LITMIR.BIZ

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and he could not pick it up and put it back where it belonged.

      Taking a straight course across the prairie, he struck Flying U coulee at the point where the sheep had left it. On the way there he had crossed their trail where they went through the fence farther along the coulee than before, and therefore with a better chance of passing undetected; especially since the Happy Family, believing that he was forcing them steadily to the north, would not be watching for sheep. The barbed wire barrier bothered him somewhat. He was compelled to lie down and roll under the fence, in the most undignified manner, and, when he was through, there was the problem of getting upon his feet again. But he managed it somehow, and went on down the coulee, perspiring with the heat and a bitter realization of his ignominy. What the Happy Family would have to say when they saw him, even Andy Green’s vivid imagination declined to picture.

      He knew by the sun that it was full noon when he came in sight of the stable and corrals, and his soul sickened at the thought of facing that derisive bunch of punchers, with their fiendish grins and their barbed tongues. But he was hungry, and his arms had reached the limit of prickly sensations and were numb to his shoulders. He shook his hair back from his beaded forehead, cast a wary glance at the silent stables, set his jaw, and went on up the hill to the mess-house, wishing tardily that he had waited until they were off at work again, when he might intimidate old Patsy into keeping quiet about his predicament.

      Within the mess-house was the clatter of knives and forks plied by hungry men, the sound of desultory talk and a savory odor of good things to eat. The door was closed. Andy stood before it as a guilty-conscienced child stands before its teacher; clicked his teeth together, and, since he could not open the door, lifted his right foot and gave it a kick to strain the hinges.

      Within were exclamations of astonishment, silence and then a heavy tread. Patsy opened the door, gasped and stood still, his eyes popping out like a startled rabbit.

      “Well, what’s eating you?” Andy demanded querulously, and pushed past him into the room.

      Not all of the Happy Family were there. Cal, Jack Bates, Irish and Happy Jack had gone into the Bad Lands next to the river; but there were enough left to make the soul of Andy quiver forebodingly, and to send the flush of extreme humiliation to his cheeks.

      The Happy Family looked at him in stunned surprise; then they glanced at one another in swift, wordless inquiry, grinned wisely and warily, and went on with their dinner. At least they pretended to go on with their dinner, while Andy glared at them with amazed reproach in his misleadingly honest gray eyes.

      “When you’ve got plenty of time,” he said at last in a choked tone, “maybe one of you obliging cusses will untie this damned rope.”

      “Why, sure!” Pink threw a leg over the bench and got up with cheerful alacrity. “I’ll do it now, if you say so; I didn’t know but what that was some new fad of yours, like—”

      “Fad!” Andy repeated the word like an explosion.

      “Well, by golly, Andy needn’t think I’m goin’ to foller that there style,” Slim stated solemnly. “I need m’ rope for something else than to tie n’ clothes on with.”

      “I sure do hate to see a man wear funny things just to make himself conspicuous,” Pink observed, while he fumbled at the knot, which was intricate. Andy jerked away from him that he might face him ragefully.

      “Maybe this looks funny to you,” he cried, husky with wrath. “But I can’t seem to see the joke, myself. I admit I let then herders make a monkey of me.… They slipped up behind, going down into Antelope coulee, and slid down the bluff onto me; and, before I could get up, they got me tied, all right. I licked one of ’em before that, and thought I had ’em gentled down—”

      Andy stopped short, silenced by that unexplainable sense which warns us when our words are received with cold disbelief.

      “Mh-hm—I thought maybe you’d run up against a hostile jackrabbit, or something,” Pink purred, and went back to his place on the bench.

      “Haw-haw-haw-w-w!” came Big Medicine’s tardy bellow. “That’s more reasonable than the sheepherder story, by cripes!”

      Andy looked at them much as he had stared up at the sky before he began to swear—speechlessly, with a trembling of the muscles around his mouth. He was quite white, considering how tanned he was, and his forehead was shiny, with beads of perspiration standing thickly upon it.

      “Weary, I wish you’d untie this rope. I can’t.” He spoke still in that peculiar, husky tone, and, when the last words were out, his teeth went together with a snap.

      Weary glanced inquiringly across at the Native Son, who was regarding Andy steadily, as one gazes upon a tangled rope, looking for the end which will easiest lead to an untangling.

      Miguel’s brown eyes turned languidly to meet the look. “You’d better untie him,” he advised in his soft drawl. “He may not be in the habit of doing it—but he’s telling the truth.”

      “Untie me, Miguel,” begged Andy, going over to him, “and let me at this bunch.”

      “I’ll do it,” said Weary, and rose pacifically. “I kinda believe you myself, Andy. But you can’t blame the boys none; you’ve fooled ’em till they’re dead shy of anything they can’t see through. And, besides, it sure does look like a plant. I’d back you single-handed against a dozen sheepherders like then two we’ve been chasing around. If I hadn’t felt that way I wouldn’t have sent yuh out alone with ’em.”

      “Well, Andy needn’t think he’s goin’ to stick me on that there story,” Slim declared with brutal emphasis. “I’ve swallered too many baits, by golly. He’s figurin’ on gettin’ us all out on the war-path, runnin’ around in circles, so’s’t he can give us the laugh. I’ll bet, by golly, he paid then herders to tie him up like that. He can’t fool me!”

      “Say, Slim, I do believe your brains is commencin’ to sprout!” Big Medicine thumped him painfully upon the back by way of accenting the compliment. “You got the idee, all right.”

      Andy stood quiet while Weary unwound the rope; lifted his numbed arms with some difficulty, and displayed to the doubters his rope-creased wrists, and purple, swollen hands.

      “I couldn’t fight a caterpiller right now,” he said thickly. “Look at them hands! Do yuh call that a josh? I’ve been tied up like a bed-roll for five hours, you—” Well, never mind, he merely repeated a part of what he had recited aloud in Antelope coulee, the only difference being that he applied the vitriolic utterances to the Happy Family instead of to sheepherders, and that with the second recitation he gained much in fluency and dramatic delivery.

      It is not nice for a man to swear; to swear the way Andy did, at any rate. But the result perhaps atoned in a measure for the wickedness, in that the Happy Family were absolutely convinced of his sincerity, and the feelings of Andy greatly relieved, so that, when he had for the third time that day completely exhausted his vocabulary, he sat down and began to eat his dinner with a keen appetite.

      “I don’t suppose you know where your horse is at, by this tine,” Weary observed, as casually as possible, breaking a somewhat constrained silence.

      “I don’t—and I don’t give a darn,” Andy snapped back. He ate a few mouthfuls, and added less savagely: “He wasn’t in sight, as I came along. I didn’t follow the trail; I struck straight across and came down the coulee. He may be at the gate, and he may be down toward Rogers’.”

      Pink reached for a toothpick, eyeing Andy side-long; dimpled his cheeks disarmingly, and cleared his throat. “Please don’t kill me off when you get that pie swallowed,” he began pacifically. “Strange as it may seem, I believe you, Andy. What I want to know is this: Who owns them Dots? And what are they chasing all over the Flying U range for? It looks plumb malicious, to me. Did you find out anything about ’em, Andy, while you—er—while they—” His eyes twinkled and betrayed him for an arrant pretender. (Pink was not afraid of anything on earth—least of all Andy Green.)

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