The horse-wrangler saw him coming and came loping up to meet him.  “What’s eating yuh, Happy?” he inquired inelegantly.

“Jakie—­he’s gone nutty!  He come at me with a knife, and he’d uh killed me if I’d stayed!” Happy Jack pantingly recovered himself.  “I didn’t have no time ta git my gun,” he added in a more natural tone, “or I’d uh settled him pretty blame quick.  So I come out to borrow yourn.  I betche I’ll have the next move.”

The horse-wrangler grinned heartlessly.  “I reckon he’s about half shot,” he said, sliding over in the saddle and getting out the inevitable tobacco sack and papers.  “Old Pete Williams rode past while you were gone, loaded to the guards and with a bottle uh whisky in each saddle-pocket and two in his coat.  He gave me a drink, and then he went on and stopped at camp.  He was hung up there for quite a spell, I noticed.  I didn’t see him pass any uh the vile liquor to little Jakie, but—­” he twirled a blackened match stub in his fingers and then tossed it from him.

“Aw, gwan!  Jakie wouldn’t touch nothing when he was in town,” Happy Jack objected.  “I betche he’s gone crazy, or else—­”

“Well,” interrupted the horse-wrangler, “I’ve told yuh what I know and all I know.  Take it or leave it.”  He rode back to turn the lead-horse from climbing a ridge where he did not want the herd to follow.  He did not lend Happy Jack his gun, and for that reason—­perhaps—­Jakie remained alive and unpunctured until the first of the riders came loping in to camp.

The first riders happened to be Pink and Big Medicine.  They were met by a tearful, contrite Jakie—­a Jakie who seemed much inclined to weeping upon their shirt-fronts and to confessing all his sins, particularly the sin of trying to carve Happy Jack.  That perturbed gentleman made his irate appearance as soon as he found that reinforcements had arrived.

Big Medicine disengaged himself from the clinging arms of the chef, sniffed suspiciously and wiped away the tears from his vest.  “Well, say,” he bellowed in his usual manner of trying to make all Chouteau County hear what he had to say, “I ain’t t’ blame if he got away on yuh.  Yuh hadn’t ought to uh done it—­or else yuh oughta made a clean job of it sos’t we could hang yuh proper.  Supper ready?”

“It is that the supply of eggs is inadequate,” wept Jakie, steadying himself against the tent-pole while he wiped his eyes upon his apron.  “Because of it I could not prepare the floating island—­and without the dessert I have not the heart to prepare the dinner, yes?  It is that I am breaking of the heart that I assail the good friend of me.  Oh, Mr. Happy, it is that I crave pardon!”

Happy Jack came near taking to his heels again when he saw Jakie start for him; he did back up hastily, and his evident reluctance to embrace and forgive started afresh the tears of remorse.  Jakie wailed volubly and, catching Pink unaware, he wept upon his bosom.