t
ain't old Dunk himself, it's the devil, and that's next thing to him."

Dunk, they judged, had just arrived with another man whom they did not
know: a tall man with light hair that hung lank to his collar, a thin,
sharp-nosed face and a wide mouth, which stretched easily into a smile,
but which was none the pleasanter for that. When he turned inquiringly
toward them they saw that he was stoop-shouldered; though not from any
deformity, but from sheer, slouching lankness. Dunk gave them a swift,
sour look from under his eyebrows and went on.

Weary rode straight past the lank man, whom he judged to be Oleson, and
overtook Dunk Whittaker himself.

"Hello, Dunk," he said cheerfully, sliding over in the saddle so that a
foot hung free of the stirrup, as men who ride much have learned to do
when they stop for a chat, thereby resting while they may. "Back on the
old stamping ground, are you?"

"Since you see me here, I suppose I am," Dunk made churlish response.

"Do you happen to own those Dot sheep, back there on the hill?" Weary
tilted his head toward home.

"I happen to own half of them." By then they had reached the gate and
Dunk passed through and started on to the house.

"Oh, don't be in a rush--come on back and be sociable," Weary called
out, in the mildest of tones, twisting the reins around his saddle-horn
so that he might roll a cigarette at ease.

Dunk remembered, perhaps, certain things he had learned when he was
J. G. Whitmore's partner, and had more or less to do with the charter
members of the Happy Family. He came back and stood by the gate,
ungraciously enough, to be sure; still, he came back. Weary smiled under
cover of lighting his cigarette. Dunk, by that reluctant compliance,
betrayed something which Weary had been rather anxious to know.

"We've been having a little trouble with those sheep of yours," Weary
remarked between puffs. "You've got some poor excuses for humans herding
them. They drove the bunch across our coulee just exactly three times.
There ain't enough grass left in our lower field to graze a prairie
dog." He glanced back to see where Pink was, saw that he was close
behind, as was the lank man, and spoke in a tone that included them all.

"The Flying U ain't pasturing sheep, this spring," he informed them
pleasantly. "But, seeing the grass is eat up, we'll let yuh pay for it.
Why didn't you bring them in along the trail, anyway?"

"I didn't bring them in. I just came down fr