Everybody nodded and grinned.  Douglas sat on a pile of mail order catalogs smoking, his hat on the back of his head, his eyes thoughtful.  “Anybody know how Jimmy’s been behaving to-day?”

Frank Day laughed heartily.  “I rode up there this morning after I heard the news, friendly like, of course.  Grandma had Jimmy out in the yard, washing baby dresses, while she stood in the door giving him what for.  Jimmy was dribbling cigarette ashes over the suds but he sure was game.  He grinned and got red when he saw me.  ’I’m the hen-peckedest damn fool in the Rockies,’ he says.”

There was a roar of laughter.

“What was Charleton doing?” asked Young Jeff, wiping his eyes.

“I found him in the corral.  He’d slept in the alfalfa stack and he wasn’t quoting poetry.  I didn’t stay with him but a minute.”

Again there was laughter.

“Big Marion will calm him,” said Peter.

“I know one thing,” exclaimed Douglas.  “None of us will be saying the things to Charleton we’ve been saying behind his back.”

“We sure won’t,” agreed Frank.  “I suppose Judith’s all broke up, poor little devil!”

Douglas nodded.

“I saw her and Inez hobnobbing in the Rodmans’ corral to-day,” said Young Jeff.  “She’d better cut Inez out.”

Douglas stared at the familiar faces around the room as if he never before had seen them.  Peter, thin, melancholy, his long sinewy throat exposed by his buttonless blue shirt; Frank Day, big and keen of eye, squatting as usual against the wall; Young Jeff, ruddy and heavy-set, with his kind blue eyes and heavy jaw.  All clean shaven, all in chaps and spurs, all good fellows, and all as helpless before the nameless mystery of life as Doug himself.  The sweat started to his forehead.  He rose, pulling on his gloves.

“It’s early yet, Doug,” said Peter.

“I’m going to call for Judith,” replied Douglas.  He went out into the night, whistled to Prince, mounted the Moose and galloped across to the west trail.

It was sharp and frosty but Inez and Judith, in mackinaws, were sitting on the back steps with a little fire of chips at their feet.  Douglas dismounted and came into the fireglow.  The light caught the point of his chin, his clean-cut nostrils, and the heavy overhang of his brows.

“Ready to come home, Jude, old girl?” he asked.

“Sit down and talk to us a little, Douglas,” suggested Inez.

Douglas hauled up a broken wagon seat and sat down.  Prince crawled up beside him and went to sleep with his head and one paw on Doug’s knee.

“I suppose congress was sitting at the post-office, to-night?” said Judith.

“Yes.  Everybody’s strong for you and Little Marion.”

“I don’t see why I should be bunched with her.  Not that I care though!” Judith tossed her head and then dropped her chin to the palm of her hand.

“I swear some one ought to give John Spencer a good thrashing!” exclaimed Inez.