ally, trotted over to where a man was holding out the
belt that proclaimed him champion of the state. Andy reached out a
hand for the belt, buckled it around his middle and saluted the grand
stand as he used to do from the circus ring when one Andre de Greno
had performed his most difficult feat.

The Happy Family crowded up, shamefaced and manfully willing to own
themselves wrong.

"We're down and ready to be walked on by the Champion," Weary
announced quizzically. "Mama mine! but yuh sure can ride."

Andy looked at them, grinned and did an exceedingly foolish thing,
just to humiliate Happy Jack, who, he afterwards said, still looked
unconvinced. He coolly got upon his feet in the saddle, stood so while
he saluted the Happy Family mockingly, lighted the cigarette he had
just rolled, then, with another derisive salute, turned a double
somersault in the air and lighted upon his feet--and the roan did
nothing more belligerent than to turn his head and eye Andy
suspiciously.

"By gracious, maybe you fellows'll some day own up yuh don't know it
all!" he cried, and led the Weaver back into the corral and away from
the whooping maniacs across the track.

* * * * *

ANDY, THE LIAR

Andy Green licked a cigarette into shape the while he watched with
unfriendly eyes the shambling departure of their guest. "I believe the
darned old reprobate was lyin' to us," he remarked, when the horseman
disappeared into a coulee.

"You sure ought to be qualified to recognize the symptoms," grunted
Cal Emmett, kicking his foot out of somebody's carelessly coiled rope
on the ground. "That your rope, Happy? No wonder you're always on the
bum for one. If you'd try tying it on your saddle--"

"Aw, g'wan. That there's Andy's rope--"

"If you look at my saddle, you'll find my rope right where it
belongs," Andy retorted. "I ain't sheepherder enough to leave it
kicking around under foot. That rope belongs to his nibs that just
rode off. When he caught up his horse again after dinner, he throwed
his rope down while he saddled up, and then went off and forgot it. He
wasn't easy in his mind--that jasper wasn't. I don't go very high on
that hard-luck tale he told. I know the boy he had wolfing with him
last winter, and he wasn't the kind to pull out with all the stuff he
could get his hands on. He was an all-right fellow, and if there's
been any rusty work done down there in the breaks, this shifty-eyed
m