o come back 'n' settle close handy
by--they been at us t' sell out and move fer the last five years, now,
and I told Mary--"

Even Cal forgot, eventually, that he had asked a question which remained
unanswered; what interest he had felt at first was smothered to death
beneath that blanket of words, and he eagerly followed the boys out
and over to Rusty Brown's place, where Denson, because of an old grudge
against Rusty, might be trusted not to follow.

"Mamma!" Weary commented amusedly, when they were crossing the street,
"that Denson bunch can sure talk the fastest and longest, and say the
least, of any outfit I ever saw."

"Wonder who did buy him out?" Jack Bates queried. "Old ginger-whiskers
didn't pass out any facts, yuh notice. He couldn't have got much; his
land's mostly gravel and 'doby patches. He's got a water right on Flying
U creek, you know--first right, at that, seems to me--and a dandy fine
spring in that coulee. Wonder why our outfit didn't buy him out--seeing
he wanted to sell so bad?"

"This wantin' to sell is something I never heard of b'fore," Slim said
slowly. "To hear him tell it, that ranch uh hisn was worth a dollar an
inch, by golly. I don't b'lieve he's been wantin' to sell out. If he
had, Mis' Bixby woulda said something about it. She don't know about
this here sellin' business, or she'd a said--"

"Yeah, you can most generally bank on the Countess telling all she
knows," Cal assented with some sarcasm; at which Slim grunted and turned
sulky afterward.

Denson and his affairs they speedily forgot for a time, in the diversion
which Rusty Brown's familiar place afforded to young men with unjaded
nerves and a zest for the primitive pleasures. Not until mid-afternoon
did it occur to them that Flying U coulee was deserted by all save old
Patsy, and that there were chores to be done, if all the creatures of
the coulee would sleep in comfort that night. Pink, therefore, withdrew
his challenge to the bunch, and laid his billiard cue down with a sigh
and the remark that all he lacked was time, to have the scalps of every
last one of them hanging from his belt. Pink was figurative in his
speech, you will understand; and also a bit vainglorious over beating
Andy Green and Big Medicine twice in succession.

It occurred to Weary then that a word of cheer to the Old Man and
his anxious watchers might not cone amiss. Therefore the Happy Family
mounted and rode to the depot to send it, and on the way w