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Pink turned his head cautiously so that his eyes met the eyes of Andy Green. The two had been at some pains to place that pie in a safe place so that they might be sure of something appetizing when they came in from standing guard that night, but neither seemed to think it necessary to proclaim the fact and clear Patsy.

“I’ll bet yuh didn’t do a thing to the pie when yuh did find it?” Pink half questioned, more anxious than he would have owned.

“By golly, I eat the whole thing and I cussed Patsy between every mouthful!” boasted Slim, almost in a good-humor again. “I sure got the old boy stirred up; I left him swearin’ Dutch cuss-words that sounded like he was peevish. But I’ll betche he won’t throw out the coffee till I’ve had what I want after this, by golly!”

“Happy Jack is out yet,” Weary observed after a sympathetic silence. “You oughtn’t to have put Patsy on the fight till everybody was filled up, Slim. Happy’s liable to go to bed with an empty tummy, if yuh don’t ride out and warn him to approach easy. Listen over there!”

From where they lay, so still was the air and so incensed was Patsy, they could hear plainly the rumbling of his wrath while he talked to himself over the dishwashing. When he appeared at the corner of the tent or plodded out toward the front of the wagon, his heavy tread and stiff neck proclaimed eloquently the mood he was in. They watched and listened and were secretly rather glad they were fed and so need not face the storm which Slim had raised; for Patsy thoroughly roused was very much like an angry bull: till his rage cooled he would charge whoever approached him, absolutely blind to consequences.

“Well, I ain’t going to put nobody next,” Slim asserted. “Happy’s got to take chances, same as I did. And while we’re on the subject, Patsy was on the prod before I struck camp, or he wouldn’t uh acted the way he done. Somebody else riled him up, by golly–I never.”

“Well, you sure did put the finishing touches to him,” contended Irish, guiltily aware that he himself was originally responsible; for Patsy never had liked Irish very well because of certain incidents connected with his introduction to Weary’s double. Patsy never could quite forget, though he might forgive, and resentment lay always close to the surface of his mood when Irish was near.

Happy Jack, hungry and quite unconscious that he was riding straight into the trail of trouble, galloped around a ragged point of service-berry bushes, stopped with a lurch at the prostrate corral and unsaddled hastily. Those in the shade of the willow watched him, their very silence proclaiming loudly their interest. They might have warned him by a word, but they did not; for Happy Jack was never eager to heed warnings or to take advice, preferring always to abide by the rule of opposites. Stiff-legged from long riding, the knees of his old, leather chaps bulging out in transient simulation of bowed limbs, he came clanking down upon the cook-tent with no thought but to ease his hunger.

Those who watched saw him stoop and thrust his head into the tent, heard a bellow and saw him back out hastily. They chuckled unfeelingly and strained ears to miss no word of what would follow.

“Aw, gwan!” Happy Jack expostulated, not yet angry. “I got here quick as I could–and I ain’t heard nothing about no new laws uh getting here when the whistle blows. Gimme what there is, anyhow.”

Some sentences followed which, because of guttural tones and German accent emphasized by excitement, were not quite coherent to the listeners. However, they did not feel at all mystified as to his meaning–knowing Patsy as they did.

“Aw, come off! Somebody must uh slipped yuh a two-gallon jug uh something. I’ve rode the range about as long as you’ve cooked on it, and I never knowed a man to go without his supper yet, just because he come in late. I betche yuh dassent stand and say that before Chip, yuh blamed old Dutch–” Just there, Happy Jack dodged and escaped getting more than a third of the basin of water which came splashing out of the tent.