ion on his face as when he had left
it an hour or so before.

He did not see Dick that day. The other boys watched him covertly, it
seemed to him, and showed a disposition to talk among themselves. Jim
was whistling cheerfully in the kitchen. He turned his head and laughed
when Ford went in.

"I found a dead soldier behind the sack of spuds," Jim announced, and
produced an empty bottle, mate to the one Ford had thrown into the
gully. "And Dick didn't seem to have any appetite at all, and Mose is
still in Sleepytown. I guess that's all the news at this end of the
line. Er--hope everything is all right at the house?"

"Far as I could see, it was," Ford replied, with an inner sense of
evasion. "I guess we'll just let her go as she looks, Jim. Did you say
anything to the boys?"

Jim reddened under his tan, but he laughed disarmingly. "I cannot tell a
lie," he confessed honestly, "and it was too good to keep to myself. I'm
the most generous fellow you ever saw, when it comes to passing along a
good story that won't hurt anybody's digestion. You don't care, do you?
The joke ain't on you."

"If you'd asked me about it, I'd have said keep it under your hat.
But--"

"And that would have been a sin and a shame," argued Jim, licking a
finger he had just scorched on a hot kettle-handle. "The fellows all
like a good story--and it don't sound any worse because it's on Dick.
And say! I kinda got a clue to where he connected with that whisky. Walt
says he come back from the line-camp with his overcoat rolled up and
tied behind the saddle--and it wasn't what you could call a hot night,
either. He musta had that jug wrapped up in it. I'll bet he sent in by
Peterson, the other day, for it. He was over there, I know. He's sure a
deliberate kind of a cuss, isn't he? Must have had this thing all
figured out a week ago. The boys are all tickled to death at the way he
got it in the neck; they know Dick pretty well. But if you'd told me not
to say anything, I'd have said he stubbed his toe on his shadow and fell
all over himself, and let it go at that."

"Lordy me! Jim, you needn't worry about it; you ought to know you can't
keep a thing like this quiet, on a ranch. It doesn't matter much how he
got that whisky here, either; I know well enough you didn't haul it out.
I'd figured it out about as Walt says.

"Say, it looks as if you'll have to wrastle with the pots and pans till
to-morrow. The lower fence I'll ride, this afternoon; did