“Oh, mamma! you’re a peach, all right.  Here, give me that sage brush!  Now, watch.  We haven’t got all night to make medicine over it.  See?  Yuh want to hold it over her head and kinda bend down, like yuh were daring yourself to kiss—­”

Happy Jack backed off to get the effect; incidentally, he took the curtain back with him; also incidentally—­, Johnny dropped a match into the red fire, which glowed beautifully.  Weary caught his breath, but he was game and never moved any eyelash.

The red glow faded and left an abominable smell behind it, and some merciful hand drew the curtain—­but it was not the hand of Happy Jack.  He had gone out through the window and was crouching beneath it drinking in greedily the hand-clapping and the stamping of feet and the whistling, with occasional shouts of mirth which he recognized as coming from the rest of the Happy Family.  It all sounded very sweet to the great, red ears of Happy Jack.

When the clatter showed signs of abatement he stole away to where his horse was tied, his sorrel coat gleaming with frost sparkles in the moonlight.  “It’s you and me to hit the trail, Spider,” he croaked to the horse, and with his bare hand scraped the frost from the saddle.

A tall figure crept up from behind and grappled with him.  Spider danced away as far as the rope would permit and snorted, and two struggling forms squirmed away from his untrustworthy heels.

“Aw, leggo!” cried Happy Jack when he could breathe again.

“I won’t.  You’ve got to come back and square yourself with Annie.  How do yuh reckon she’s feeling at the trick yuh played on her, yuh lop-eared—­”

Happy Jack jerked loose and stood grinning in the moonlight.  “Aw, gwan.  Annie knowed I was goin’ to do it,” he retorted, loftily.  “Annie and me’s engaged.”  He got into the saddle and rode off, shouting back taunts.

Weary stood bareheaded in the cold and stared after him blankly.

WHEN THE COOK FELL ILL

It was four o’clock, and there was consternation in the round-up camp of the Flying U; when one eats breakfast before dawn—­July dawn at that—­covers thirty miles of rough country before eleven o’clock dinner and as many more after, supper seems, for the time being, the most important thing in the life of a cowboy.

Men stood about in various dejected attitudes, their thumbs tucked inside their chap-belts, blank helplessness writ large upon their perturbed countenances—­they were the aliens, hired but to make a full crew during round-up.  Long-legged fellows with spurs a-jingle hurried in and out of the cook-tent, colliding often, shouting futile questions, commands and maledictions—­they were the Happy Family:  loyal, first and last to the Flying U, feeling a certain degree of proprietorship and a good deal of responsibility.

Happy Jack was fanning an incipient blaze in the sheet-iron stove with his hat, his face red and gloomy at the prospect of having to satisfy fifteen outdoor appetites with his amateur attempts at cooking.  Behind the stove, writhing bulkily upon a hastily unrolled bed, lay Patsy, groaning most pitiably.