by B. M. Bower
"WOLF! WOLF!"
Andy Green, of the Flying U, loped over the grassy level and hummed atune as he rode. The sun shone just warm enough to make a man feelthat the world was good enough for him, and the wind was just a lazy,whispering element to keep the air from growing absolutely still andstagnant. There was blue sky with white, fluffy bits of cloud liketorn cotton drifting as lazily as the wind, and there weremeadow-larks singing and swaying, and slow-moving range cattle withtheir calves midway to weaning time. Not often may one ride leisurelyafar on so perfect a day, and while Andy was a sunny-natured fellow atall times, on such a day he owned not a care.
A mile farther, and he rode over a low shoulder of the butte he waspassing, ambled down the long slope on the far side, crossed anotherrounded hill, followed down a dry creek-bed at the foot of it, soughtwith his eye for a practicable crossing and went headlong down asteep, twenty-foot bank; rattled the loose rocks in the dry, narrowchannel and went forging up a bank steeper than the first, withcreaking saddle-leather and grunting horse, and struck again easygoing.
"She slipped on me," he murmured easily, meaning the saddle. "I'mriding on your tail, just about; but I guess we can stand it the restuh the why, all right." If he had not been so lazy and self-satisfiedhe would have stopped right there and reset the saddle. But if he had,he might have missed something which he liked to live over o' nights.
He went up a gentle rise, riding slowly because of the saddle, passedover the ridge and went down another short slope. At the foot of theslope, cuddled against another hill, stood a low, sod-roofed cabinwith rusty stove-pipe rising aslant from one corner. This was the spothe had been aiming for, and he neared it slowly.
It was like a dozen other log cabins tucked away here and there amongthe foothills of the Bear Paws. It had an air of rakish hominess, asif it would be a fine, snuggy place in winter, when the snow and thewind swept the barren land around. In the summer, it stood open-dooredand open-windowed, with all the litter of bachelor belongingsscattered about or hanging from pegs on the wall outside. There was afaint trail of smoke from the rusty pipe, and it brought a grunt ofsatisfaction from Andy.
"He's home, all right. And if he don't throw together some uh themsour-dough biscuits uh his, there'll be something happen! Hope thebean-pot's full. G'wan, yuh lazy old skate." He slapped the rein-endslightly down the flanks of his horse and went at a trot around the endof the cabin. And there he was so utterly taken by surprise that healmost pulled his mount into a sitting posture.
A young woman was stooping before the open door, and she was pouringsomething from a white earthen bowl into a battered tin pan. Twowaggle-tailed lambs--a black one and a white--were standing on theirknees in their absorption, and were noisily drinking of the stuff asfast as it came within reach.
Andy had half a minute in which to gaze before the young woman lookedup, said "Oh!" in a breathless sort of way and retreated to thedoorstep, where she stood regarding him inquiringly.
Andy, feeling his face go unreasonably red, lifted his hat. He knewthat she was waiting for him to speak, but he could not well say anyof the things he thought, and blurted out an utterly idiotic question.
"What are yuh feeding 'em?"
The girl looked down at the bowl in her hands and laughed a little.
"Rolled oats," she answered, "boiled very thin and with condensedcream added to taste. Good morning." She seemed about to disappear,and that brought Andy to his senses. He was not, as a rule, a bashfulyoung man.
"Good morning. Is--er--Mr. Johnson at home?" He came near saying"Take-Notice," but caught himself in time. Take-Notice Johnson waswhat men called the man whom Andy had ridden over to see upon a moreor less trivial matter.
"He isn't, but he will be back--if you care to wait." She spoke with acertain preciseness which might be natural or artificial, and shestood in the doorway with no symptoms of immediate disappearance.
Andy slid over a bit in the saddle, readjusted his hat so that itsbrim would shield his eyes from the sunlight, and prepared to befriendly. "Oh, I'll wait," he said easily. "I've got all the timethere is. Would you mind if I smoked a cigarette?"
"Indeed, I was wishing you would," she told him, with surprisingfrankness. "I've so longed to see a dashing young cowboy roll acigarette with deft, white fingers."
Andy, glancing at her startled, spilled much tobacco down the front ofhim, stopped to brush it away and let the lazy breeze snatch the tinyoblong of paper from between his unwatchful fingers. Of course, shewas joshing him, he thought uneasily, as he separated the leaves ofhis cigarette book by blowing gently upon them, and singled outanother paper. "Are yuh so new to the country that it's anything of atreat?" he asked guardedly.
"Yes, I'm new. I'm what you people call a pilgrim. Don't you do itwith one hand? I thought--oh, yes! You hold the reins between yourfirm, white teeth while you roll--"
"Lady, I never travelled with no show," Andy protested mildly anduntruthfully. _Was_ she just joshing? Or didn't she know any better?She looked sober as anything, but somehow her eyes kind of--
"You see, I know some things about you. Those are chaps" (Heavens! Shecalled them the way they are spelled, without the soft sound of s!)"That you're wearing for--trousers" (Andy blushed modestly. He was notwearing them "for trousers".), "and you've got jingling rowels at yourheels, and those are taps--"
"You're going to be shy a yard or two of calico if that blacklamb-critter has his say-so," Andy cut in remorselessly, and hastilymade and lighted his cigarette while she was rescuing her blue calicoskirt from the jaws of the black lamb and puckering her eyebrows overthe chewed place. When her attention was once more given to him, hewas smoking as unobtrusively as possible, and he was gazing at herwith a good deal of speculative admiration. He looked hastily down atthe lambs. "Mary had _two_ little lambs," he murmured inanely.
"They're not mine," she informed him, taking him seriously--or seemingto do so. Andy had some trouble deciding just how much of her wassincere. "They were here when I came, and I can't take them back withme, so there's no use in claiming them. They'd be such a nuisance onthe train--"
"I reckon they would," Andy agreed, "if yuh had far to go."
"Well, you can't call San Jose _close_," she observed, meditatively."It takes four days to come."
"You're a long way from home. Does it--are yuh homesick, ever?" Andywas playing for information without asking directly how long sheintended to stay--a question which had suddenly seemed quiteimportant. Also, why was she stopping here with Take-Notice Johnson,away off from everybody?
"Seeing I've only been here four days, the novelty hasn't worn offyet," she replied. "But it does seem more like four weeks; and howI'll ever stand two months of it, not ever seeing a soul but father--"
Andy looked reproachful, and also glad. Didn't she consider him asoul? And Take-Notice was her dad! To be sure, Take-Notice had nevermentioned having a daughter, but then, in the range-land, men don't goaround yawping their personal affairs.
Before Take-Notice returned, Andy felt that he had accomplished much.He had learned that the young woman's name really was Mary, and thatshe was a stenographer in a real-estate office in San Jose, where hermother lived; that the confinement of office-work had threatened herwith pulmonary tuberculosis (Andy failed, at the moment, to recognizethe disease which had once threatened him also, and wondered vaguely)and that the doctor had advised her coming to Montana for a couple ofmonths; that she had written to her father (it seemed queer to haveanyone speak of old Take-Notice as "father") and that he had told herto "come a-running."
She told Andy that she had not seen her father for five years (Andyknew that Take-Notice had disappeared for a whole winter, about thatlong ago, and that no one had discovered where he went) because he andher mother were "not congenial."
He had dismounted, at her invitation, and had gone clanking to thedoorstep and sat down--giving a furtive kick now and then at the blacklamb, which developed a fondness for the leathern fringe on hischaps--and had eaten
an orange which she had brought in her trunk allthe way from San Jose, and which she had picked from a tree whichstood by her mother's front gate. He had nibbled a ripe olive--eatingit with what Andy himself would term "long teeth"--and had tried hardnot to show how vile he found it. He had inspected two star-fisheswhich she had found last Fourth-of-July at Monterey and had dried; andhad crumpled a withered leaf of bay in his hands and had smelled andnearly sneezed his head off; and had cracked and eaten fourwalnuts--also gathered from her mother's yard--and three almonds fromthe same source, and had stared admiringly at a note-book filled withfunny marks which she called shorthand.
Between-whiles Andy had told her his name and the name of the outfithe worked for; had explained what he meant by "outfit," and had drawna large U in the dirt to show her what a Flying U was, and had wantedto murder the black lamb which kept getting in his way and trying toeat the stick Andy used for a pencil; had confessed that he didsometimes play cards for money, as do the cowboys in Western stories,but assured her that he had never killed off any of his friends duringany little disagreement. He had owned to drinking a glass of whiskynow and then, but declared that it was only for snake bite and did nothappen oftener than once in six months or so. Yes, he had often hadrattlers in his bed, but not to hurt. This is where he began toinspect the star-fishes, and so turned the conversation safely back toCalifornia and himself away from the temptation to revel in fiction.
All of which took time, so that Take-Notice came before they quitefelt a longing for his presence; and though the sun shone straight inthe cabin door and so proved that it was full noon, there was no fireleft in the stove and nothing in sight that was eatable save anotherripe olive--which Andy had politely declined--and two more almonds andan orange.
A stenographer, with a fluffy pompadour that dipped distractingly atone side, and a gold watch suspended around the neck like a locket,and with sleeves that came no farther than the elbow and heels higherthan any riding boot Andy ever owned in his life, and with teeth thatwere very white and showed a glint of gold here and there, and eyesthat looked at one with insincere gravity, and fingers with nails thatshone--fingers that pinched red lips together meditatively--astenographer who has all these entrancing attributes, Andy discovered,may yet lack those housewifely accomplishments that make a man dreamof a little home for two. So far as Andy could see, her knowledge ofcookery extended no farther than rolled oat porridge for the twolambs.
Take-Notice it was who whittled shavings and started the fire withoutany comment upon the hour or his appetite; who went to the spring andbrought water, half-filled the enameled teakettle which had large,bare patches where the enamel had been chipped off in the stress ofbaching, and sliced the bacon and mixed the "sour-dough" biscuits. Tobe sure, he had done those things for years and thought nothing of it;Andy, also, had done those things, many's the time, and had thoughtnothing of it, either. But to do them while a young woman sits calmlyby and makes no offer of help, but talks of many things, unconsciouseven of her world-old, feminine duties and privileges, that struckAndy with a cold breath of disillusionment.
He watched her unobtrusively while she talked. She never once seemedto feel that cooking belonged to woman, and as far as he could seeTake-Notice did not feel so either. So Andy mentally adjusted himselfto the novelty and joyed in her presence.
To show how successful was his mental adjustment, it is necessarymerely to state one fact: Where he had intended to stop an hour or so,he stayed the afternoon; ate supper there and rode home at sundown,his mind a jumble of sunny Californian days where one may gatherstar-fishes and oranges, bay leaves and ripe olives at will, and ofblack and white lambs which always obtrude themselves at the wrongmoment and break off little, intimate confidences about life in areal-estate office, perhaps; and of polished finger-nails that neverdip themselves in dishwater--Andy had come to believe that it would beneither right or just to expect them to do so common a thing.
The season was what the range calls "between roundups," so that Andywent straight to the ranch and found the Happy Family in or around thebunk-house, peacefully enjoying their before-bedtime smoke. Andy,among other positive faults and virtues, did not lack a certain degreeof guile. Men there were at the Flying U who would ride in haste ifthey guessed that a pompadoured young woman from California was at theend of the trail, and Andy, knowing well the reputation he bore amongthem, set that reputation at work to keep the trail empty of allriders save himself. When someone asked him idly what had kept him solong, he gazed around at them with his big, innocent gray eyes.
"Why, I was just getting acquainted with the new girl," he answeredsimply and truthfully.
Truth being something which the Happy Family was unaccustomed to fromthe lips of Andy Green, they sniffed scornfully.
"What girl?" demanded Irish bluntly.
"Why, Take-Notice's girl. His young lady daughter that is visitinghim. She's mighty nice, and she's got style about her, and she wasfeeding two lambs. Her name," he added softly, "is Mary."
Since no one had ever heard that Take-Notice had a daughter, the HappyFamily could not be blamed for doubting Andy. They did doubt,profanely and volubly.
"Say, did any of you fellows ever eat a ripe olive?" Andy broke in,when he could make himself heard. "Well," he explained mildly, whencame another rift of silence in the storm-cloud of words, "When yuhride over there, she'll likely give yuh one to try; but yuh take myadvice and pass it up. I went up against one, and I ain't got thetaste out uh my mouth yet. It's sure fierce."
More words, from which Andy gathered that they did not believeanything he said; that he was wasting time and breath, and that hisimagination was weak and his lies idiotic. He'd better not letTake-Notice hear how he was taking his name in vain and giving him adaughter--and so on.
"Say, did yuh ever see a star-fish? Funniest thing yuh ever saw, allpimply, and pink, and with five points to 'em. She's got two. When yuhgo over, you ask her to let yuh see 'em." Andy was in bed, then, andhe spoke through the dusk toward the voices. What those voices hadjust then been saying seemed to have absolutely no effect upon him.
"Oh, dry up!" Irish commanded impatiently. "Nobody's thinking uhriding over there, yuh chump. What kind of easy marks do yuh think weare?"
Andy laughed audibly in his corner next the window. "Say, you fellowsdo amuse me a lot. By gracious, I'll bet five dollars some of yuh takethe trail over there, soon or late. I--I'll bet five dollars to _one_that yuh do! The bet to hold good for--well, say six weeks. But yuhbetter not take me up, boys--especially Irish, that ain't got a girlat present. Yes, or _any_ of yuh, by gracious! It'll be a case forbreach-uh-promise for any one uh yuh. Say, she's a bird! Got goldyhair, and a dimple in her chin and eyes that'd make a man--"
With much reviling they accepted the wager, and after that Andy wentpeacefully to sleep, quite satisfied for the time with the effectproduced by his absolute truthfulness; it did not matter much, he toldhimself complacently, what a man's reputation might be, so long as herecognized its possibilities and shaped his actions properly.
It is true that when he returned from Dry Lake, not many days after,with a package containing four new ties and a large, lustrous silkhandkerchief of the proper, creamy tint, the Happy Family seemed towaver a bit. When he took to shaving every other day, and becameextremely fastidious about his finger-nails and his boots and the knotin his tie, and when he polished the rowels of his spurs with Patsy'sscouring brick (which Patsy never used) and was careful to dent hishat-crown into four mathematically correct dimples before ever hewould ride away from the ranch, the Happy Family looked thoughtful anddiscussed him privately in low tones.
But when Andy smilingly assured them that he was going over to call onTake-Notice's girl, and asked them if they wouldn't like to come alongand be introduced, and taste a ripe olive, and look at thestar-fishes, and smell a crumpled leaf of bay, they backedfiguratively from the wiles of him and asserted more or lessemphatically he couldn't work _them_. Then Andy would grin and ridegaily away,
and Flying U Coulee would see him no more for severalhours. It was mere good fortune--from Andy's viewpoint--that duty didnot immediately call the Happy Family, singly or as a whole, to rideacross the hills toward the cabin of Take-Notice Johnson. Without alegitimate excuse, he felt sure of their absence from the place, andhe also counted optimistically upon their refusing to ask any one whomthey might meet, if Take-Notice Johnson had a daughter visiting him.
Four weeks do not take much space in a calendar, nor much time tolive; yet in the four that came just after Andy's discovery, heaccomplished much, even in his own modest reckoning. He had taught thegirl to watch for his coming and to stand pensively in the door withmany good-bye messages when he said he must hit the trail. He hadformed definite plans for the future and had promised her quiteseriously that he would cut out gambling, and never touch liquor inany form--unless the snake was a _very_ big one and sunk his fangs ina vital spot, in which dire contingency Mary absolved him from hisvow. He had learned the funny marks that meant his name and hers inshorthand and had watched with inner satisfaction her efforts to learnhow to fry canned corn in bacon grease, and to mix sour-dough biscuitsthat were neither yellow with too much soda nor distressfully "soggy"with too little, and had sat a whole, blissful afternoon in hisshirtsleeves, while Mary bent her blond pompadour domestically overhis coat, sewing in the sleeve-linings that are prone to come looseand torment a man. To go back to the first statement, which includesall these things and much more, Andy had, in those four weeks,accomplished much.
But a girl may not live forever in that lonely land with only AndyGreen to discover her presence, and the rumors which at first buzzedunheeded in the ears of the Happy Family, stung them at last to thepoint of investigation; so that on a Sunday--the last Sunday beforethe Flying U wagons took again to the trailless range-land, Irish andJack Bates rode surreptitiously up the coulee half an hour after Andy,blithe in his fancied security, had galloped that way to spend a longhalf-day with Mary. If he discovered them they would lose a dollareach--but if they discovered a girl such as Andy had pictured, theyfelt that it would be a dollar well lost.
In the range-land many strange things may happen. Irish and Jackpulled up short when, off to their right, in a particularly, lonelypart of that country, broken into seamed coulees and deep-scarredhills, they heard a faint halloo. With spurs pricking deep andfrequent they hurried to the spot; looked down a grassy swale and sawAndy lying full length upon the ground in rather a peculiar pose,while his horse fed calmly a rein-length away.
They stopped and looked at him, and at each other; rode cautiously towithin easy rifle shot and stopped again.
"Ain't yuh getting tired feelings kinda unseasonable in the day?" JackBates called out guardedly.
"I--I'm hurt, boys," Andy lifted his head to say, strainedly. "My hossstepped in a hole, and I wasn't looking for it. I guess--my leg'sbroke."
Jack snorted. "That so? Sure it ain't your neck, now? Seems to me yourhead sets kinda crooked. Better feel it and find out, while we go onwhere we're going." He half turned his horse up the hill again,resenting the impulse which had betrayed him a hand's breadth from thetrail.
Andy waited a moment. Then: "On the dead, boys, my leg's broke--likeyou'd bust a dry stick. Come and see--for yourselves."
"Maybe--" Irish began, uncertainly, in an undertone. Andy's voice hadin it a note of pain that was rather convincing.
"Aw, he's just trying to head us off. Didn't I help pack him up thatungodly bluff, last spring, thinking he was going to die before we gothim to the top--and him riding off and giving us the horse-laugh topay for it? You can bite, if yuh want to; I'm going on. I sure savvyAndy Green."
"Come and look," Andy begged from below. "If I'm joshing--"
"You can josh and be darned," finished Jack for him. "I don't pack youup hill more than once, old-timer. We're going to call on yourMary-girl. When yuh get good and refreshed up, you can come and lookon at me and Irish acting pretty and getting a stand-in. So-long!"
Irish, looking back over his shoulder, saw Andy raise his head andgaze after them; saw it drop upon his arms just before they went quiteover the hill. The sight stuck persistently and unpleasantly in hismemory.
"Yuh know, he _might_ be hurt," he began tentatively when they hadridden slowly a hundred yards or so.
"He might. But he ain't. He's up to some game again, and he wouldn'tlike anything better than to have us ride down there and feel hisbones. If you'd been along, that day in the Bad-lands, you'd know thekind of bluff he can put up. Why, we all thought sure he was going todie. He acted that natural we felt like we was packing a corpse at afuneral--and him tickled to death all the while at the load he wasthrowing! No sir, yuh don't see me swallowing no such dope as _that_,any more. When he gets tired uh laying there, he'll recover rapid andcome on. Don't yuh worry none about Andy Green; why, man, do yuhreckon any horse-critter could break _his_ leg--a rider like him? Heknows more ways uh falling off a horse without losing the ashes offhis cigarette than most men know how to--how to punish grub! AndyGreen _couldn't_ get hurt with a horse! If he could, he'd uh been deadand playing his little harp long ago."
Such an argument was more convincing than the note of pain in thevoice of Andy, so that Irish shook off his uneasiness and laughed atthe narrow escape he'd had from being made a fool. And speedily theyforgot the incident.
It was Take-Notice who made them remember, when they had been an houror so basking themselves, so to speak, in the smiles of Mary. They hadfancied all along that she had a curiously expectant air, and that shewent very often to the door to see what the lambs were up to--andalways lifted her eyes to the prairie slope down which they had riddenand gazed as long as she dared. They were not dull; they understoodquite well what "lamb" it was that held half the mind of her, and theywere piqued because of their understanding, and not disposed tofurther the cause of the absent. Therefore, when Take-Notice askedcasually what had become of Andy, Jack Bates moved his feetimpatiently, shot a sidelong glance at the girl (who was at thatmoment standing where she could look out of the window) and laughedunpleasantly.
"Oh, Andy's been took again with an attack uh bluff," he answeredlightly. "He gets that way, ever so often, you know. We left himlaying in a sunny spot, a few miles back, trying to make somebodythink he was hurt, so they'd pack him home and he'd have the laugh onthem for all summer."
"Wasn't he hurt?" The girl turned suddenly and her voice told how muchit meant to her. But Jack was not sympathetic.
"No, he wasn't hurt. He was just playing off. He got us once, thatway, and he's never given up the notion that he could do it again. Wemay be easy, but--"
"I don't understand," the girl broke in sharply. "Do you mean that hewould deliberately try to deceive you into believing he was hurt, whenhe wasn't?"
"Miss Johnson," Jack replied sorrowfully, "he would. He would losevaluable sleep for a month, studying up the smoothest way to deceive.I guess," he added artfully, and as if the subject was nearlyexhausted, "yuh don't know Mr. Green very well."
"I remember hearing about that job he put up on yuh," Take-Noticeremarked, not noticing that the girl's lips were opened for speech,"Yuh made a stretcher, didn't yuh, and--"
"No--he told it that way, but he's such a liar he couldn't tell thetruth if he wanted to. We found him lying at the bottom of a steepbluff, and he appeared to be about dead. It looked as if he'd slippedand fallen down part way. So we packed water and sloshed in his face,and he kinda come to, and then we packed him up the bluff--and yuhknow what the Bad-lands is like, Take-Notice. It was unmerciful hot,too, and we like to died getting him up. At the top we laid him downand worked over him till we got him to open his eyes, and he couldtalk a little and said maybe he could ride if we could get him on ahorse. The--he made us _lift_ him into the saddle--and considering thesize of him, it was something of a contract--and then he made as if hecouldn't stay on, even. But first we knew he digs in the spurs, yanksoff his hat and lets a yell out of him you could hear a mile, andsays: 'Much ob
liged, boys, it was too blamed hot to walk up thathill,' and off he goes."
Take-Notice stretched his legs out before him, pushed his hands deepdown in his trousers' pockets, and laughed and laughed. "That was sureone on you," he chuckled. "Andy's a hard case, all right."
But the girl stood before him, a little pale and with her chin high."Father, how can you think it's funny?" she cried impatiently. "Itseems to me--er--I think it's perfectly horrid for a man to act likethat. And you say, Mr. Bates, that he's out there _now_"--she swept avery pretty hand and arm toward the window--"acting the same sillysort of falsehood?"
"I don't know where he is _now_," Jack answered judicially. "That'swhat he was doing when we came past."
She went to the door and stood looking vaguely out at nothing inparticular, and Irish took the opportunity to kick Jack on theankle-bone and viciously whisper, "Yuh damned chump!" But Jack smiledserenely. Irish, he reflected, had not been with them that day in theBad-lands, and so had not the same cause for vengeance. He rememberedthat Irish had laughed, just as Take-Notice was laughing, when theytold him about it; but Jack had never been able to see the joke, andhis conscience did not trouble him now.
More they said about Andy Green--he and Take-Notice, with Irish mostlysilent and with the girl extremely indignant at times and at othersslightly incredulous, but always eager to hear more. More they said,not with malice, perhaps, for they liked Andy Green, but with thespirit of reminiscence strong upon them. Many things that he had saidand done they recalled and laughed over--but the girl did not laugh.At sundown, when they rode away, she scribbled a hasty note, put it inan envelope and entrusted it to Irish for immediate delivery to theabsent and erring one. Then they rode home, promising each other thatthey would sure devil Andy to death when they saw him, and wishingthat they had ridden long ago to the cabin of Take-Notice. It was notpleasant to know that Andy Green had again fooled them completely.
None at the ranch had seen Andy, and they speculated much upon thenature of the game he was playing. Happy Jack wanted to bet that Andyreally had broken his leg--but that was because he had a presentgrievance against Irish and hated to agree with anything he said. Butwhen they went to bed, the Happy Family had settled unanimously uponthe theory that Andy had ridden to Dry Lake, and would come lopingserenely down the trail next day.
Irish did not know what time it was when he found himself sitting upin bed listening, but he discovered Pink getting quietly into hisclothes. Irish hesitated a moment, and then felt under his pillow forhis own garments--long habit had made him put them there--and began todress. "I guess I'll go along with yuh," he whispered.
"Yuh can if yuh want to," Pink answered ungraciously. "But yuh needn'traise the long howl if--"
"Hold on, boys; my ante's on the table," came guardedly from Weary'sbunk, and there was a soft, shuffling sound as of moving blankets; thesubdued scrape of boots pulled from under bunks, and the quietsearching for hats and gloves. There was a clank of spur-chains, thefaint squeal of a hinge gone rusty, a creak of a loose board, and thenthe three stood together outside under the star-sprinkle and avoidedlooking at one another. Without a word they went down the deep-wornpath to the big gate, swung it open and headed for the corral whereslept their horses.
"If them bone-heads don't wake up, nobody'll be any the wiser--andit's a lovely night for a ramble," murmured Weary, consoling himself.
"Well, I couldn't sleep," Irish confessed, half defiantly. "I expectit's just a big josh, but--it won't do any hurt to make sure."
"Yuh all think Andy Green lives to tell lies," snapped Pink, throwingthe saddle on his horse with a grunt at the weight of it. The horseflinched away from its impact, and Pink swore at it viciously. "Yuhmight uh gone down and made sure, anyhow," he criticised.
"Well, I was going to; but Jack said--" Irish stooped to pick up thelatigo and did not finish. "But I can't get over the way his headdropped down on his arms, when we were riding out uh sight. As if--oh,hell! If it was a josh, I'll just about beat the head off him forspoiling my sleep this way. Get your foot off that rein, yuh damned,clumsy bench!" This last to his horse.
They rode slowly away from the ranch and made the greater haste whenthe sound of their galloping could not reach the dulled ears of thosewho slept. They did not talk much, and when they did it was to tellone another what great fools they were--but even in the telling theyurged their horses to greater speed.
"Well," Pink summed up at last, "if he's hurt, out here, we're doingthe right thing; and if he ain't, he won't be there to have the laughon us; so it's all right either way."
There was black shadow in the grassy swale where they found him. Hishorse had wandered off and it was only the sure instinct of Irish thatled them to the spot where he lay, a blacker shadow in the darknessthat a passing cloud had made. Just at first they thought him dead,but when they lifted him he groaned and then spoke.
"It's one on me, this time," he said, and the throat of Irish pinchedachingly together at the sound of his voice, which had in it the noteof pain he had been trying to forget.
After that he said nothing at all, because he was a senseless weightin their arms.
At daylight Irish was pounding vehemently the door of the White Houseand calling for the Little Doctor. Andy lay stretched unconscious uponthe porch beside him, and down in the bunk-house the Happy Family wasrubbing eyes and exclaiming profanely at the story Pink was telling.
"And here," finished Irish a couple of hours later, when he wastalking the thing over with the Little Doctor, "here's a noteTake-Notice's girl gave me for him. I don't reckon there's any goodnews in it, so maybe yuh better hold it out on him till he's got overthe fever. I guess we queered Andy a lot--but I'll ride over, soon asI can, and fix it up with her and tell her he broke his leg, allright. Maybe," he finished optimistically, "she'll come over to seehim."
Irish kept his word, though he delayed until the next day; and thenext day it was too late. For the cabin of Take-Notice was closed andempty, and the black lamb and the white were nosing unhappily theirover-turned pan of mush, and bleating lonesomely. Irish waited a whileand started home again; rode into the trail and met Bert Rogers, whoexplained:
"Take-Notice was hauling his girl, trunk and all, to the depot," hetold Irish. "I met 'em just this side the lane. They aimed to catchthe afternoon train, I reckon. She was going home, Take-Notice toldme."
So Irish rode thoughtfully back to the ranch and went straight to theWhite House where Andy lay, meaning to break the news as carefully ashe knew how.
Andy was lying in bed looking big-eyed at the ceiling, and in his handwas the note. He turned his head and glanced indifferently at Irish.
"Yuh sure made a good job of it, didn't yuh?" he began calmly, thoughit was not the calm which meant peace. "I was just about engaged tothat girl. If it'll do yuh any good to know how nice and thorough yuhbusted everything up for me, read that." He held out the paper, andIrish turned a guilty red when he took it.
"Mr. Green: I have just been greatly entertained with the history of your very peculiar deeds and adventures, and I wish to say that I have discovered myself wholly lacking the sense of humor which is necessary to appreciate you.
"As I am going home to-morrow, this is my only opportunity of letting you know how thoroughly I detest falsehood in _any_ form. Yours truly,
"MARY EDITH JOHNSON."
"Ain't yuh proud?" Andy inquired in a peculiar, tired voice. "MaybeI'm a horrible liar, all right--but I never done anybody a dirty tricklike that."
Irish might have said it was Jack Bates who did the mischief, but hedid not. "We never knew it was anything serious," he explainedcontritely. "On the dead, I'm sorry--"
"And that does a damned lot uh good--if she's gone!" Andy cut in,miserably.
"Oh, she's gone, all right. She went to-day," murmured Irish, and wentout and shut the door softly behind him.
* * * * *