that he would cut out gambling, and never touch liquor in any form—­unless the snake was a very big one and sunk his fangs in a vital spot, in which dire contingency Mary absolved him from his vow.  He had learned the funny marks that meant his name and hers in shorthand and had watched with inner satisfaction her efforts to learn how to fry canned corn in bacon grease, and to mix sour-dough biscuits that were neither yellow with too much soda nor distressfully “soggy” with too little, and had sat a whole, blissful afternoon in his shirtsleeves, while Mary bent her blond pompadour domestically over his coat, sewing in the sleeve-linings that are prone to come loose and torment a man.  To go back to the first statement, which includes all these things and much more, Andy had, in those four weeks, accomplished much.

But a girl may not live forever in that lonely land with only Andy Green to discover her presence, and the rumors which at first buzzed unheeded in the ears of the Happy Family, stung them at last to the point of investigation; so that on a Sunday—­the last Sunday before the Flying U wagons took again to the trailless range-land, Irish and Jack Bates rode surreptitiously up the coulee half an hour after Andy, blithe in his fancied security, had galloped that way to spend a long half-day with Mary.  If he discovered them they would lose a dollar each—­but if they discovered a girl such as Andy had pictured, they felt that it would be a dollar well lost.

In the range-land many strange things may happen.  Irish and Jack pulled up short when, off to their right, in a particularly, lonely part of that country, broken into seamed coulees and deep-scarred hills, they heard a faint halloo.  With spurs pricking deep and frequent they hurried to the spot; looked down a grassy swale and saw Andy lying full length upon the ground in rather a peculiar pose, while his horse fed calmly a rein-length away.

They stopped and looked at him, and at each other; rode cautiously to within easy rifle shot and stopped again.

“Ain’t yuh getting tired feelings kinda unseasonable in the day?” Jack Bates called out guardedly.

“I—­I’m hurt, boys,” Andy lifted his head to say, strainedly.  “My hoss stepped in a hole, and I wasn’t looking for it.  I guess—­my leg’s broke.”

Jack snorted.  “That so?  Sure it ain’t your neck, now?  Seems to me your head sets kinda crooked.  Better feel it and find out, while we go on where we’re going.”  He half turned his horse up the hill again, resenting the impulse which had betrayed him a hand’s breadth from the trail.

Andy waited a moment.  Then:  “On the dead, boys, my leg’s broke—­like you’d bust a dry stick.  Come and see—­for yourselves.”

“Maybe—­” Irish began, uncertainly, in an undertone.  Andy’s voice had in it a note of pain that was rather convincing.

“Aw, he’s just trying to head us off.  Didn’t I help pack him up that ungodly bluff, last spring, thinking he was going to die before we got him to the top—­and him riding off and giving us the horse-laugh to pay for it?  You can bite, if yuh want to; I’m going on.  I sure savvy Andy Green.”