the long length of him.

"They had it coming," said Miguel softly, with a peculiar relish. "Two
whole weeks, and never a friendly word from one of them--oh, hell!"

"I know--I heard it all, soon as I hit the ranch," Andy replied weakly,
standing up and wiping his eyes. "I just thought I'd learn 'em a
lesson--and the way you played up--say, my hat's off to you, all right!"

"One learns to seize opportunities without stuttering," Miguel observed
calmly--and a queer look came into his eyes as they rested upon the face
of Andy. "And, if the chance comes, I'll do as much for you. By the way,
did you see the saddle those Arizona boys sent me? It's over here. It's
a pip-pin--almost as fine as the spurs, which I keep in the bunk-house
when they're not on my heels. And, if I didn't say so before, I'm sure
glad to meet the man that helped me through that alley. That big, fat
devil would have landed me, sure, if you hadn't--"

"Ah--what?" Andy leaned and peered into the face of Miguel, his jaw
hanging slack. "You don't mean to tell me--it's true?"

"True? Why, I thought you were the fellow--" Miguel faced him steadily.
His eyes were frankly puzzled.

"I'll tell you the truth, so help me," Andy said heavily. "I don't know
a darned thing about it, only what I read in the papers. I spent the
whole winter in Colorado and Wyoming. I was just joshing the boys."

"Oh," said Miguel.

They stood there in the dusk and silence for a space, after which Andy
went forth into the night to meditate upon this thing. Miguel stood and
looked after him.

"He's the real goods when it comes to lying--but there are others," he
said aloud, and smiled a peculiar smile. But for all that he felt that
he was going to like Andy very much indeed. And, since the Happy Family
had shown a disposition to make him one of themselves, he knew that he
was going to become quite as foolishly attached to the Flying U as was
even Slim, confessedly the most rabid of partisans.

In this wise did Miguel Rapponi, then, become a member of Jim Whitmore's
Happy Family, and play his part in the events which followed his
adoption.

CHAPTER III. Bad News

Andy Green, that honest-eyed young man whom everyone loved, but whom
not a man believed save when he was indulging his love for more or less
fantastic flights of the imagination, pulled up on the brow of Flying U
coulee and stared somberly at the picture spread below him. On the porch
of the White House the hammo