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None at the ranch had seen Andy, and they speculated much upon the nature of the game he was playing. Happy Jack wanted to bet that Andy really had broken his leg–but that was because he had a present grievance against Irish and hated to agree with anything he said. But when they went to bed, the Happy Family had settled unanimously upon the theory that Andy had ridden to Dry Lake, and would come loping serenely down the trail next day.

Irish did not know what time it was when he found himself sitting up in bed listening, but he discovered Pink getting quietly into his clothes. Irish hesitated a moment, and then felt under his pillow for his own garments–long habit had made him put them there–and began to dress. “I guess I’ll go along with yuh,” he whispered.

“Yuh can if yuh want to,” Pink answered ungraciously. “But yuh needn’t raise the long howl if–“

“Hold on, boys; my ante’s on the table,” came guardedly from Weary’s bunk, and there was a soft, shuffling sound as of moving blankets; the subdued scrape of boots pulled from under bunks, and the quiet searching for hats and gloves. There was a clank of spur-chains, the faint squeal of a hinge gone rusty, a creak of a loose board, and then the three stood together outside under the star-sprinkle and avoided looking at one another. Without a word they went down the deep-worn path to the big gate, swung it open and headed for the corral where slept their horses.

“If them bone-heads don’t wake up, nobody’ll be any the wiser–and it’s a lovely night for a ramble,” murmured Weary, consoling himself.

“Well, I couldn’t sleep,” Irish confessed, half defiantly. “I expect it’s just a big josh, but–it won’t do any hurt to make sure.”

“Yuh all think Andy Green lives to tell lies,” snapped Pink, throwing the saddle on his horse with a grunt at the weight of it. The horse flinched away from its impact, and Pink swore at it viciously. “Yuh might uh gone down and made sure, anyhow,” he criticised.

“Well, I was going to; but Jack said–” Irish stooped to pick up the latigo and did not finish. “But I can’t get over the way his head dropped down on his arms, when we were riding out uh sight. As if–oh, hell! If it was a josh, I’ll just about beat the head off him for spoiling my sleep this way. Get your foot off that rein, yuh damned, clumsy bench!” This last to his horse.

They rode slowly away from the ranch and made the greater haste when the sound of their galloping could not reach the dulled ears of those who slept. They did not talk much, and when they did it was to tell one another what great fools they were–but even in the telling they urged their horses to greater speed.

“Well,” Pink summed up at last, “if he’s hurt, out here, we’re doing the right thing; and if he ain’t, he won’t be there to have the laugh on us; so it’s all right either way.”

There was black shadow in the grassy swale where they found him. His horse had wandered off and it was only the sure instinct of Irish that led them to the spot where he lay, a blacker shadow in the darkness that a passing cloud had made. Just at first they thought him dead, but when they lifted him he groaned and then spoke.

“It’s one on me, this time,” he said, and the throat of Irish pinched achingly together at the sound of his voice, which had in it the note of pain he had been trying to forget.

After that he said nothing at all, because he was a senseless weight in their arms.

At daylight Irish was pounding vehemently the door of the White House and calling for the Little Doctor. Andy lay stretched unconscious upon the porch beside him, and down in the bunk-house the Happy Family was rubbing eyes and exclaiming profanely at the story Pink was telling.