It was nearly noon when he reached again the sheep camp, and the Swede hospitably urged him to stay and eat with him; but Happy Jack would not tarry, for he was anxious to reach the camp of the Flying U. A mile from the herder’s camp he saw again on a distant hilltop three familiar figures.  This time he did not dodge into shelter, but urged Stranger to a gallop and rode boldly toward them.  They greeted him joyfully and at the top of their voices when he came within shouting distance.

“How comes it you’re riding the pinnacles over here?” Weary wanted to know, as soon as he rode alongside.

“Aw, I just came over after more orders; hope they send somebody else over there, if they want any more repping done,” Happy Jack said, in his customary tone of discontent with circumstances.

“Say!  Yuh didn’t see anything of a wild man, down next the river, did yuh?” put in Pink.

“Aw, gwan! what wild man?” Happy Jack eyed them suspiciously.

“Honest, there’s a wild man ranging around here in these hills,” Pink declared.  “We’ve been mooching around all forenoon, hunting him.  Got sight of him, early this morning, but he got away in the brush.”

Happy Jack looked guilty, and even more suspicious.  Was it possible that they had recognized him?

“The way we come to hear about him,” Weary explained, “we happened across some campers, over in a little coulee to the west uh here.  They was all worked up over him.  Seems he went into camp last night, and like to scared the ladies into fits.  He ain’t got enough clothes on to flag an antelope, according to them, and he’s about seven feet high, and looks more like a missing link than a plain, ordinary man.  The one that didn’t faint away got the best look at him, and she’s ready to take oath he ain’t more’n half human.  They kept fires burning all night to scare him out uh the coulee, and they’re going to break camp to-day and hike for home.  They say he give a screech that’d put a crimp in the devil himself, and went galloping off, jumping about twenty feet at a lick.  And—­”

“Aw, gwan!” protested Happy Jack, feebly.

“So help me Josephine, it’s the truth,” abetted Pink, round-eyed and unmistakably in earnest.  “We wouldn’t uh taken much stock in it, either, only we saw him ourselves, not more than two hundred yards off.  He was just over the hill from the coulee where they were camped, so it’s bound to be the same animal.  It’s a fact, he didn’t have much covering—­just something hung over his shoulders.  And he was sure wild, for soon as he seen us he humped himself and got into the brush.  We could hear him go crashing away like a whole bunch of elephants.  It’s a damn’ shame he got away on us,” Pink sighed regretfully.  “We was going to rope him and put him in a cage; we could sure uh made money on him, at two bits a look.”

Happy Jack continued to eye the three distrustfully.  Too often had he been the victim of their humor for him now to believe implicitly in their ignorance.  It was too good to be real, it seemed to him.  Still, if by any good luck it were real, he hated to think what would happen if they ever found out the truth.  He eased the clothing cautiously away from his smarting back, and stared hard into a coulee.