refully the shirt of Happy Jack, that he might
inspect the wound.

Pink gave a last, wistful look at Happy Jack's face, which seemed
unfamiliar with all the color and all the expression wiped out of it
like that, and turned away. "Come and help me change saddles, Cal,"
he said shortly. "Weary's stirrups are too darned long." Even with the
delay, he was mounted on Glory and galloping toward Flying U coulee
before Weary was through uncovering the wound; and that does not mean
that Weary was slow.

The rifle cracked again, and a bullet plucked into the sod twenty feet
beyond the circle of men and horses. But no one looked up or gave any
other sign of realization that they were still the target; they were
staring, with that frowning painfully intent look men have at such
moments, at a purplish hole not much bigger than if punched by a lead
pencil, just under the point of Happy Jack's shoulder blade; and at the
blood oozing sluggishly from it in a tiny stream across the girlishly
white flesh and dripping upon Big Medicine's arm.

"Hadn't we better get a rig to take him home with?" Irish suggested.

Weary, exploring farther, had just disclosed a ragged wound under the
arm where the bullet had passed out; he made no immediate reply.

"Well, he ain't got it stuck inside of 'im, anyway," Big Medicine
commented relievedly. "Don't look to me like it's so awful bad--went
through kinda anglin', and maybe missed his lungs. I've saw men shot up
before--"

"Aw--I betche you'd--think it was bad--if you had it--" murmured Happy
Jack peevishly, lifting his eyelids heavily for a resentful glance when
they moved him a little. But even as Big Medicine grinned joyfully down
at him he went off again into mental darkness, and the grin faded into
solicitude.

"You'd kick, by golly, if you was goin' to be hung," Slim bantered
tritely and belatedly, and gulped remorsefully when he saw that he was
"joshing" an unconscious man.

"We better get him home. Irish, you--" Weary looked up and discovered
that Irish and jack Bates were already headed for home and a conveyance.
He gave a sigh of approval and turned his attention toward wiping the
sweat and grime from Happy's face with his handkerchief.

"Somebody else is goin' to git hit, by golly, if we stay here," Slim
blurted suddenly, when another bullet dug up the dirt in that vicinity.

"That gol-darned fool'll keep on till he kills somebody. I wisht I
had m' thirty-thirty here--I'd make hi