He examined his knee dolefully. It was beginning to look inflamed, and it was going to make him limp. He wondered if the boys would notice anything queer about his walk. If they did, there was the conventional excuse that his horse had fallen down with him--Happy Jack hoped that it would be convincing. He took up the box again and looked at the shining emptiness of it. It had been half full--not enough, by a long way--and maybe some one would wonder what had become of it. Darn a bunch that always had to know everything, anyway! Happy Jack, warned at last by that unnamed instinct which tells of a presence unseen, turned around and looked up apprehensively. The Happy Family, sitting in a row upon their heels on the bank, looked down at him gravely and appreciatively. "There's a can uh wagon dope, up at camp," Cal Emmett informed him sympathetically. "Aw--" Happy Jack began, and choked upon his humiliation. "I used to know a piece uh poetry about a fellow like Happy," Weary remarked sweetly. "It said _'He raised his veil, the maid turned slowly round_ _Looked at him, shrieked, and fell upon the ground.'_ Only, in this case," Weary smiled blandly down upon him, "Happy didn't have no veil." "Aw, gwan!" adjured Happy Jack helplessly, and reached for his clothes, while the Happy Family chorused a demand for explanations. * * * * * A TAMER OF WILD ONES. When the days grow crisp at each end and languorous in the middle; when a haze ripples the skyline like a waving ribbon of faded blue; when the winds and the grasses stop and listen for the first on-rush of winter, then it is that the rangeland takes on a certain intoxicating unreality, and range-wild blood leaps with desire to do something--anything, so it is different and irresponsible and not measured by precedent or prudence. In days like that one grows venturesome and ignores difficulties and limitations with a fine disregard for probable consequences, a mental snapping of fingers. On a day like that, the Happy Family, riding together out of Dry Lake with the latest news in mind and speech, urged Andy Green, tamer of wild ones, to enter the rough-riding contest exploited as one of the features of the Northern Montana Fair, to be held at Great Falls in two weeks. Pink could not enter, because a horse had fallen with him and hurt his leg, so that he was picking the gentlest in his string for daily riding. Weary would not, because he had promised his Little Schoolma'am to take care of himself and not take any useless risks; even the temptation of a two-hundred-dollar purse could not persuade him that a rough-riding contest is perfectly safe and without the ban. But Andy, impelled by the leaping blood of him and urged by the loyal Family, consented and said he'd try it a whirl, anyway.