He remembered then that Andy had spoken of chaining Dunk to the anvil.

That would make it unnecessary to lock the door, of course. Slim seized the hanging strip of iron, gave it a jerk and bathed all the dingy interior with a soft, sunset glow. Cobwebs quivered at the inrush of the breeze, and glistened like threads of fine gold. The forge remained a dark blot in the corner. A new chisel, lying upon the earthen floor, became a bar of yellow light.

Slim's eyes went to the anvil and clung there in a widening stare. His hands, white and soft when his gloves were off, drew up convulsively into fighting fists, and as he stood looking, the cords swelled and stood out upon his thick neck. For years he had hated Dunk Whittaker--

The Happy Family, with rare good sense, had not hesitated to turn the white house into an impromptu hospital. They knew that if the Little Doctor and Chip and the Old Man had been at home Happy Jack would have been taken unquestioningly into the guest chamber--which was a square, three-windowed room off the big livingroom. More than one of them had occupied it upon occasion. They took Happy Jack up there and put him to bed quite as a matter-of-course, and when he was asleep they lingered upon the wide, front porch; the hammock of the Little Doctor squeaked under the weight of Andy Green, and the wide-armed chairs received the weary forms of divers young cowpunchers who did not give a thought to the intrusion, but were thankful for the comfort. Andy was swinging luxuriously and drawing the last few puffs from a cigarette when Slim, purple and puffing audibly, appeared portentously before him.

"I thought you said you was goin' to lock Dunk up in the blacksmith shop," he launched accusingly at Andy.

"We did," averred that young man, pushing his toe against the railing to accelerate the voluptuous motion of the hammock.

"He ain't there. He's broke loose. The chain--by golly, yuh went an'

used that chain that was broke an' jest barely hangin' together! His horse ain't anywheres around, either. You fellers make me sick. Lollin'

around here an' not paying no attention, by golly--he's liable to be ten mile from here by this time!" When Slim stopped, his jaw quivered like a dish of disturbed jelly, and I wish I could give you his tone; choppy, every sentence an accusation that should have made those fellows wince.

Irish, Big Medicine and Jack Bates had sprung guiltily to their feet and started down the steps. The drawling voice of the Native Son stopped them, ten feet from the porch.

"Twelve, or fifteen, I should make it. That horse of his looked to me like a drifter."

"Well--are yuh goin' t' set there on your haunches an' let him GO?"

Slim, by the look of him, was ripe for murder.

"You want to look out, or you'll get apoplexy sure," Andy soothed, giving himself another luxurious push and pulling the last, little whiff from his cigarette before he threw away the stub. "Fat men can't afford to get as excited as skinny ones can."

"Aw, say! Where did you put him, Andy?" asked Big Medicine, his first flurry subsiding before the absolute calm of those two on the porch.

"In the blacksmith shop," said Andy, with a slurring accent on the first word that made the whole sentence perfectly maddening. "Ah, come on back here and sit down. I guess we better tell 'em the how of it. Huh, Mig?"

Miguel cast a slow, humorous glance over the four. "Ye-es--they'll have us treed in about two minutes if we don't," he a.s.sented. "Go ahead."

"Well," Andy lifted his head and shoulders that he might readjust a pillow to his liking, "we wanted him to make a getaway. Fact is, if he hadn't, we'd have been--strictly up against it. Right! If he hadn't--how about it, Mig? I guess we'd have been to the Little Rockies ourselves."

"You've got a sweet little voice," Irish cut in savagely, "but we're tired. We'd rather hear yuh say something!"

"Oh--all right. Well, Mig and I just ribbed up a josh on Dunk. I'd read somewhere about the same kinda deal, so it ain't original; I don't lay any claim to the idea at all; we just borrowed it. You see, it's like this: We figured that a man as mean as this Dunk person most likely had stepped over the line, somewhere. So we just took a gambling chance, and let him do the rest. You see, we never saw him before in our lives. All that identification stunt of ours was just a bluff. But the minute I shoved my chips to the center, I knew we had him dead to rights. You were there. You saw him wilt. By gracious--"

"Yuh don't know anything against him?" gasped Irish.

"Not a darned thing--any more than what you all know," testified Andy complacently.

It took a minute or two for that to sink in.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" breathed Irish.

"We did chain him to the anvil," Andy went on. "On the way down, we talked about being in a hurry to get back to you fellows, and I told Mig--so Dunk could hear--that we wouldn't bother with the horse. We tied him to the corral. And I hunted around for that b.u.m chain, and then we made out we couldn't find the padlock for the door; so we decided, right out loud, that he'd be dead safe for an hour or two, till the bunch of us got back. Not knowing a darn thing about him, except what you boys have told us, we sure would have been in bad if he hadn't taken a sneak.

Fact is, we were kinda worried for fear he wouldn't have nerve enough to try it. We waited, up on the hill, till we saw him sneak down to the corral and jump on his horse and take off down the coulee like a scared coyote. It was," quoth the young man, unmistakably pleased with himself, "pretty smooth work, if you ask me."

"I'd hate to ride as fast and far to-night as that hombre will,"

supplemented Miguel with his brief smile, that was just a flash of white, even teeth and a momentary lightening of his languorous eyes.

Slim stood for five minutes, a stolid, stocky figure in the midst of a storm of congratulatory comment. They forgot all about Happy Jack, asleep inside the house, and so their voices were not hushed. Indeed, Big Medicine's bull-like remarks boomed full-throated across the coulee and were flung back mockingly by the barren hills. Slim did not hear a word they were saying; he was thinking it over, with that complete mental concentration which is the chief recompense of a slow-working mind. He was methodically thinking it all out--and, eventually, he saw the joke.

"Well, by golly!" he bawled suddenly, and brought his palm down with a terrific smack upon his sore leg--whereat his fellows laughed uproariously.

"We told you not to try to see through any more jokes till your leg gets well, Slim," Andy reminded condescendingly.

"Say, by golly, that's a good one on Dunk, ain't it? Chasin' himself clean outa the country, by golly--scared plumb to death---and you fellers was only jest makin' b'lieve yuh knowed him! By golly, that sure is a good one, all right!"

"You've got it; give you time enough and you could see through a barbed-wire fence," patronized Andy, from the hammock. "Yes, since you mention it, I think myself it ain't so bad."

"Aw-w shut up, out there, an' let a feller sleep!" came a querulous voice from within. "I'd ruther bed down with a corral full uh calves at weanin' time, than be anywheres within ten mile uh you darned, mouthy--"

The rest was indistinguishable, but it did not matter. The Happy Family, save Slim, who stayed to look after the patient, tiptoed penitently off the porch and took themselves and their enthusiasm down to the bunk-house.

CHAPTER XVII. Good News

Pink rolled over in his bed so that he might look--however sleepily--upon his fellows, dressing more or less quietly in the cool dawn-hour.

"Say, I got a letter for you, Weary," he yawned, stretching both arms above his head. "I opened it and read it; it was from Chip, so--"

"What did he have to say?"

"Old Man any better?"

"How they comm', back here?"

Several voices, speaking at once, necessitated a delayed reply.

"They'll be here, to-day or to-morrow," Pink replied without any circ.u.mlocution whatever, while he fumbled in his coat pocket for the letter. "He says the Old Man wants to come, and the doctors think he might as well tackle it as stay there fussing over it. They're coming in a special car, and we've got to rig up an outfit to meet him. The Little Doctor tells just how she wants things fixed. I thought maybe it was important--it come special delivery," Pink added naively, "so I just played it was mine and read it."

"That's all right, Cadwalloper," Weary a.s.sured him while he read hastily the letter. "Well, we'll fix up the spring wagon and take it in right away; somebody's got to go back anyway, with MacPherson. h.e.l.lo, Cal; how's Happy?"

"All right," answered Cal, who had watched over him during the night and came in at that moment after someone to take his place in the sickroom.

"Waked up on the fight because I just happened to be setting with my eyes shut. I wasn't asleep, but he said I was; claimed I snored so loud I kept him awake all night. Gee whiz! I'd ruther nurse a she bear with the mumps!"

"Old Man's coming home, Cal." Pink announced with more joy in his tone and in his face than had appeared in either for many a weary day. Whereupon Cal gave an exultant whoop. "Go tell that to Happy,"

he shouted. "Maybe he'll forget a grouch or two. Say, luck seems to be kinda casting loving glances our way again--what?"

"By golly, seems to me Pink oughta told us when he come in, las' night,"

grumbled Slim, when he could make himself heard.

"You were all dead to the world," Pink defended, "and I wanted to be. Two o'clock in the morning is a mighty poor time for elegant conversation, if you want my opinion."

"And the main point is, you knew all about it, and you didn't give a darn whether we did or not," Irish said bluntly. "And Weary sneaked in, too, and never let a yip outa him about things over in Denson coulee."

"Oh, what was the use?" asked Weary blandly. "I got an option out of Oleson for the ranch and outfit, and all his sheep, at a mighty good figure--for the Flying U. The Old Man can do what he likes about it; but ten to one he'll buy him out. That is, Oleson's share, which was two-thirds. I kinda counted on Dunk letting go easy. And," he added, reaching for his hat, "once I got the papers for it, there wasn't anything to hang around for, was there? Especially," he said with his old, sunny smile, "when we weren't urged a whole lot to stay."

Remained therefore little, save the actual arrival of the Old Man--a pitifully weak Old Man, bandaged and odorous with antiseptics, and quite pathetically glad to be back home--and his recovery, which was rather slow, and the recovery of Happy Jack, which was rapid.