I couldn't sleep," Irish confessed, half defiantly. "I expect
it's just a big josh, but--it won't do any hurt to make sure."

"Yuh all think Andy Green lives to tell lies," snapped Pink, throwing
the saddle on his horse with a grunt at the weight of it. The horse
flinched away from its impact, and Pink swore at it viciously. "Yuh
might uh gone down and made sure, anyhow," he criticised.

"Well, I was going to; but Jack said--" Irish stooped to pick up the
latigo and did not finish. "But I can't get over the way his head
dropped down on his arms, when we were riding out uh sight. As if--oh,
hell! If it was a josh, I'll just about beat the head off him for
spoiling my sleep this way. Get your foot off that rein, yuh damned,
clumsy bench!" This last to his horse.

They rode slowly away from the ranch and made the greater haste when
the sound of their galloping could not reach the dulled ears of those
who slept. They did not talk much, and when they did it was to tell
one another what great fools they were--but even in the telling they
urged their horses to greater speed.

"Well," Pink summed up at last, "if he's hurt, out here, we're doing
the right thing; and if he ain't, he won't be there to have the laugh
on us; so it's all right either way."

There was black shadow in the grassy swale where they found him. His
horse had wandered off and it was only the sure instinct of Irish that
led them to the spot where he lay, a blacker shadow in the darkness
that a passing cloud had made. Just at first they thought him dead,
but when they lifted him he groaned and then spoke.

"It's one on me, this time," he said, and the throat of Irish pinched
achingly together at the sound of his voice, which had in it the note
of pain he had been trying to forget.

After that he said nothing at all, because he was a senseless weight
in their arms.

At daylight Irish was pounding vehemently the door of the White House
and calling for the Little Doctor. Andy lay stretched unconscious upon
the porch beside him, and down in the bunk-house the Happy Family was
rubbing eyes and exclaiming profanely at the story Pink was telling.

"And here," finished Irish a couple of hours later, when he was
talking the thing over with the Little Doctor, "here's a note
Take-Notice's girl gave me for him. I don't reckon there's any good
news in it, so maybe yuh better hold it out on him till he's got over
the fever. I guess we queered Andy a lot--but I'll