“He must uh had ’em,” Weary commented, quite as if he believed.

“Yuh wait till I’m through,” Andy advised, still wholly unconscious of their disbelief.  “Yuh was all kinda skeptical when I told yuh he had a guilty conscience, but I was right about it, and come mighty near laying out on the range to-night with my toes pointing straight up, just because you fellows wouldn’t—­”

“Sun-stroke?” asked Pink, coming closer, his eyes showing purple in the softened light.

“No—­yuh wait, now, till I tell yuh.”  Whereupon Andy smoked relishfully and in silence, and from the tail of his eye watched his audience squirm with impatience.  “A man gets along a whole lot better without any conscience,” he began at last, irrelevantly, “’specially if he wants to be mean.  I trailed this jasper up the coulee and out on the bench, across that level strip between Black Coulee and Dry Spring Gulch, and down the gulch a mile or so.  He was fogging right along, and seemed as if he looked back every ten rods—­I know he spotted me just as I struck the level at the head uh Black Coulee, because he acted different then.

“I could see he was making across country for the trail to Chinook, but I wanted to overhaul him and have a little casual talk about Dan.  I don’t suppose yuh noticed I took his rope along; I wanted some excuse for hazing after him like that, yuh see.”

“Uh course, such accommodating cusses as you wouldn’t be none strange to him,” fleered Cal.

“Well, he never found out what I was after,” sighed Andy.  “It wasn’t my fault I didn’t come up with him, and my intentions were peaceful and innocent.  But do yuh know what happened?  He got out uh sight down Dry Spring Gulch—­yuh know where that elephant-head rock sticks out, and the trail makes a short turn around it—­that’s where I lost sight of him.  But he wasn’t very far in the lead, and I was dead anxious to give him his rope, so I loped on down—­”

“You were taking long chances, old-timer; that’s mighty rough going, along there,” hinted Chip, gravely.

“Sure, I was,” Andy agreed easily.  “But yuh recollect, I was in a hurry.  So I’d just rounded the elephant’s head, when bing! something spats the rock, just over my right shoulder, and my horse squatted down on his rump and said he’d gone far enough.  I kinda felt the same way about it, so when he wheeled and humped himself back up the trail, I didn’t argue none with him.”

There was silence so deep one could hear the saddle-bunch cropping the thick grasses along the creek.  If this were true—­this tale that Andy was telling—­The Happy Family, half tempted to believe, glanced furtively at one another.

“Aw, gwan!” It was the familiar, protesting croak of Happy Jack.  “What did yuh turn tail for?  Why didn’t yuh have it out with him?” The Happy Family drew a long breath, and the temptation to believe was pushed aside.