“Ouch!  It—­it’s swell!”

“You’re a dam’ liar,” declared Pink, getting up.  “Furthermore, yuh old chuckle-head, yuh ought t’ know better than try t’ run any ranikaboos on me.  I’ve got your pedigree, right back to the Flood; and it’s safe betting yuh got mine, and don’t know it.  Your best girl happens to be my cousin.”

Cal scrambled slowly and painfully to his feet.  “Then you’re Milk River Pink.  I might uh guessed it,” he sighed.

“I cannot tell a lie,” Pink averred.  “Only, plain Pink’ll do for me.  Where d’yuh suppose the bunch is by this time?”

They mounted and rode back together.  Cal was deeply thoughtful.

“Say,” he said suddenly, just as they parted to ride their rounds, “the boys’ll be tickled plumb to death.  We’ve been wishing you’d blow in here ever since the Cross L quit the country.”

Pink drew rein and looked back, resting one hand on the cantle.  “My gentle friend,” he warned, “yuh needn’t break your neck spreading the glad tidings.  Yuh better let them frivolous youths wise-up in their own playful way, same as you done.”

“Sure,” agreed Cal, passing his fingers gingerly over certain portions of his face.  “I ain’t a hog.  I’m willing they should have some sport with yuh, too.”

Next morning, when Cal appeared at breakfast with a slight limp and several inches of cuticle missing from his features, the Happy Family learned that his horse had fallen down with him as he was turning a stray back into the herd.

Chip looked up quizzically and then hid a smile behind his coffee-cup.

It was Weary that afternoon on dayherd who indulged his mendacity for the benefit of Pink; and his remarks were but paving-stones for a scheme hatched overnight by the Happy Family.

Weary began by looking doleful and emptying his lungs in sighs deep and sorrowful.  When Pink, rising obligingly to the bait, asked him if he felt bad.  Weary only sighed the more.  Then, growing confidential, he told how he had dreamed a dream the night before.  With picturesque language, he detailed the horror of it.  He was guilty of murder, he confessed, and the crime weighed heavily on his conscience.

“Not only that,” he went on, “but I know that death is camping on my trail.  That dream haunts me.  I feel that my days are numbered in words uh one syllable.  That dream’ll come true; you see if it don’t!”

“I—­I wouldn’t worry over just a bad dream, Mr. Weary,” comforted Pink.

“But that ain’t all.  I woke up in a cold sweat, and went outside.  And there in the clouds, perfect as life, I seen a posse uh men galloping up from the South.  Down South,” he explained sadly, “sleeps my victim—­a white-headed, innocent old man.  That posse is sure headed for me, Mr. Perkins.”

“Still, it was only clouds.”

“Wait till I tell yuh,” persisted Weary, stubbornly refusing comfort.  “When I got up this morning I put my boots on the wrong feet; that’s a sure sign that your dream’ll come true.  At breakfast I upset the can uh salt; which is bad luck.  Mr. Perkins, I’m a lost man.”