of
Pink. "What's the matter, Cadwolloper?" he asked, when he was close
enough. "Seen a garter snake?" Pink was notoriously afraid of snakes.

"You come with me, and I'll show yuh the wild man," he grinned.

"Mama!" ejaculated Weary, and followed stealthily where Pink led.

Some distance up the creek Pink signalled caution, and they crept like
Indians on hands and knees through the grass. On the edge of the high
bank they stopped, and Pink motioned. Weary looked over and came near
whooping at the sight below. He gazed a minute, drew back and put his
face close to the face of Pink.

"Cadwolloper, go get the bunch!" he commanded in a whisper, and Pink,
again signalling needlessly for silence, slipped hastily away from the
spot.

Happy Jack, secure in the seclusion offered by the high bank of the
creek, ran his finger regretfully around the inside of the carbolic
salve box, eyed the result dissatisfiedly, and applied the finger
carefully to a deep cut on his knee. He had got that cut while going
up the bluff, just after leaving the tent where had been the shrieking
females. He wished there was more salve, and he picked up the cover of
the box and painstakingly wiped out the inside; the result was
disheartening.

He examined his knee dolefully. It was beginning to look inflamed, and
it was going to make him limp. He wondered if the boys would notice
anything queer about his walk. If they did, there was the conventional
excuse that his horse had fallen down with him--Happy Jack hoped that
it would be convincing. He took up the box again and looked at the
shining emptiness of it. It had been half full--not enough, by a long
way--and maybe some one would wonder what had become of it. Darn a
bunch that always had to know everything, anyway!

Happy Jack, warned at last by that unnamed instinct which tells of a
presence unseen, turned around and looked up apprehensively. The Happy
Family, sitting in a row upon their heels on the bank, looked down at
him gravely and appreciatively.

"There's a can uh wagon dope, up at camp," Cal Emmett informed him
sympathetically.

"Aw--" Happy Jack began, and choked upon his humiliation.

"I used to know a piece uh poetry about a fellow like Happy," Weary
remarked sweetly. "It said

_'He raised his veil, the maid turned slowly round_
_Looked at him, shrieked, and fell upon the ground.'_

Only, in this case," Weary smiled blandly down upon him, "Happy didn't
have no veil."