and it was a horse none of them had ever seen before.
+
+"It's him, all right," Jack Bates admitted reluctantly.
+
+"_Yip!  Cowboys in town_!" rang the slogan of the range land.  "Come
+on and--_wake 'em up_!  _OO-oop-ee_!"  He pulled up so suddenly that
+his horse almost sat down in the dust, and reined in beside Pink.
+
+They eyed him in amaze, and avoided meeting one another's eyes.  Truly,
+he was a strange-looking Weary.  His head was bare and disheveled, his
+eyes bloodshot and glaring, his cheeks flushed hotly.  His
+neck-kerchief covered his chest like a bib and he wore no coat; one
+shirtsleeve was rent from shoulder to cuff, telling eloquently that
+violent hands had sought to lay hold on him.  His long legs, clad in
+Angora chaps, swung limp to the stirrup.  By all these signs and
+tokens, they knew that he was drunk---joyously, unequivocally,
+vociferously drunk!
+
+Joe Meeker peered cautiously out of the window of Rusty Brown's place
+when they rode up, and Cal Emmett swore aloud at sight of him.  Joe
+Meeker was the most indefatigable male gossip for fifty miles around,
+and the story of Weary's spree would spread far and fast.  Worse, it
+would reach first of all the ears of Weary's School-ma'am, who lived at
+Meeker's.
+
+Cal started to get down; he wanted to go in and reason with Joe Meeker.
+At all events, Ruby Satterlee must not hear of Weary's defection.  It
+was all right, maybe, for some men to make fools of themselves in this
+fashion; some women would look upon it with lenience.  But this was
+different; Weary was different, and so was Ruby Satterlee.  Cal
+meditated upon just what would the most effectually close the mouth of
+Joe Meeker.
+
+But Weary spied him as his foot touched the ground.  "Oh, yuh can't
+sneak off like that, old-timer.  Yuh stay right outside and help wake
+'em up!" he shouted hoarsely.
+
+Cal turned and looked at him keenly; looked also at the erratic
+movements of the gun, and reconsidered his decision.  Joe Meeker could
+wait.
+
+"Better come on out to camp, Weary," he said persuasively.  "We're all
+of us going, right away.  Yuh can ride out with us."
+
+Weary had not yet extracted all the joy there was in the situation.  He
+did not want to ride out to camp; more, he had no intention of doing
+so.  He stood up in the stirrups and declaimed loudly his views upon
+the subject, and his opinion of any man who proposed such a move, and
+punctuated his remarks freely with profanity and bullets.
+
+Under cover of Weary's elocution Pink did a bit of jockeying and got
+his horse sidling up against Cal.  He leaned carelessly upon the
+saddle-horn and fixed his big, innocent eyes upon Weary's flushed face.
+
+"He's pretty cute, if he is full," he murmured discreetly to Cal.  "He
+won't let his gun get empty--see?  Loads after every third shot,
+regular.  We've got to get him so excited he forgets that little
+ceremony.  Once his gun's empty, he's all to the bad--we can take him
+into camp.  We'll try and rush him out uh town anyway, and shoot as we
+go.  It's our only show--unless we can get him inside and lay him out."
+
+"Yeah, that's what we'll have to do," Cal assented guardedly.  "He's
+sure tearing it off in large chunks, ain't he?  I never knew--"
+
+"Here!  What you two gazabos making medicine about?" cried Weary
+suspiciously.  "Break away, there.  I won't stand for no side-talks--"
+
+"We're just wondering if we hadn't all better adjourn and have
+something to drink," said Pink musically, straightening up in the
+saddle.  "Come on--I'm almighty dry."
+
+"Same here," said Jack Bates promptly taking the cue, and threw one leg
+over the cantle.  He got no further than that.
+
+"You stay right up on your old bench!" Weary commanded threateningly.
+"We're the kings uh the prairie, and we'll drink on our thrones.  That
+so-many-kinds-of-bar-slave can pack out the dope to us.  It's what he's
+there for."
+
+That settled Pink's little plan to get him inside where, lined up to
+the bar, they might--if they were quick enough--get his gun away from
+him; or, failing that, the warm room and another drink or two would
+"lay him out" and render him harmless.
+
+Weary, shoving three cartridges dexterously into the chambers in place
+of those just emptied, shouted to Rusty to bring out the "sheepdip."
+The four drew together and attempted further consultation, separated
+hastily when his eye fell upon them, and waited meekly his further
+pleasure.  They knew better than to rouse his anger against them.
+
+Weary, displeased because Rusty did not immediately respond to his
+call, sent a shot or two through the window by way of hurrying him.
+
+Whereupon Rusty cautiously opened the door, shoved a tray with bottle
+and glasses ostentatiously out into the sunlight for a peace offering,
+and finding that hostilities ceased, came forth in much fear and served
+them.
+
+They drank solemnly.
+
+"Take another one, darn yuh," commanded Weary.
+
+They drank again, more solemnly.
+
+The sun beat harshly down upon the deserted street, and upon the bare,
+tousled, brown head of Weary.  The four stared at him uneasily; they
+had never seen him like this before, and it gave him an odd, unfamiliar
+air that worried them more than they would have cared to own.
+
+Only Pink refused to lose heart.  "Well, come on--let's wake up these
+dead ones," he shouted, drawing his gun and firing into the air.  "Get
+busy, you sleepers!  _Yip_!  _Cowboys in town_!"  He wheeled and darted
+off down the street, shooting and yelling, and the others, with Weary
+in their midst, followed.  At the blacksmith shop, Pink, tacitly the
+leader of the rescuers, would have gone straight on out of town.  But
+Weary whirled and galloped back, firing merrily into the air.  A bit
+chagrined, Pink wheeled and galloped at his heels, fuming inwardly at
+the methodical reloading after every third shot.  Cal, on the other
+side, glanced across at Pink, shook his head ruefully and shoved more
+shells into his smoking gun.
+
+Back and forth from the store at one end of the street to the
+blacksmith shop at the other they rode, yelling till their throats
+ached and shooting till their gun-barrels were hot; and Weary kept pace
+with them and out-yelled and out-shot the most energetic, and never
+once forgot the little ceremony of shoving in fresh shells after the
+third shot.  Drunk, Weary appeared much more cautious than when sober.
+Pink grew hot and hoarse, and counted the shots, one, two, three, over
+and over till his brain grew sick.
+
+On the seventh trip down the street, a sleek, black head appeared for
+an instant over the top of the board-pile in the hotel yard.  A pair of
+frightened, slant eyes peered out at them.  Weary, just about to
+reload, caught sight of him and gave a whoop of pure joy.
+
+"Lord, how I do hate a Chink!" he cried, and dropped to the ground the
+three shells in his hand that he might fire the two in his gun.
+
+Pink yelled also.  "Nab him, Cal!" and caught his gun arm the instant
+Weary's last bullet left the barrel.
+
+Cal leaned and caught Weary round the neck in a close hug.  Jack Bates
+and Happy Jack crowded close, eager to help but finding no place to
+take hold.
+
+"Now, you blame fool, come along home and quit disgracing the whole
+community!" cried Cal, half angrily.  "Ain't yuh got any sense at all?"
+
+Weary protested; he swore; he threatened.  He was not in the least like
+his old, sweet-tempered self.  He mourned openly because he had no
+longer a gun that he might slay and spare not.  He insisted that he
+would take much pleasure in killing them all off--especially Pink.  He
+felt that Pink was the greatest traitor in the lot, and said that it
+would be a special joy to him to see Pink expire slowly and in great
+pain.  He remarked that they would be sorry, before they were through
+with him, and repeated, many times, the hint that he never forgot a
+friend or forgave an enemy--and looked darkly at Pink.
+
+"You're batty," Pink told him sorrowfully, the while they led him out
+through the lane.  "We're the best friends yuh got--only yuh don't
+appreciate us."
+
+Weary glared at him through a tangle of brown hair, and remarked
+further, in tones that one could hear a mile, upon the subject of
+Pink's treachery and the particular kind of death he deserved to die.
+
+Pink shrugged his shoulder and grew sulky; then, old friendship growing
+strong within him, he sought to soothe him.
+
+But Weary absolutely declined to be soothed.  Cal, serene in his
+fancied favoritism, attempted the impossible, and was greeted with
+language which no man living had ever before heard from the lips of
+Weary the sunny.  Jack Bates and Happy Jack, profiting by his
+experience, wisely kept silence.
+
+For this, the homeward ride was not the companionable gallop it usually
+was.  They tried to learn from Weary what he had done with Glory, and
+whence came the mud-colored cayuse with the dim, blotched brand, that
+he bestrode.  They asked also where were the horses he had been sent to
+bring.
+
+In return, Weary began viciously to dissect their pedigree and general
+moral characters.
+
+After that, they gave over trying to question or to reason, and the
+last two miles they rode in utter silence.  Weary, tiring of venom that
+brought no results, subsided gradually into mutterings, and then into
+sullen silence, so that, save for his personal appearance, they reached
+camp quite decorously.
+
+Chip met them at the bed wagon, where they slipped dispiritedly off
+their horses and began to unsaddle--all save Weary; he stared around
+him, got cautiously to the ground and walked, with that painfully
+circumspect stride sometimes affected by the intoxicated, over to the
+cook-tent.
+
+"Well," snapped Chip to the others, "For once in his life, Happy was
+right."
+
+Weary, still planting his feet primly upon the trampled grass, went
+smiling up to the stupefied Patsy.
+
+"Lord, how I do love a big, fat, shiny Dutch cook!" he murmured, and
+flung his long arms around him in a hug that caused Patsy to grunt.
+"How yuh was, already, Dutchy?  Got any pie in this man's cow-camp?"
+
+Patsy scowled and drew haughtily away from his embrace; there was one
+thing he would not endure, even from Weary: it was having his
+nationality too lightly mentioned.  To call him Dutchy was a direct
+insult, and the Happy Family never did it to his face--unless the
+provocation was very great.  To call him Dutchy and in the same breath
+to ask for pie--that, indeed, went far beyond the limits of decency.
+
+"Py cosh, you not ged any pie, Weary Davidson.  Py cosh, I learns you
+not to call names py sober peoples.  You not get no grub whiles you iss
+too drunk to be decend mit folks."
+
+"Hey?  Yuh won't feed a man when he's hungry?  Yuh darn Dutch--"  Weary
+went into details in a way that was surprising.
+
+The Happy Family rushed up and pulled him off Patsy before he had done
+any real harm, and held him till the cook had got into the shelter of
+his tent and armed himself with a frying pan.  Weary was certainly
+outdoing himself today.  The Happy Family resolved into a peace
+committee.
+
+"Aw, dig up some pie for him, Patsy," pleaded Cal.  "Yuh don't want to
+mind anything he says while he's like this; yuh know Weary's a good
+friend to yuh when he's sober.  Get some strong coffee--that'll
+straighten him out."
+
+"Py cosh, I not feed no drunk fools.  I not care if it iss Weary.  He
+hit mine jaw--"
+
+"Aw, gwan!  I guess yuh never get that way yourself," put in Happy
+Jack, ponderously sarcastic.  "I guess yuh never tanked up in roundup,
+one time, and left me cook chuck fer the hull outfit--and I guess Weary
+never rode all night, and had the dickens of a time, tryin' t' get yuh
+a doctor--yuh old heathen.  Yuh sure are an ungrateful cuss."
+
+"Give him some good, hot coffee, Patsy, and anything he wants to eat,"
+commanded Chip, more sharply than was his habit.  "And don't be all day
+about it, either."
+
+That settled it, of course; Chip, being foreman, was to be
+obeyed--unless Patsy would rather roll his blankets and hunt a new job.
+He took to muttering weird German sentences the while he brought out
+two pies and poured black coffee into a cup.  The reveler drank the
+coffee--three cups of it--ate a whole blueberry pie, and was consoled.
+He even wanted to embrace Patsy again, but was restrained by the
+others.  After that he went over and laid down in the shade of the
+bed-wagon, and straightway began to snore with much energy and
+enthusiasm.
+
+Chip watched him a minute and then went and sat down on the shady side
+of the bed-tent and began gloomily to roll a cigarette.  The rest of
+the Happy Family silently followed his example; for a long while no one
+said a word.
+
+It certainly was a shock to see Weary like that.  Not because it is
+unusual for a man of the range to get in that condition--for on the
+contrary, it is rather commonplace.  And the Happy Family had lived the
+life too long to judge a man harshly because of an occasional
+indiscreet departure from the path virtuous; they knew that the man
+might be a good fellow, after all.  In the West grows Charity sturdily,
+with branches quite broad enough to cover certain defections on the
+part of such men as Weary Davidson.
+
+For that, the real shock came in the utter unexpectedness of the
+thing--and from the fact that a man, even though prone to indulge in
+such riotous conduct, is supposed to forswear such indulgence when he
+has other and more important things to do.  Weary had been sent afar on
+a matter of business; he had ridden Glory, a horse belonging to the
+Flying U.  His arrival without the strays he had been sent after;
+without even the horse he had ridden away--that was the real disaster.
+He had broken a trust; he had, apparently, appropriated a horse that
+did not belong to him, which was worse.  But the Happy Family were
+loyal, to a man.  They did not condemn him; they were only waiting for
+him to sleep himself into a condition to explain the mystery.
+
+"Somebody's doped him," said Pink with decision, after three hours of
+shying around the subject.  "You'll see; somebody's doped him and
+likely took Glory away when they'd got him batty enough not to know the
+difference.  Yuh mind the queer look in his eyes?  And he acts queer.
+So help me Josephine!  I'd sure like to get next to the man that traded
+horses with him."
+
+The Happy Family breathed deeply; they were all, apparently, thinking
+the same thing.
+
+"By golly, that's what," spoke Slim, with decision.  "He does act like
+a man that had been doped."
+
+"Whisky straight wouldn't make that much difference in a man," averred
+Jack Bates.  "Yuh can't _get_ Weary on the fight, hardly, when he's
+sober; and look at the way he was in town--hot to slaughter that
+Chinaman that wasn't doing a thing to him, and saying how he hated
+Chinks.  Weary don't; he always says, when Patsy don't make enough pie
+to go round, that if he was running the outfit he'd have a Chink to
+cook."
+
+"Aw, look at the way he acted t' Rusty--and he thinks a lot uh Rusty,
+too," put in Happy Jack, who felt the importance of discovery and was
+in an unusually complacent mood.  "And he was going t' hang Pink up by
+the heels and--"
+
+Pink turned round and looked at him fixedly, and Happy Jack became
+suddenly interested in his cigarette.
+
+"Say, he'll sure be sore when he comes to himself, though," observed
+Cal.  "I don't know how he's going to square himself with his
+school-ma'am.  Joe Meeker was into Rusty's place while the big setting
+comes off; I would uh given him a gentle hint about keeping his face
+closed, only Weary wouldn't let me off my horse.  Joe'll sure give a
+high-colored picture uh the performance."
+
+"Well, if he does, he'll regret it a lot," prophesied Pink.  "And
+anyway, something sure got wrong with Weary; do yuh suppose he'd give
+up Glory deliberately?  Not on your life!  Glory comes next to the
+Schoolma'am in his affections."
+
+"Wonder where he got that dirt-colored cayuse, anyhow," mused Cal.
+
+"I was studying out the brand, a while ago," Pink answered.  "It's
+blotched pretty bad, but I made it out.  It's the Rocking R--they range
+down along Milk River, next to the reservation.  I've never had
+anything to do with the outfit, but I'd gamble on the brand, all right."
+
+"Well, how the deuce would he come by a Rocking R horse?  He never got
+it around here, anywheres.  He must uh got it up on the Marias."
+
+"Then that must be a good long jag he's had--which I don't believe,"
+interjected Cal.
+
+"Somebody," said Pink meaningly, "ought to have gone along with him;
+this thing wouldn't uh happened, then."
+
+"Ye-e-s?"  Chip felt that the remark applied to him as a foreman,
+rather than as one of the Family, and he resented it.  "If I'd sent
+somebody else with him, the outfit would probably be out two horses,
+instead of one--and there'd be two men under the bed-wagon with their
+hats and coats missing."
+
+Pink's eyes, under their heavy fringe of curled lashes, turned
+ominously purple.  "With all due respect to you, Mr. Bennett, I'd like
+to have you explain--"
+
+A horseman rode quietly up to them from behind a thicket of
+choke-cherry bushes.  Pink, catching sight of him first, stopped short
+off and stared.
+
+"Hello, boys," greeted the new-comer gaily.  "How's everything?  Mamma!
+it's good to get amongst white folks again."
+
+The Happy Family rose up as one man and stared fixedly; not one of them
+spoke, or moved.  Pink was the first to recover.
+
+"Well--I'll be--damned!"
+
+"Yuh sure will, Cadwolloper, if yuh don't let down them pretty lashes
+and quit gawping.  What the dickens ails you fellows, anyhow?  Is--is
+my hat on crooked, or--or anything?"
+
+"Weary, by all that's good!" murmured Chip, dazedly.
+
+Weary swung a long leg over the back of Glory and came to earth.
+"Say," he began in the sunny, drawly voice that was good to hear,
+"what's the joke?"
+
+The Happy Family sat down again and looked queerly at one another.
+
+Happy Jack glanced furtively at a long figure in the grass near by, and
+then, unhappily, at Weary.
+
+"It's him, all right," he blurted solemnly.  "They're both him!"
+
+The Happy Family snickered hysterically.
+
+Weary took a long step and confronted Happy Jack.  "I'm both him, am
+I?" he repeated mockingly.  "Mamma, but you're a lucid cuss!"  He
+turned and regarded the stunned Family judicially.
+
+"If there's any of it left," he hinted sweetly, "I wouldn't mind taking
+a jolt myself; but from the looks, and the actions, yuh must have got
+away with at least two gallons!"
+
+"Oh, we can give you a jolt, I guess," Chip retorted dryly.  "Just step
+this way."
+
+Weary, wondering a bit at the tone of him, followed; at his heels came
+the perturbed Happy Family.  Chip stooped and turned the sleeping one
+over on his back; the sleeper opened his eyes and blinked questioningly
+up at the huddle of bent faces.
+
+The astonished, blue eyes of Weary met the quizzical blue eyes of his
+other self.  He leaned against the wagon wheel.
+
+"Oh, mamma!" he said, weakly.
+
+His other self sat up and looked around, felt for his hat, saw that it
+was gone, and reached mechanically for his cigarette material.
+
+"By the Lord!  Are punchers so damn scarce in this neck uh the woods,
+that yuh've got to shanghai a man in order to make a full crew?" he
+demanded of the Happy Family, in the voice of Weary--minus the drawl.
+"I've got a string uh cayuses in that darn stockyards, back in
+town--and a damn poor town it is!--and I've also got a date with the
+Circle roundup for tomorrow night.  What yuh going to do about it?
+Speak up, for I'm in a hurry to know."
+
+The Happy Family looked at one another and said nothing.
+
+"Say," began Weary, mildly.  "Did yuh say your name was Ira Mallory,
+and do yuh mind how they used to mix us up in school, when we were both
+kids?  'Cause I've got a hunch you're the same irrepressible that has
+the honor to be my cousin."
+
+"I didn't say it," retorted his other self, pugnaciously.  "But I don't
+know as it's worth while denying it.  If you're Will Davidson, shake.
+What the devil d'yuh want to look so much like me, for?  Ain't yuh got
+any manners?  Yuh always was imitating your betters."  He grinned and
+got slowly to his feet.  "Boys, I don't know yuh, but I've a hazy
+recollection that we had one hell of a time shooting up that little
+townerine, back there.  I don't go on a limb very often, but when I do,
+folks are apt to find it out right away."
+
+The Happy Family laughed.
+
+"By golly," said Slim slowly, "that cousin story 's all right--but I
+bet yuh you two fellows are twins, at the very least!"
+
+"Guess again, Slim," cried Weary, already in the clutch of old times.
+"Run away and play, you kids.  Irish and me have got steen things to
+talk about, and mustn't be bothered."
+
+
+
+
+THE UNHEAVENLY TWINS
+
+There was a dead man's estate to be settled, over beyond the Bear Paws,
+and several hundred head of cattle and horses had been sold to the
+highest bidder, who was Chip Bennett, of the Flying U.  Later, there
+were the cattle and horses to be gathered and brought to the home
+range; and Weary, always Chip's choice when came need of a trusted man,
+was sent to bring them.  He was to hire what men he needed down there,
+work the range with the Rocking R, and bring home the stock--when his
+men could take the train and go back whence they had come.
+
+The Happy Family was disappointed.  Pink and Irish, especially, had
+hoped to be sent along; for both knew well the range north of the Bear
+Paws, and both would like to have made the trip with Weary.  But men
+were scarce and the Happy Family worked well together--so well that
+Chip grudged every man of them that ever had to be sent afar.  So Weary
+went alone, and Pink and Irish watched him wistfully when he rode away
+and were extremely unpleasant companions for the rest of that day, at
+least.
+
+Over beyond the Bear Paws men seemed scarcer even than around the
+Flying U range.  Weary scouted fruitlessly for help, wasted two days in
+the search, and then rode to Bullhook and sent this wire--collect--to
+Chip, and grinned as he wondered how much it would cost.  He, too, had
+rather resented being sent off down there alone.
+
+
+  "C. BENNETT, Dry Lake:
+  Can't get a man here for love or money.  Have
+  tried both, and held one up with a gun.  No use.
+  Couldn't top a saw horse.  For the Lord's sake,
+  send somebody I know.  I want Irish and Pink
+  and Happy--and I want them bad.  Get a move on.
+    W. DAVIDSON."
+
+
+Chip grinned when he read it, paid the bill, and told the three to get
+ready to hit the trail.  And the three grinned answer and immediately
+became very busy; hitting the trail, in this case, meant catching the
+next train out of Dry Lake, for there were horses bought with the
+cattle, and much time would be saved by making up an outfit down there.
+
+
+Weary rode dispiritedly into Sleepy Trail (which Irish usually spoke of
+as Camas, because it had but lately been rechristened to avoid
+conflictions with another Camas farther up on Milk River).  Weary
+thought, as he dismounted from Glory, which he had brought with him
+from home, that Sleepy Trail fitted the place exactly, and that
+whenever he heard Irish refer to it as Camas, he would call him down
+and make him use this other and more appropriate title.
+
+Sleepy it was, in that hazy sunshine of mid fore-noon, and apparently
+deserted.  He tied Glory to the long hitching pole where a mild-eyed
+gray stood dozing on three legs, and went striding, rowels a-clank,
+into the saloon.  He had not had any answer to his telegram, and the
+world did not look so very good to him.  He did not know that Pink and
+Irish and Happy Jack were even then speeding over the prairies on the
+eastbound train from Dry Lake, to meet him.  He had come to Sleepy
+Trail to wait for the next stage, on a mere hope of some message from
+the Flying U.
+
+The bartender looked up, gave a little, welcoming whoop and leaned half
+over the bar, hand extended.  "Hello, Irish!  Lord!  When did _you_ get
+back?"
+
+Weary smiled and shook the hand with much emphasis.  Irish had once
+created a sensation in Dry Lake by being taken for Weary; Weary
+wondered if, in the guise of Irish, there might not be some diversion
+for him here in Sleepy Trail.  He remembered the maxim "Turn about is
+fair play," and immediately acted thereon.
+
+"I just came down from the Flying U the other day," he said.
+
+The bartender half turned, reached a tall, ribbed bottle and two
+glasses, and set them on the bar before Weary.  "Go to it," he invited
+cordially.  "I'll gamble yuh brought your thirst right along with
+yuh--and that's your pet brand.  Back to stay?"
+
+Weary poured himself a modest "two fingers," and wondered if he had
+better claim to have reformed; Irish could--and did--drink long and
+deep, where Weary indulged but moderately.
+
+"No," he said, setting the glass down without refilling.  "They sent me
+back on business.  How's everything?"
+
+The bartender spoke his wonder at the empty glass, listened while Weary
+explained how he had cut down his liquid refreshments "just to see how
+it would go, and which was boss," and then told much unmeaning gossip
+about men and women Weary had never heard of before.
+
+Weary listened with exaggerated interest, and wondered what the fellow
+would do if he told him he was not Irish Mallory at all.  He reflected,
+with some amusement, that he did not even know what to call the
+bartender, and tried to remember if Irish had ever mentioned him.  He
+was about to state quietly that he had never met him before, and watch
+the surprise of the other, when the bartender grew more interesting.
+
+"And say! yuh'd best keep your gun strapped on yuh, whilst you're down
+here," he told Weary, with some earnestness.  "Spikes Weber is in this
+country--come just after yuh left; fact is, he's got it into his block
+that you left _because_ he come.  Brought his wife along--say!  I feel
+sorry for that little woman--and when he ain't bowling up and singing
+his war-song about you, and all he'll do when he meets up with yuh,
+he's dealing her misery and keeping cases that nobody runs off with
+her.  Why, at dances, he won't let her dance with nobody but him!  Goes
+plumb wild, sometimes, when it's 'change partners' in a square dance,
+and he sees her swingin' with somebody he thinks looks good to her.
+I've saw him raising hell with her, off in some corner between dances,
+and her trying not to let on she's cryin'.  He's dead sure you're still
+crazy over her, and ready to steal her away from him first chance, only
+you're afraid uh him.  He never gits full but he reads out your
+pedigree to the crowd.  So I just thought I'd tell you, and let yuh be
+on your guard."
+
+"Thanks," said Weary, getting out papers and tobacco.  "And whereabouts
+will I find this lovely specimen uh manhood?"
+
+"They're stopping over to Bill Mason's; but yuh better not go hunting
+trouble, Irish.  That's the worst about putting yuh next to the lay.
+You sure do love a fight.  But I thought I'd let yuh know, as a friend,
+so he wouldn't take you unawares.  Don't be a fool and go out looking
+for him, though; he ain't worth the trouble."
+
+"I won't," Weary promised generously.  "I haven't lost nobody that
+looks like Spikes-er-" he searched his memory frantically for the other
+name, failed to get it, and busied himself with his cigarette, looking
+mean and bloodthirsty to make up.  "Still," he added darkly, "if I
+should happen to meet up with him, yuh couldn't blame me--"
+
+"Oh, sure not!" the bartender hastened to cut in.  "It'd be a case uh
+self-defence--the way he's been makin' threats.  But--"
+
+"Maybe," hazarded Weary mildly, "you'd kinda like to see--_her_--a
+widow?"
+
+"From all accounts," the other retorted, flushing a bit nevertheless,
+"If yuh make her a widow, yuh won't leave her that way long.  I've
+heard it said you was pretty far gone, there."
+
+Weary considered, the while he struck another match and relighted his
+cigarette.  He had not expected to lay bare any romance in the somewhat
+tumultuous past of Irish.  Irish had not seemed the sort of fellow who
+had an unhappy love affair to dream of nights; he had seemed a
+particularly whole-hearted young man.
+
+"Well, yuh see," he said vaguely, "Maybe I've got over it."
+
+The bartender regarded him fixedly and unbelievingly.  "You'll have
+quite a contract making Spikes swallow that," he remarked drily.
+
+"Oh, damn Spikes," murmured Weary, with the fine recklessness of Irish
+in his tone.
+
+At that moment a cowboy jangled in, caught sight of Weary's back and
+fell upon him joyously, hailing him as Irish.  Weary was very glad to
+see him, and listened assiduously for something that would give him a
+clue to the fellow's identity.  In the meantime he called him "Say,
+Old-timer," and "Cully." It had come to be a self-instituted point of
+honor to play the game through without blundering.  He waved his hand
+hospitably toward the ribbed bottle, and told the stranger to "Throw
+into yuh, Old-timer--it's on me."  And when Old-timer straightway began
+doing so, Weary leaned against the bar and wiped his forehead, and
+wondered who the dickens the fellow could be.  In Dry Lake, Irish had
+been--well, hilarious--and not accountable for any little
+peculiarities.  In Sleepy Trail Weary was, perhaps he considered
+unfortunately, sober and therefore obliged to feel his way carefully.
+
+"Say! yuh want to keep your eyes peeled for Spikes Weber, Irish,"
+remarked the unknown, after two drinks.  "He's pawing up the earth
+whenever he hears your name called.  He's sure anxious to see the sod
+packed down nice on top uh yuh."
+
+"So I heard; his nibs here," indicating the bartender, "has been wising
+me up, a lot.  When's the stage due, tomorrow, Oldtimer?"  Weary was
+getting a bit ashamed of addressing them both impartially in that
+manner, but it was the best he could do, not knowing the names men
+called them.  In this instance he spoke to the bartender.
+
+"Why, yuh going to pull out while your hide's whole?" bantered the
+cowboy, with the freedom which long acquaintance breeds.
+
+"I've got business out uh town, and I want to be back time the stage
+pulls in."
+
+"Well, Limpy's still holding the ribbons over them buckskins uh his,
+and he ain't varied five minutes in five years," responded the
+bartender.   "So I guess yuh can look for him same old time."
+
+Weary's eyes opened a bit wider, then drooped humorously.  "Oh, all
+right," he murmured, as though thoroughly enlightened rather than being
+rather more in the dark than before.  In the name of Irish he found it
+expedient to take another modest drink, and then excused himself with a
+"See yuh later, boys," and went out and mounted Glory.
+
+Ten miles nearer the railroad--which at that was not what even a
+Montanan would call close--he had that day established headquarters and
+was holding a bunch of saddle horses pending the arrival of help.  He
+rode out on the trail thoughtfully, a bit surprised that he had not
+found the situation more amusing.  To be taken for Irish was a joke,
+and to learn thereby of Irish's little romance should be funny.  But it
+wasn't.
+
+Weary wondered how Irish got mixed up in a deal like that, which
+somehow did not seem to be in line with his character.  And he wished,
+a bit vindictively, that this Spikes Weber _could_ meet Irish.  He
+rather thought that Spikes needed the chastening effects of such a
+meeting.  Weary, while not in the least quarrelsome on his own account,
+was ever the staunch defender of a friend.
+
+Just where another brown trail branched off and wandered away over a
+hill to the east, a woman rode out and met him face to face.  She
+pulled up and gave a little cry that brought Weary involuntarily to a
+halt.
+
+"You!" she exclaimed, in a tone that Weary felt he had no right to hear
+from any but his little schoolma'am.  "But I knew you'd come back when
+you heard I--Have--have you seen Spikes, Ira?"
+
+Weary flushed embarrassment; this was no joke.  "No," he stammered, in
+some doubt just how to proceed.  "The fact is, you've made a little
+mistake.  I'm not--"
+
+"Oh, you needn't go on," she interrupted, and her voice, had Weary
+known it better, heralded the pouring out of a woman's heart.  "I know
+I've made a mistake, all right; you don't need to tell me that.  And I
+suppose you want to tell me that you've got over--things; that you
+don't care, any more.  Maybe you don't, but it'll take a lot to make me
+believe it.  Because you _did_ care, Ira.  You _cared_, all right
+enough!"  She laughed in the way that makes one very uncomfortable.
+
+"And maybe you'll tell me that I didn't.  But I did, and I do yet.  I
+ain't ashamed to say it, if I did marry Spikes Weber just to spite you.
+That's all it was, and you'd have found it out if you hadn't gone off
+the way you did.  I _hate_ Spikes Weber; and he knows it, Ira.  He
+knows I--care--for you, and he's making my life a hell.  Oh, maybe I
+deserve it--but you won't--  Now you've come back, you can have it out
+with him; and I--I almost hope you'll kill him!  I do, and I don't care
+if it is wicked.  I--I don't care for anything much, but--you."  She
+had big, soft brown eyes, and a sweet, weak mouth, and she stopped and
+looked at Weary in a way that he could easily imagine would be
+irresistible--to a man who cared.
+
+Weary felt that he was quite helpless.  She had hurried out sentences
+that sealed his lips.  He could not tell her now that she had made a
+mistake; that he was not Ira Mallory, but a perfect stranger.  The only
+thing to do now was to carry the thing through as tactfully as
+possible, and get away as soon as he could.  Playing he was Irish, he
+found, was not without its disadvantages.
+
+"What particular brand of hell has he been making for you?" he asked
+her sympathetically.
+
+"I wouldn't think, knowing Spikes as you do, you'd need to ask," she
+said impatiently.  "The same old brand, I guess.  He gets drunk, and
+then--I told him, right out, just after we were married, that I liked
+you the best, and he don't forget it; and he don't let me.  He swears
+he'll shoot you on sight--as if that would do any good!  He hates you,
+Ira."  She laughed again unpleasantly.
+
+Weary, sitting uneasily in the saddle looking at her, wondered if Irish
+really cared; or if, in Weary's place, he would have sat there so
+calmly and just looked at her.  She was rather pretty, in a pink and
+white, weak way.  He could easily imagine her marrying Spikes Weber for
+mere spite; what he could not imagine, was Irish in love with her.
+
+It seemed almost as if she caught a glimmer of his thoughts, for she
+reined closer, and her teeth were digging into her lower lip.  "Well,
+aren't you going to _do_ anything?" she demanded desperately.  "You're
+here, and I've told you I--care.  Are you going to leave me to bear
+Spikes' abuse always?"
+
+"You married him," Weary remarked mildly and a bit defensively.  It
+seemed to him that loyalty to Irish impelled him.
+
+She tossed her head contemptuously.  "It's nice to throw that at me.  I
+might get back at you and say you loved me.  You did, you know."
+
+"And you married Spikes; what can _I_ do about it?"
+
+"What--can--you--do--about it?  Did you come back to ask me that?"
+There was a well defined, white line around her mouth, and her eyes
+were growing ominously bright.
+
+Weary did not like the look of her, nor her tone.  He felt, somehow,
+glad that it was not Irish, but himself; Irish might have felt the
+thrall of old times--whatever they were--and have been tempted.  His
+eyes, also, grew ominous, but his voice was very smooth.  (Irish, too,
+had that trait of being quietest when he was most roused.)
+
+"I came back on business; I will confess I didn't come to see you," he
+said.  "I'm only a bone-headed cowpuncher, but even cowpunchers can
+play square.  They don't, as a rule step in between a man and his wife.
+You married Spikes, and according to your own tell, you did it to spite
+me.  So I say again, what can _I_ do about it?"
+
+She looked at him dazedly.
+
+"Uh course," he went on gently, "I won't stand to see any man abuse his
+wife, or bandy her name or mine around the country.  If I should happen
+to meet up with Spikes, there'll likely be some dust raised.  And if I
+was you, and Spikes abused me, I'd quit him cold."
+
+"Oh, I see," she said sharply, with an exaggeration of scorn.  "You
+have got over it, then.  There's someone else.  I might have known a
+man can't be trusted to care for the same woman long.  You ran after me
+and acted the fool, and kept on till you made me believe you really
+meant all you said--"
+
+"And you married Spikes," Weary reiterated--ungenerously, perhaps; but
+it was the only card he felt sure of.  There was no gainsaying that
+fact, it seemed.  She had married Spikes in a fit of pique at Irish.
+Still, it was not well to remind her of it too often.  In the next five
+minutes of tumultuous recrimination, Weary had cause to remember what
+Shakespeare has to say about a woman scorned, and he wondered, more
+than ever, if Irish had really cared.  The girl--even now he did not
+know what name to call her--was showing a strain of coarse temper; the
+temper that must descend to personalities and the calling of
+unflattering names.  Weary, not being that type of male human who can
+retort in kind, sat helpless and speechless the while she berated him.
+When at last he found opportunity for closing the interview and riding
+on, her anger-sharpened voice followed him shrewishly afar.  Weary
+breathed deep relief when the distance swallowed it, and lifted his
+gray hat to wipe his beaded forehead.
+
+"Mamma mine!" he said fervently to Glory.  "Irish was sure playing big
+luck when she _did_ marry Spikes; and I don't wonder at the poor devil
+taking to drink.  I would, too, if my little schoolma'am--"
+
+At the ranch, he hastened to make it quite plain that he was not Ira
+Mallory, but merely his cousin, Will Davidson.  He was quite determined
+to put a stop to all this annoying mixing up of identities.  And as for
+Spikes Weber, since meeting the woman Spikes claimed from him something
+very like sympathy; only Weary had no mind to stand calmly and hear
+Irish maligned by anybody.
+
+The next day he rode again to Sleepy Trail to meet the stage, hoping
+fervently that he would get some word--and that favorable--from Chip.
+He was thinking, just then, a great deal about his own affairs and not
+at all about the affairs of Irish.  So that he was inside the saloon
+before he remembered that the bartender knew him for Irish.
+
+The bartender nodded to him in friendly fashion, and jerked his head
+warningly toward a far corner where two men sat playing seven-up
+half-heartedly.  Weary looked, saw that both were strangers, and
+puzzled a minute over the mysterious gesture of the bartender.  It did
+not occur to him, just then, that one of the men might be Spikes Weber.
+
+The man who was facing him nipped the corners of the cards idly
+together and glanced up; saw Weary standing there with an elbow on the
+bar looking at him, and pushed back his chair with an oath unmistakably
+warlike.  Weary resettled his hat and looked mildly surprised.  The
+bartender moved out of range and watched breathlessly.
+
+"You ---- ---- --------!" swore Spikes Weber, coming truculently
+forward, hand to hip.  He was of medium height and stockily built, with
+the bull neck and little, deep-set eyes that go often with a nature
+quarrelsome.
+
+Weary still leaned his elbow on the bar and smiled at him tolerantly.
+"Feel bad anywhere?" he wanted to know, when the other was very close.
+
+Spikes Weber, from very surprise, stopped and regarded Weary for a
+space before he began swearing again.  His hand was still at his hip,
+but the gun it touched remained in his pocket.  Plainly, he had not
+expected just this attitude.
+
+Weary waited, smothering a yawn, until the other finished a
+particularly pungent paragraph.  "A good jolt uh brandy 'll sometimes
+cure a bad case uh colic," he remarked.  "Better have our friend here
+fix yuh up--but it'll be on you.  I ain't paying for drinks just now."
+
+Spikes snorted and began upon the pedigree and general character of
+Irish.  Weary took his elbow off the bar, and his eyes lost their
+sunniness and became a hard blue, darker than was usual.  It took a
+good deal to rouse Weary to the fighting point, and it is saying much
+for the tongue of Spikes that Weary was roused thoroughly.
+
+"That'll be about enough," he said sharply, cutting short a sentence
+from the other.  "I kinda hated to start in and take yuh all to
+pieces--but yuh better saw off right there, or I can't be responsible--"
+
+A gun barrel caught the light menacingly, and Weary sprang like the
+pounce of a cat, wrested the gun from the hand of Spikes and rapped him
+smartly over the head with the barrel.  "Yuh would, eh?" he snarled,
+and tossed the gun upon the bar, where the bartender caught it as it
+slid along the smooth surface and put it out of reach.
+
+After that, chairs went spinning out of the way, and glasses jingled to
+the impact of a body striking the floor with much force.  Came the
+slapping sound of hammering fists and the scuffling of booted feet,
+together with the hard breathing of fighting men.
+
+Spikes, on his back, looked up into the blazing eyes he thought were
+the eyes of Irish and silently acknowledged defeat.  But Weary would
+not let it go at that.
+
+"Are yuh whipped to a finish, so that yuh don't want any more trouble
+with anybody?" he wanted to know.
+
+Spikes hesitated but the fraction of a second before he growled a
+reluctant yes.
+
+"Are yuh a low-down, lying sneak of a woman-fighter, that ain't got
+nerve enough to stand up square to a ten-year-old boy?"
+
+Spikes acknowledged that he was.  Before the impromptu catechism was
+ended, Spikes had acknowledged other and more humiliating things--to
+the delectation of the bartender, the stage driver and two or three men
+of leisure who were listening.
+
+When Spikes had owned to being every mean, unknowable thing that Weary
+could call to mind--and his imagination was never of the barren
+sort--Weary generously permitted him to get upon his feet and skulk out
+to where his horse was tied.  After that, Weary gave his unruffled
+attention to the stage driver and discovered the unwelcome fact that
+there was no letter and no telegram for one William Davidson, who
+looked a bit glum when he heard it.
+
+So he, too, went out and mounted Glory and rode away to the ranch where
+waited the horses; and as he went he thought, for perhaps the first
+time in his life, some hard and unflattering things of Chip Bennett.
+He had never dreamed Chip would calmly overlook his needs and leave him
+in the lurch like this.
+
+At the ranch, when he had unsaddled Glory and gone to the bunk-house,
+he discovered Irish, Pink and Happy Jack wrangling amicably over whom a
+certain cross-eyed girl on the train had been looking at most of the
+time.  Since each one claimed all the glances for himself, and since
+there seemed no possible way of settling the dispute, they gave over
+the attempt gladly when Weary appeared, and wanted to know, first
+thing, who or what had been gouging the hide off his face.
+
+Weary, not aware until the moment that he was wounded, answered that he
+had done it shaving; at which the three hooted derision and wanted to
+know since when he had taken to shaving his nose.  Weary smiled
+inscrutably and began talking of something else until he had weaned
+them from the subject, and learned that they had bribed the stage
+driver to let them off at this particular ranch; for the stage driver
+knew Irish, and knew also that a man he had taken to be Irish was
+making this place his headquarters.  The stage driver was one of those
+male gossips who know everything.
+
+When he could conveniently do so, Weary took Irish out of hearing of
+the others and told him about Spikes Weber.  Irish merely swore.  After
+that, Weary told him about Spikes Weber's wife, in secret fear and with
+much tact, but in grim detail.  Irish listened with never a word to say.
+
+"I done what looked to me the best thing, under the circumstances,"
+Weary apologized at the last, "and I hope I haven't mixed yuh up a
+bunch uh trouble.  Mamma mine! she's sure on the fight, though, and
+she's got a large, black opinion of yuh as a constant lover.  If yuh
+want to square yourself with her, Irish, you've got a big contract."
+
+"I don't want to square myself," Irish retorted, grinning a bit.  "I
+did have it bad, I admit; but when she went and got tied up to Spikes,
+that cured me right off.  She's kinda pretty, and girls were scarce,
+and--oh, hell! you know how it goes with a man.  I'd a married her and
+found out afterwards that her mind was like a little paper windmill
+stuck up on the gatepost with a shingle nail--only she saved me the
+trouble.  Uh course, I was some sore over the deal for awhile; but I
+made up my mind long ago that Spikes was the only one in the bunch that
+had any sympathy coming.  If he's been acting up like you say, I change
+the verdict: there ain't anything coming to him but a big bunch uh
+trouble.  I'm much obliged to yuh, Weary; you done me a good turn and
+earnt a lot uh gratitude, which is yours for keeps.  Wonder if supper
+ain't about due; I've the appetite of a Billy goat, if anybody should
+ask yuh."
+
+At supper Irish was uncommonly silent, and did some things without
+thinking; such as pouring a generous stream of condensed cream into his
+coffee.  Weary, knowing well that Irish drank his coffee without cream,
+watched him a bit closer than he would otherwise have done; Irish was
+the sort of man who does not always act by rule.
+
+After supper Weary missed him quite suddenly, and went to the door of
+the bunk-house to see where he had gone.  He did not see Irish, but on
+a hilltop, in the trail that led to Sleepy Trail, he saw a flurry of
+dust.  Two minutes of watching saw it drift out of sight over the hill,
+which proved that the maker was traveling rapidly away from the ranch.
+Weary settled his hat down to his eyebrows and went out to find the
+foreman.
+
+The foreman, down at the stable, said that Irish had borrowed a horse
+from him, unsacked his saddle as if he were in a hurry about something,
+and had pulled out on a high lope.  No, he had not told the foreman
+where he was headed for, and the foreman knew Irish too well to ask.
+Yes, now Weary spoke of it, Irish did have his gun buckled on him, and
+he headed for Sleepy Trail.
+
+Weary waited for no further information.  He threw his saddle on a
+horse that he knew could get out and drift, if need came: presently he,
+too, was chasing a brown dust cloud over the hill toward Sleepy Trail.
+
+That Irish had gone to find Spikes Weber, Weary was positive; that
+Spikes was not a man who could be trusted to fight fair, he was even
+more positive.  Weary, however, was not afraid for Irish--he was merely
+a bit uneasy and a bit anxious to be on hand when came the meeting.  He
+spurred along the trail darkening with the afterglow of a sun departed
+and night creeping down upon the land, and wondered whether he would be
+able to come up with Irish before he reached town.
+
+At the place where the trail forked--the place where he had met the
+wife of Spikes, he saw from a distance another rider gallop out of the
+dusk and follow in the way that Irish had gone.  Without other evidence
+than mere instinct, he knew the horseman for Spikes.  When, further
+along, the horseman left the trail and angled away down a narrow
+coulee, Weary rode a bit faster.  He did not know the country very
+well, and was not sure of where that coulee led; but he knew the nature
+of a man like Spikes Weber, and his uneasiness was not lulled at the
+sight.  He meant to overtake Irish, if he could; after that he had no
+plan whatever.
+
+When, however, he came to the place where Spikes had turned off.  Weary
+turned off also and followed down the coulee; and he did not explain
+why, even to himself.  He only hurried to overtake the other, or at
+least to keep him in sight.
+
+The darkness lightened to bright starlight, with a moon not yet in its
+prime to throw shadows black and mysterious against the coulee sides.
+The coulee itself, Weary observed, was erratic in the matter of height,
+width and general direction.  Places there were where the width
+dwindled until there was scant room for the cow trail his horse
+conscientiously followed; places there were where the walls were easy
+slopes to climb, and others where the rocks hung, a sheer hundred feet,
+above him.
+
+One of the easy slopes came near throwing him off the trail of Spikes.
+He climbed the slope, and Weary would have ridden by, only that he
+caught a brief glimpse of something on the hilltop; something that
+moved, and that looked like a horseman.  Puzzled but persistent, Weary
+turned back where the slope was easiest, and climbed also.  He did not
+know the country well enough to tell, in that come-and-go light made
+uncertain by drifting clouds, just where he was or where he would bring
+up; he only knew instinctively that where Spikes rode, trouble rode
+also.
+
+Quite suddenly at the last came further knowledge.  It was when, still
+following, he rode along a steeply sloping ridge that narrowed
+perceptibly, that he looked down, down, and saw, winding brownly in the
+starlight, a trail that must be the trail he had left at the coulee
+head.
+
+"Mamma!" he ejaculated softly, and strained eyes under his hatbrim to
+glimpse the figure he knew rode before.  Then, looking down again, he
+saw a horseman galloping rapidly towards the ridge, and pulled up short
+when he should have done the opposite--for it was then that seconds
+counted.
+
+When the second glance showed the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in
+his spurs and galloped forward.  Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a
+rifle shot came sharply ahead.  He glanced down and saw horse and rider
+lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail.  Weary drew his own
+gun and went on, his teeth set tight together.  Now, when it was too
+late, he understood thoroughly the situation.
+
+He came clattering out of the gloom to the very, point of the bluff,
+just where it was highest and where it crowded closest the trail a long
+hundred feet below.  A man stood there on the very edge, with a rifle
+in his hands.  He may have been crouching, just before, but now he was
+standing erect, looking fixedly down at the dark heap in the trail
+below, and his figure, alert yet unwatchful, was silhouetted sharply
+against the sky.
+
+When Weary, gun at aim, charged furiously down upon him, he whirled,
+ready to give battle for his life; saw the man he supposed was lying
+down there dead in the trail, and started backward with a yell of pure
+terror.  "Irish!"  He toppled, threw the rifle from him in a single
+convulsive movement and went backward, down and down.--
+
+Weary got off his horse and, gun still gripped firmly, walked to the
+edge and looked down.  In his face, dimly revealed in the fitful
+moonlight, there was no pity but a look of baffled vengeance.  Down at
+the foot of the bluff the shadows lay deep and hid all they held, but
+out in the trail something moved, rose up and stood still a moment, his
+face turned upward to where stood Weary.
+
+"Are yuh hurt, Irish?" Weary called anxiously down to him.
+
+"Never touched me," came the answer from below.  "He got my horse, damn
+him! and I just laid still and kept cases on what he'd do next.  Come
+on down!"
+
+Weary was already climbing recklessly down to where the shadows reached
+long arms up to him.  It was not safe, in that uncertain light, but
+Weary was used to taking chances.  Irish, standing still beside the
+dead horse, watched and listened to the rattle of small stones
+slithering down, and the clink of spur chains upon the rocks.
+
+Together the two went into the shadows and stood over a heap of
+something that had been a man.
+
+"I never did kill a man," Weary remarked, touching the heap lightly
+with his foot.  "But I sure would have, that time, if he hadn't dropped
+just before I cut loose on him."
+
+Irish turned and looked at him.  Standing so, one would have puzzled
+long to know them apart.  "You've done a lot for me, Weary, this trip,"
+he said gravely.  "I'm sure obliged."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONESOME TRAIL AND OTHER
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