on back,"
Andy amended the order after his own free fashion. "He couldn't get out
in a million years; not after I'm through staking him out to the anvil
with a log-chain." He smiled maliciously into Dunk's fear-yellowed
countenance, and waved him a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk did
without a word of protest while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.

"What's it all about, Weary?" Irish asked, when the three were gone.
"What is it they've got on Dunk? Must be something pretty fierce, the
way he wilted down into the saddle."

"You'll have to wait and ask the boys." Weary rode off to hurry the
herders on the far side of the band.

So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the subject and
for that they said hard things about Weary, and about Andy and Miguel as
well. They believed that they were entitled to know the truth, and they
called it a smart-aleck trick to keep the thing so almighty secret.

There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and the
dam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always sweep down
upon those who have provoked the disaster. Frequently it happens that
perfectly innocent victims are made to suffer. The Happy Family had
been extremely forbearing, as has been pointed out before. They had
frequently come to the boiling point of rage and had cooled without
committing any real act of violence. But that day had held a long series
of petty annoyances; and here was a really important thing kept from
them as if they were mere outsiders. When Weary was gone, Irish asked
Pink what crime Dunk had committed in the past. And Pink shook his head
and said he didn't know. Irish mentally accused Pink of lying, and
his temper was none the better for the rebuff, as anyone can readily
understand.

When the herders, therefore, rounded up the sheep and started them
moving south, the Happy Family speedily rebelled against that shuffling,
nibbling, desultory pace that had kept them long, weary hours in the
saddle with the other band. But it was Irish who first took measures to
accelerate that pace.

He got down his rope and whacked the loop viciously down across the
nearest gray back. The sheep jumped, scuttled away a few paces and
returned to its nibbling progress. Irish called it names and whacked
another.

After a few minutes he grew tired of swinging his loop and seeing it
have so fleeting an effect, and pulled his gun. He fired close to the
heels of a yearling buck