At three o’clock Pink, from long habit, opened his eyes to the dull gray of early morning.  The air in the tent was clammy and chill and filled with the audible breathing of a dozen sleeping men; overhead the canvas was dull yellow and sodden with the steady drip, drip, drop of rain.  There would be no starting out at sunrise—­and perhaps there would be no starting at all, he thought with lazy disappointment, and turned on his side for another nap.  His glance fell upon Weary’s up-turned, slumber-blank face, and his memory reverted revengefully to the baiting of the night before.  He would fix Weary for that, he told himself spitefully; mentally measured a perpendicular line from Weary’s face to the roof, reached up and drew his finger firmly down along the canvas for a good ten inches—­and if you don’t know why, try it yourself some time in a tent with the rain pouring down upon the land.  As if that were not enough he repeated the operation again and again, each time in a fresh place, until the rain came through beautifully all over the bed of Weary.  Then he lay down, cuddled the blankets up to his ears, closed his eyes and composed himself to sleep, at peace with his conscience and the world—­and it did not disturb his self-satisfaction when Weary presently awoke, moved sleepily away from one drip and directly under another, shifted again, swore a little in an undertone and at last was forced to take refuge under his tarpaulin.  After that Pink went blissfully off to dreamland.

At four o’clock it still rained dismally—­and the Happy Family, waking unhappily one after another, remembered that this was the Fourth that they had worked and waited for so long, “swore a prayer or two and slept again.”  At six the sun was shining, and Jack Bates, first realizing the blessed fact, called the others jubilantly.

Weary sat up and observed darkly that he wished he knew what son-of-a-gun got the tent to leaking over him, and eyed Pink suspiciously; but Pink only knuckled his eyes like a sleepy baby and asked if it rained in the night, and said he had been dead to the world.  Happy Jack came blundering under the ban by asking Weary to remember that he told him it would rain.  As he slept beside Weary, his guilt was certain and his punishment, Weary promised himself, would be sure.

Then they went out and faced the clean-washed prairie land, filled their lungs to the bottom with sweet, wine-like air, and asked one another why in the dickens the night-hawk wasn’t on hand with the cavvy, so they could get ready to start.

At nine o’clock, had you wandered that way, you would have seen the Happy Family—­a clean-shaven, holiday-garbed, resplendent Happy Family—­roosting disconsolately wherever was a place clean enough to sit, looking wistfully away to the skyline.

They should, by now, have been at the picnic, and every man of them realized the fact keenly.  They were ready, but they were afoot; the nighthawk had not put in an appearance with the saddle bunch, and there was not a horse in camp that they might go in search of him.  With no herd to hold, they had not deemed it necessary to keep up any horses, and they were bewailing the fact that they had not forseen such an emergency—­though Happy Jack did assert that he had all along expected it.