ark done it. He was lying--"

Somebody laughed suddenly, and another chuckle helped to point the
joke, until the whole outfit was in an uproar; for of all the men who
had slept under Flying-U tents and eaten beside the mess-wagon, Andy
Green was conceded to be the greatest, the most shameless and wholly
incorrigible liar of the lot.

"Aw, yuh don't want to get jealous of an old stiff like that," Pink
soothed musically. "There ain't one of us but what knows you could lie
faster and farther and more of it in a minute, with your tongue
half-hitched around your palate and the deaf-and-dumb language barred,
than any three men in Chouteau County. Don't let it worry yuh, Andy."

"I ain't letting it worry me," said Andy, getting a bit red with
trying not to show that the shot hit him. "When my imagination gets to
soaring, I'm willing to bet all I got that it can fly higher than the
rest of you, that have got brains about on a par with a sage-hen, can
follow. When I let my fancy soar, I take notice the rest of yuh like
to set in the front row, all right--and yuh never, to my knowledge,
called it a punk show when the curtain rung down; yuh always got the
worth uh your money, and then some.

"But if yuh'd taken notice of the load that old freak was trying to
throw into the bunch, you'd suspicion there was something scaley about
it; there was, all right. I'd gamble on it."

"From the symptoms," spoke Weary mildly, rising to an elbow, "Andy's
about to erupt one of those wide, hot, rushing streams of melted
imagination that bursts forth from his think-works ever so often.
Don't get us all worked up over it, Andy; what's it going to be this
time? A murder in the Bad-lands?"

Andy clicked his teeth together, thought better of his ill-humor and
made reply, though he had intended to remain dignifiedly silent.

"Yuh rung the bell, m'son--but it ain't any josh. By gracious, I mean
it!" He glared at those who gurgled incredulously, and went on: "No,
sir, you bet it ain't any josh with me _this_ time. That old gazabo
had something heavy on his conscience--and knowing the fellow he had
reference to, I sure believe he lied a whole lot when he said Dan
pulled out with all the stuff they'd got together, and went down
river. Maybe he went down river, all right--but if he did, it was most
likely to be face-down. Dan was as honest a boy as there is in the
country, and he had money on him that he got mining down in the little
Rockies last su