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“Aw–and you was goin’ t’ ride in that contest!” wailed Happy Jack recriminatingly. “And I’ve got forty dollars up on yuh!”

“Shut up!” snapped Pink in his ear, heart-broken but loyal to the last. “Yuh going to blat around and let them Diamond Gs give yuh the laugh? Hunt up something you can use for a backbone till they get out uh camp, for Heaven’s sake! Andy’s our man. So help me, Josephine, if anybody goes rubbing it in where I can hear, he’ll get his face punched!”

“Say, I guess we ain’t let down on our faces, or anything!” sighed Cal Emmett, coming up to them. “I thought Andy could ride! Gee whiz, but it was fierce! Why, Happy could make a better ride than that!”

“By golly, I want t’ have a talk with that there broncho-tamer,” Slim growled behind them. “I got money on him. Is he goin t’ ride for that purse? ‘Cause if he is, I ain’t going a foot.”

These and other remarks of a like nature made up the clamor that surged in the ears of Andy as he went, disgraced and alone, up to the deserted bunk-house where he need not hear what they were saying. He knew, deep in his heart, that he could ride that horse. He had been thrown because of his own unpardonable carelessness–a carelessness which he could not well explain to the others. He himself had given the roan an evil reputation; a reputation that, so far as he knew, was libel pure and simple. To explain now that he was thrown simply because he never dreamed the horse would pitch, and so was taken unaware, would simply be to insult their intelligence. He was not supposed, after mounting a horse like that, to be taken unaware. He might, of course, say that he had lied all along–but he had no intention of making any confession like that. Even if he did, they would not believe him. Altogether, it was a very unhappy young man who slammed his spurs into a far corner and kicked viciously a box he had stumbled over in the dusk.

“Trying to bust the furniture?” it was the voice of the Old Man at the door.

“By gracious, it seems I can’t bust bronks no more,” Andy made rueful reply. “I reckon I’ll just about have to bust the furniture or nothing.”

The Old Man chuckled and came inside, sought the box Andy had kicked, and sat down upon it. Through the open door came the jumble of many voices upraised in fruitless argument, and with it the chill of frost. The Old Man fumbled for his pipe, filled it and scratched a match sharply on the box. In the flare of it Andy watched his kind old face with its fringe of grayish hair and its deep-graven lines of whimsical humor.

“Doggone them boys, they ain’t got the stayin’ qualities I give ’em credit for having,” he remarked, holding up the match and looking across at Andy, humped disconsolately in the shadows. “Them Diamond G men has just about got ’em on the run, right now. Yuh couldn’t get a hundred-t’-one bet, down there.”

Andy merely grunted.

“Say,” asked the Old Man suddenly. “Didn’t yuh kinda mistake that blue roan for his twin brother, Pardner? This here cayuse is called Weaver. I tried t’ get hold of t’other one, but doggone ’em, they wouldn’t loosen up. Pardner wasn’t for sale at no price, but they talked me into buying the Weaver; they claimed he’s just about as good a horse, once he’s tamed down some–and I thought, seein’ I’ve got some real tamers on my pay-roll, I’d take a chance on him. I thought yuh knew the horse–the way yuh read up his pedigree–till I seen yuh mount him. Why, doggone it, yuh straddled him like yuh was just climbing a fence! Maybe yuh know your own business best–but didn’t yuh kinda mistake him for Pardner? They’re as near alike as two bullets run in the same mold–as far as looks go.”