f silent contention.

"What was all that you started to tell us about the dry-farmers, Andy?"
he asked indulgently.

"All straight goods. But there's no use talking to you bone-heads.
You'll set around chewing the rag and looking wise till it's too late to
do anything but holler your heads off." He got up from where he had been
lounging on a bench just outside the mess house and walked away,
with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his shoulders drooped
forward.

The Happy Family looked after him doubtfully.

"Aw, it's just some darned josh uh his," Happy Jack declared. "I know
HIM."

"Look at the way he slouches along--like he was loaded to the ears with
trouble!" Pink pointed out amusedly. "He'd fool anybody that didn't know
him, all right."

"And he fools the fellows that do know him, oftener than anybody else,"
added the Native Son negligently. "You're fooled right now if you think
that's all acting. That HOMBRE has got something on his mind."

"Well, by golly, it ain't dry-farmers," Slim asserted boldly.

"If you fellows wouldn't say it was a frame-up between us two, I'd go
after him and find out. But..."

"But as it stands, we'd believe Andy Green a whole lot quicker'n what we
would you," supplemented Big Medicine loudly. "You're dead right there."

"What was it he said about it?" Weary wanted to know. "I wasn't paying
much attention, with the Kid yelling his head off and old Silver gaping
like a sick turkey, and all. What was it about them dryfarmers?"

"He said," piped Pink, "that he'd got next to a scheme to bring a big
bunch of dry-farmers in on this bench up here, with stock that they'd
turn loose on the range. That's what he said. He claims the agent wanted
him to go in on it."

"Mamma!" Weary held a match poised midway between his thigh and his
cigarette while he stared at Pink. "That would be some mixup--if it was
to happen." His sunny blue eyes--that were getting little crow's-feet
at their corners--turned to look after the departing Andy. "Where's the
josh?" he questioned the group.

"The josh is, that he'd like to see us all het up over it, and makin'
war-talks and laying for the pilgrims some dark night with our six-guns,
most likely," retorted Pink, who happened to be in a bad humor because
in ten minutes he was due at a line of post-holes that divided the big
pasture into two unequal parts. "He can't agitate me over anybody's
troubles but my own. Happy, I'll help Bud stretch wi