Where he went, that afternoon when for some reason sufficient for the foreman—­who was Chip Bennett—­the Flying U roundup crew lay luxuriously snoring in the shade instead of riding hurriedly and hotly the high divides, no one but Andy himself knew.  They talked about him after he left, and told one another how great a liar he was, and how he couldn’t help it because he was born that way, and how you could hardly help believing him.  They recalled joyously certain of his fabrications that had passed into the history of the Flying U, and wondered what josh he was trying to spring this time.

“What we ought to do,” advised Cal, “is to lead him on and let him lie his darndest, and make out we believe him.  And then we can give him the laugh good and plenty—­and maybe cure him.”

“Cure nothing!” exclaimed Jack Bates, getting up because the sun had discovered him, and going over to the mess-wagon where a bit of shade had been left unoccupied.  “About the only way to cure Andy of lying, is to kill him.  He was working his way up to some big josh, and if yuh let him alone you’ll find out what it is, all right.  I wouldn’t worry none about it, if I was you.”  To prove that he did not worry, Jack immediately went to sleep.

Such being the attitude of the Happy Family, when Andy rode hurriedly into camp at sundown, his horse wet to the tips of his ears with sweat, they sat up, expectancy writ large upon their faces.  No one said anything, however, while Andy unsaddled and came over to beg a belated supper from the cook; nor yet while he squatted on his heels beside the cook-tent and ate hungrily.  He seemed somewhat absorbed in his thoughts, and they decided mentally that Andy was a sure-enough good actor, and that if they were not dead next to him and his particular weakness, they would swallow his yarn whole—­whatever it was.  A blood-red glow was in the sky to the west, and it lighted Andy’s face queerly, like a vivid blush on the face of a girl.

Andy scraped his plate thoughtfully with his knife, looked into his coffee-cup, stirred the dregs absently and dipped out half a spoonful of undissolved sugar, which he swallowed meditatively.  He tossed plate, cup and spoon toward the dishpan, sent knife and fork after them and got out his smoking material.  And the Happy Family, grouped rather closely together and watching unobtrusively, stirred to the listening point.  The liar was about to lie.

“Talk about a guilty conscience giving a man dead away,” Andy began, quite unconscious of the mental attitude of his fellows, and forgetting also his anger of the afternoon, “it sure does work out like that, sometimes.  I followed that old devil, just out uh curiosity, to see if he headed for Dry Lake like he said he was going. We didn’t have any reason for keeping cases on him, or suspicioning anything—­but he acted like we was all out on his trail, the fool!

“I kinda had a hunch that if he had been up to any deviltry, it would show on him when he left here, and I was plumb right about it.  He went all straight enough till he got down into Black Coulee; and right there it looked like he got kinda panicky and suspicious, for he turned square off the trail and headed up the coulee.”