The clatter of the pack-horse bell brought the men to their feet and they filed across to the house, a preternaturally silent aggregation that confirmed Ma Bailey’s suspicion that there was something afoot.

Andy, loitering behind them, saw Pete coming from the stables, tried to compose himself, but could not get rid of the boyish grin, which provoked Ma Bailey to mutter something which sounded like “idiot,” to which the cowboys nodded in cheerful concurrence, without other comment.

Hank Barley, the silent, was gazing surreptitiously at Ma’s face when he saw her eyes widen, saw her rise, and stand staring at the doorway as Andy clumped in, followed by Pete.

Ma Bailey sat down suddenly.

“It’s all right, Ma,” laughed Andy, alarmed at the expression on her face.  “It’s just Pete.”

“Just Pete!” echoed Ma Bailey faintly.  And then, “Goodness alive, child, where you been?”

Pete’s reply was lost in the shuffle of feet as the men rose and shook hands with him, asking him a dozen questions in as many seconds, asserting that he was looking fine, and generally behaving like a crowd of schoolboys, as they welcomed him to their midst again.

Pete sat in the absent Bill Haskins’s place.  And “You must ‘a’ knowed he was coming” asserted Avery.  “Bill is over to the line shack.”

“I got a letter,” asserted Ma Bailey mysteriously.

“And you jest said nothin’ and sprung him on us!  Well, Ma, you sure fooled me,” said Andy, grinning.

“You go ’long.”  Mrs. Bailey smiled at Andy, who had earned her forgiveness by crediting her—­rather wisely—­with having originated the surprise.

They were chatting and joking when Bill Haskins appeared in the door-way, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief.

Ma Bailey glared at him over her spectacles.  “Got any stickin’-plaster?” he asked plaintively, as though he had committed some misdemeanor.  She rose and placed a plate and chair for him as he shook hands with Pete, led him to the kitchen and inspected and bandaged his hand, which he had jagged on a wire gate, and finally reinstated him at the table, where he proved himself quite as efficient as most men are with two hands.  “Give Bill all the coffee he wants and plenty stickin’-plaster, and I reckon he never would do no work,” suggested Hank Barley.

Bill Haskins grinned good-naturedly.  “I see Pete’s got back,” he ventured, as a sort of mild intimation that there were other subjects worth discussing.  He accompanied this brilliant observation by a modest request for another cup of coffee, his fourth.  The men rose, leaving Bill engaged in his favorite indoor pastime, and intimated that Pete should go with them.  But Ma Bailey would not bear of it.  Pete was going to help her with the dishes.  Andy could go, however, and Bill Haskins, as soon as he was convinced that the coffee-pot was empty.  Ma Bailey’s chief interest in life at the moment was to get the dishes put away, the men out of the way, and Pete in the most comfortable rocking-chair in the room, that she might hear his account of how it all happened.