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At four o’clock it still rained dismally–and the Happy Family, waking unhappily one after another, remembered that this was the Fourth that they had worked and waited for so long, “swore a prayer or two and slept again.” At six the sun was shining, and Jack Bates, first realizing the blessed fact, called the others jubilantly.

Weary sat up and observed darkly that he wished he knew what son-of-a-gun got the tent to leaking over him, and eyed Pink suspiciously; but Pink only knuckled his eyes like a sleepy baby and asked if it rained in the night, and said he had been dead to the world. Happy Jack came blundering under the ban by asking Weary to remember that he told him it would rain. As he slept beside Weary, his guilt was certain and his punishment, Weary promised himself, would be sure.

Then they went out and faced the clean-washed prairie land, filled their lungs to the bottom with sweet, wine-like air, and asked one another why in the dickens the night-hawk wasn’t on hand with the cavvy, so they could get ready to start.

At nine o’clock, had you wandered that way, you would have seen the Happy Family–a clean-shaven, holiday-garbed, resplendent Happy Family–roosting disconsolately wherever was a place clean enough to sit, looking wistfully away to the skyline.

They should, by now, have been at the picnic, and every man of them realized the fact keenly. They were ready, but they were afoot; the nighthawk had not put in an appearance with the saddle bunch, and there was not a horse in camp that they might go in search of him. With no herd to hold, they had not deemed it necessary to keep up any horses, and they were bewailing the fact that they had not forseen such an emergency–though Happy Jack did assert that he had all along expected it.

“By golly, I’ll strike out afoot and hunt him up, if he don’t heave in sight mighty suddent,” threatened Slim passionately, after a long, dismal silence. “By golly, he’ll wisht I hadn’t, too.”

Cal looked up from studying pensively his patent leathers. “Go on, Slim, and round him up. This is sure getting hilarious–a fine way to spend the Fourth!”

“Maybe that festive bunch that held up the Lewistown Bank, day before yesterday, came along and laid the hawk away on the hillside so they could help themselves to fresh horses,” hazarded Jack Bates, in the hope that Happy Jack would seize the opening to prophesy a new disaster.

“I betche that’s what’s happened, all right,” said Happy, rising to the bait. “I betche yuh won’t see no horses t’day–ner no night-hawk, neither.”

The Happy Family looked at one another and grinned.

“Who’ll stir the lemonade and help pass the sandwiches?” asked Pink, sadly. “Who’ll push, when the school-ma’am wants to swing? Or Len Adams? or–“

“Oh, saw off!” Weary implored. “We can think up troubles enough, Cadwolloper, without any help from you.”

“Well, I guess your troubles are about over, cully–I can hear ’em coming.” Pink picked up his rope and started for the horse corral as the belated cavvy came jingling around the nose of the nearest hill. The Happy Family brightened perceptibly; after all, they could be at the picnic by noon–if they hurried. Their thoughts flew to the crowd–and to the girls in frilly dresses–under the pine trees in a certain canyon just where the Bear Paws reach lazily out to shake hands with the prairie land.

Up on the high level, with the sun hot against their right cheeks and a lazy breeze flipping neckerchief ends against their smiling lips, the world seemed very good, and a jolly place to live in, and there was no such thing as trouble anywhere. Even Happy Jack was betrayed into expecting much pleasure and no misfortune, and whistled while he rode.