For a half minute Luck looked up at him.  He had expected a preparatory winning of the confidence of the men whom he sought.  He had planned to lead up gradually to his mission, in case he found his men.  But in that half minute he threw aside his plan as a weak, puerile wasting of time, and he answered Andy Green truthfully.

“No, I didn’t fall off the train,” he drawled.  “I just grabbed my grip and beat it when they told me where I was.  I’m out on a still hunt for some real boys.  Some that can ride and shoot and that know cow-science so well they don’t have to glad up in cowboy clothes and tie red bandanna bibs on to make folks think they’re range broke.”

“And yet you’re wasting time in this tame little granger wart on the map!”

“No, not wasting time,” smiled Luck serenely.  “A little old trunk-juggler up the trail told me about the Flying U outfit that is still sending their wagons out when the grass gets green.  I stopped off to give the high-sign to the boys, and say howdy, and swap yarns, and maybe haze some of ’em gently into camp.  I wanted to see if the Flying U has got any real ones left.”

Andy Green looked eloquently at the Native Son.  “Now, what do you know about that, Mig?” he breathed softly behind a mouthful of smoke.  “Wanting to rope him out a few from the Flying U bunch.  Say!  Have you got a real puncher amongst that outfit of long-haired hayseeds?”

The Native Son shook his head negligently and gave Luck a velvet-eyed glance of friendly pity.

“If there is, he’s ranging deep in the breaks and never shows up at shipping time,” he averred.  “I’ve never seen one myself.  They’ve got one that—­what would you call Big Medicine, if you wanted to name him quick and easy, Andy?”

Andy frowned.  “What I’d call him had best not be named in this God-fearing little hamlet,” he responded gloomily.  “I sure would never name him in the day I talked about cow-punchers that’s ever dug sand outa their eyes on trail-herd.”

The Native Son, still with the velvet-eyed look of pity, turned to Luck.  “Andy’s right,” he sighed.  “They’ve got one that takes spells of talking deliriously about when he punched cows in Coconino County; but I guess there’s nothing to it.”

“You say you was told that the Flying U outfit has got some real ones?” Andy eyed Luck curiously and with some of the Native Son’s pity.  “Just in a general way, what happens to folks that lie to you deliberate, when you meet ’em again?  I’d like,” he added, “to know about how sorry to feel for that baggage humper when you see him—­after meeting the Flying U bunch.”

The soul of Luck Lindsay was singing an impromptu doxology, but the face of him—­so well was that face trained to do his bidding—­became tinged with disgust and disappointment.  With two “real boys” he was talking; he knew them by the unconscious range vernacular and the perfect candor with which they lied to him about themselves.  But not so much as a gleam of the eye betrayed to them that he knew.