“Untie me, Miguel,” begged Andy, going over to him, “and let me at this bunch.” “I'll do it,” said Weary, and rose pacifically. “I kinda believe you myself, Andy. But you can't blame the boys none; you've fooled 'em till they're dead shy of anything they can't see through. And, besides, it sure does look like a plant. I'd back you single-handed against a dozen sheepherders like then two we've been chasing around. If I hadn't felt that way I wouldn't have sent yuh out alone with 'em.” “Well, Andy needn't think he's goin' to stick me on that there story,” Slim declared with brutal emphasis. “I've swallered too many baits, by golly. He's figurin' on gettin' us all out on the war-path, runnin' around in circles, so's't he can give us the laugh. I'll bet, by golly, he paid then herders to tie him up like that. He can't fool me!” “Say, Slim, I do believe your brains is commencin' to sprout!” Big Medicine thumped him painfully upon the back by way of accenting the compliment. “You got the idee, all right.” Andy stood quiet while Weary unwound the rope; lifted his numbed arms with some difficulty, and displayed to the doubters his rope-creased wrists, and purple, swollen hands. “I couldn't fight a caterpiller right now,” he said thickly. “Look at them hands! Do yuh call that a josh? I've been tied up like a bed-roll for five hours, you--” Well, never mind, he merely repeated a part of what he had recited aloud in Antelope coulee, the only difference being that he applied the vitriolic utterances to the Happy Family instead of to sheepherders, and that with the second recitation he gained much in fluency and dramatic delivery. It is not nice for a man to swear; to swear the way Andy did, at any rate. But the result perhaps atoned in a measure for the wickedness, in that the Happy Family were absolutely convinced of his sincerity, and the feelings of Andy greatly relieved, so that, when he had for the third time that day completely exhausted his vocabulary, he sat down and began to eat his dinner with a keen appetite. “I don't suppose you know where your horse is at, by this tine,” Weary observed, as casually as possible, breaking a somewhat constrained silence. “I don't--and I don't give a darn,” Andy snapped back. He ate a few mouthfuls, and added less savagely: “He wasn't in sight, as I came along. I didn't follow the trail; I struck straight across and came down the coulee. He may be at the gate, and he may be down toward Rogers'.”