n him!" Happy Jack put in, coiling his rope
as he came up.

"Oh, shut up!" Andy's voice was sharp with trouble. "Boys, the Old
Man's--well, he's most likely dead by this time. I brought out a
telegram--"

"Go on!" Pink's eyes widened incredulously. "Don't you try that kind of
a load, Andy Green, or I'll just about--"

"Oh, you fellows make me sick!" Andy took his elbows off the rail and
stood straight. "Dammit, the telegram's up at the house--go and read it
yourselves, then!"

The three stared after him doubtfully, fear struggling with the caution
born of much experience.

"He don't act, to me, like he was putting up a josh," Weary stated
uneasily, after a minute of silence. "Run up to the house and find out,
Cadwalloper. The Old Man--oh, good Lord!" The tan on Weary's face took a
lighter tinge. "Scoot--it won't take but a minute to find out for sure.
Go on, Pink."

"So help me Josephine, I'll kill that same Andy Green if he's lied about
it," Pink declared, while he climbed the fence.

In three minutes he was back, and before he had said a word, his face
confirmed the bad news. Their eyes besought him for details, and he
gave them jerkily. "Automobile run over him. He ain't dead, but they
think--Chip and the Little Doctor are going to catch the night train.
You go haze in the team, Happy. And give 'em a feed of oats, Chip said."

Irish and Big Medicine, seeing the three standing soberly together
there, and sensing something unusual, came up and heard the news in
stunned silence. Andy, forgetting his pique at their first disbelief,
came forlornly back and stood with them.

The Old Man--the thing could not be true! To every man of them his
presence, conjured by the impending tragedy, was almost a palpable
thing. His stocky figure seemed almost to stand in their midst;
he looked at them with his whimsical eyes, which had the radiating
crows-feet of age, humor and habitual squinting against sun and wind;
the bald spot on his head, the wrinkling shirt-collar that seldom knew
a tie, the carpet slippers which were his favorite footgear because they
were kind to his bunions, his husky voice, good-naturedly complaining,
were poignantly real to them at that moment. Then Irish mentally
pictured him lying maimed, dying, perhaps, in a far-off hospital among
strangers, and swore.

"If he's got to die, it oughta be here, where folks know him and--where
he knows--" Irish was not accustomed to giving voice to his deeper
fe