“Yuh damn’, taffy colored cayuse!” he said fretfully.  “This is as much your funeral as mine—­seeing yuh started out all so brisk to find that pinto.  Do yah suppose yuh could find a horse if he was staked ten feet in front of your nose?  Chances are, yuh couldn’t.  I reckon you’d have trouble finding your way around the little pasture at the ranch—­unless the sun shone real bright and yuh had somebody to lead yuh!”

This was manifestly unjust and it was not like Weary; but this night’s mission was getting on his nerves.  He leaned and shifted the medicine-case again, and felt ruefully of his bruised leg.  That also was getting upon his nerves.

“Oh, Mamma!” he muttered disgustedly.  “This is sure a sarcastic layout; dope enough here to cure all the sickness in Montana—­if a fellow knew enough to use it—­battering a hole in my leg you could throw a yearling calf into, and me wandering wild over the hills like a locoed sheepherder!  Glory, you get a move on yuh, you knock-kneed, buzzard-headed—­” He subsided into incoherent grumbling and rode back whence he came, up the gully’s brim.

When the night was far gone and the slant of the Great Dipper told him that day-dawn was near, he heard a horse nicker wistfully, away to the right.  Wheeling sharply, his spurs raking the roughened sides of Glory, he rode recklessly toward the sound, not daring to hope that it might be the pinto and yet holding his mind back from despair.

When he was near the place—­so near that he could see a dim, formless shape outlined against the sky-line,—­Glory stumbled over a sunken rock and fell heavily upon his knees.  When he picked himself up he hobbled and Weary cursed him unpityingly.

When, limping painfully, Glory came up with the object, the heart of Weary rose up and stuck in his throat; for the object was a pinto horse and above it bulked the squat figure of an irate old man.

“Hello, Dock,” greeted Weary.  “How do yuh stack up?”

“Mon Dieu, Weary Davitson, I feex yous plandy.  What for do you dees t’ing?  I not do de harrm wis you.  I not got de mooney wort’ all dees troubles what you makes.  Dees horse, she lak for keel me also.  She buck, en keeck, en roon—­mon Dieu, I not like dees t’ing.”

“Sober, by thunder!” ejaculated Weary in an ecstatic half-whisper.  “Dock, you’ve got a chance to make a record for yourself to-night—­if we ain’t too late,” he added bodefully.  “Do yuh know where we’re headed for?”

“I t’ink for de devil,” retorted Old Dock peevishly.

“No sir, we aren’t.  We’re going straight to camp, and you’re going to save old Patsy—­you like Patsy, you know; many’s the time you’ve tanked up together and then fell on each other’s necks and wept because the good old times won’t come again.  He got poisoned on canned corn; the Lord send he ain’t too dead for you to cure him.  Come on—­we better hit the breeze.  We’ve lost a heap uh time.”