“Better turn Weary loose and wake him up, Chip,” suggested Jack Bates, half an hour later, shoving the stopper into his cologne bottle and making for the door. “At the rate the rigs are rolling in, it'll take us all to put up the teams.” The door slammed behind him as it had done behind the others as they hurried away. “Here!” Chip untied Weary's hands and feet and took him by the shoulder. “Wake up, Willie, if you want to be Queen o' the May.” Weary sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Confound them two Jacks! What time is it?” “A little after eight. YOUR crowd hasn't, come yet, so you needn't worry. I'm not going up yet for a while, myself.” “You're off your feed. Brace up and take all there is going, my son.” Weary prepared to finish his interrupted beautification. “I'm going to--all the bottles, that is. If that Dry Lake gang comes loaded down with whisky, like they generally do, we ought to get hold of it and cache every drop, Weary.” Weary turned clear around to stare his astonishment. “When did the W. C. T. U. get you by the collar?” he demanded. “Aw, don't be a fool, Weary,” retorted Chip. “You can see it wouldn't look right for us to let any of the boys get full, or even half shot, seeing this is the Little Doctor's dance.” Weary meditatively scraped his left jaw and wiped the lather from the razor upon a fragment of newspaper. “Splinter, we've throwed in together ever since we drifted onto the same range, and I'm with you, uh course. But--don't overlook Dr. Cecil Granthum. I'd hate like the devil to see you git throwed down, because it'd hurt you worse than anybody I know.” Chip calmly sifted some tobacco into a cigarette paper. His mouth was very straight and his brows very close together. “It's a devilish good thing it was YOU said that, Weary. If it had been anyone else I'd punch his face for him.” “Why, yes--an' I'd help you, too.” Weary, his mouth very much on one side of his face that he might the easier shave the other, spoke in fragments. “You don't take it amiss from--me, though. I can see--” The door slammed with extreme violence, and Weary slashed his chin unbecomingly in consequence, but he felt no resentment toward Chip. He calmly stuck a bit of paper on the cut to stop the bleeding and continued to shave. A short time after, the Little Doctor came across Chip glaring at Dick Brown, who was strumming his guitar with ostentatious ease upon an inverted dry-goods box at one end of the long dining room. “I came to ask a favor of you,” she said, “but my courage oozed at the first glance.” “It's hard to believe your courage would ooze at anything. What's the favor?” The Little Doctor bent her head and lowered her voice to a confidential undertone which caught at Chip's blood and set it leaping.