be a next time," Andy promised
earnestly, with embellishments better suited to the occasion than to a
children's party.

"Well, when it arrives I'm sure Johnny-on-the-spot. Them Wyoming
punchers beat me up after they'd got me tied. I'm tellin' yuh so you'll
see I ain't mean unless I'm drove to it. Turn him feet down hill, Oscar,
so he won't git a rush uh brains to the head and die on our hands. Now
you're goin' to mind your own business, sonny. Next time yuh set out to
herd sheep, better see the boss first and git on the job right."

He rose to his feet, surveyed Andy with his hands on his hips, mentally
pronounced the job well done, and took a generous chew of tobacco, after
which he grinned down at the trussed one.

"That the language uh flowers you're talkin'?" he inquired banteringly,
before he turned his attention to the horse, which he disposed of by
tying up the reins and giving it a slap on the rump. When it had trotted
fifty yards down the coulee bottom, and showed a disposition to go
farther, he whistled to his dogs, and turned again to Andy.

"This here is just a hint to that bunch you trot with, to leave us and
our sheep alone," he said. "We don't pick no quarrels, but we're goin'
to cross our sheep wherever we dern please, to git where we want to go.
Gawd didn't make this range and hand it over to you cowmen to put in yer
pockets--I guess there's a chance fer other folks to hang on by their
eyebrows, anyway."

Andy, lying there like a very good presentation of a giant cocoon, roped
round and round, with his arms pinned to his sides, had the doubtful
pleasure of seeing that noisome, foolish-faced band trail down Antelope
coulee and back upon the level they had just left, and of knowing to a
gloomy certainty that he could do nothing about it, except swear; and
even that palls when a man has gone over his entire repertoire three
times in rapid succession.

Andy, therefore, when the last sheep had trotted out of sight, hearing
and smell, wriggled himself into as comfortable a position as his bonds
would permit, and took a nap.

CHAPTER VII. Truth Crushed to Earth, etc.

Andy, only half awake, tried to obey both instinct and habit and reach
up to pull his hat down over his eyes, so that the sun could not shine
upon his lids so hotly; when he discovered that he could do no more than
wiggle his fingers, he came back with a jolt to reality and tried to sit
up. It is surprising to a man to discover sud