'em off. Honest, they blat in their sleep. I've
heard 'em."

"When you and the dogs were shooting off coyotes?" asked Andy Green
pointedly, and so precipitated dissension which lasted for ten miles.

CHAPTER V. Sheep

Slim rising first from dinner on the next day but one opened the door
of the mess-house, and stood there idly picking his teeth before he went
about his work. After a minute of listening to the boys "joshing" old
Patsy about some gooseberry pies he had baked without sugar, he turned
his face outward, threw up his head like a startled bull, and began to
sniff.

"Say, I smell sheep, by golly!" he announced in the bellowing tone which
was his conversational voice, and sniffed again.

"Oh, that's just a left-over in your system from the dose yuh got in
town Sunday," Weary explained soothingly. "I've smelled sheep, and
tasted sheep, and dreamed sheep, ever since."

"No, by golly, it's sheep! It ain't no memory. I--I b'hieve I hear
'em, too, by golly." Slim stepped out away from the building and faced
suspiciously down the coulee.

"Slim, I never suspected you of imagination before," the Native Son
drawled, and loitered out to where Slim stood still sniffing. "I wonder
if you're catching it from Andy and me. Don't you think you ought to be
vaccinated?"

"That ain't imagination," Pink called out from within. "When anybody
claims there's sheep in Flying U coulee, that's straight loco."

"Come on out here and smell 'em yourself, then!" Slim bawled
indignantly. "I never seen such an outfit as this is gittin' to be; you
fellers don't believe nobody, no more. We ain't all Andy Greens."

Upon hearing this Andy pushed back his chair and strolled outside. He
clapped his hand down upon Slim's fat-cushioned shoulder and swayed him
gently. "Never mind, Slim; you can't all be famous," he comforted. "Some
day, maybe, I'll teach yuh the fine art of lying more convincingly than
the ordinary man can tell the truth. It is a fine art; it takes a genius
to put it across. Now, the only time anybody doubts my word is when I'm
sticking to the truth hike a sand burr to a dog's tail."

From away to the west, borne on the wind which swept steadily down the
coulee, came that faint, humming sing-song, which can be made only by a
herd of a thousand or more sheep, all blatting in different keys--or
by a distant band playing monotonously upon the middle octave of their
varied instruments.

"Slim's right, by gracious! It's s