nched!"

"Say, I guess we ain't let down on our faces, or anything!" sighed Cal
Emmett, coming up to them. "I thought Andy could ride! Gee whiz, but
it was fierce! Why, _Happy_ could make a better ride than that!"

"By golly, I want t' have a talk with that there broncho-tamer," Slim
growled behind them. "I got money on him. Is he goin t' ride for that
purse? 'Cause if he is, I ain't going a foot."

These and other remarks of a like nature made up the clamor that
surged in the ears of Andy as he went, disgraced and alone, up to the
deserted bunk-house where he need not hear what they were saying. He
knew, deep in his heart, that he could ride that horse. He had been
thrown because of his own unpardonable carelessness--a carelessness
which he could not well explain to the others. He himself had given
the roan an evil reputation; a reputation that, so far as he knew, was
libel pure and simple. To explain now that he was thrown simply
because he never dreamed the horse would pitch, and so was taken
unaware, would simply be to insult their intelligence. He was not
supposed, after mounting a horse like that, to be taken unaware. He
might, of course, say that he had lied all along--but he had no
intention of making any confession like that. Even if he did, they
would not believe him. Altogether, it was a very unhappy young man who
slammed his spurs into a far corner and kicked viciously a box he had
stumbled over in the dusk.

"Trying to bust the furniture?" it was the voice of the Old Man at the
door.

"By gracious, it seems I can't bust _bronks_ no more," Andy made
rueful reply. "I reckon I'll just about have to bust the furniture or
nothing."

The Old Man chuckled and came inside, sought the box Andy had kicked,
and sat down upon it. Through the open door came the jumble of many
voices upraised in fruitless argument, and with it the chill of frost.
The Old Man fumbled for his pipe, filled it and scratched a match
sharply on the box. In the flare of it Andy watched his kind old face
with its fringe of grayish hair and its deep-graven lines of whimsical
humor.

"Doggone them boys, they ain't got the stayin' qualities I give 'em
credit for having," he remarked, holding up the match and looking
across at Andy, humped disconsolately in the shadows. "Them Diamond G
men has just about got 'em on the run, right now. Yuh couldn't get a
hundred-t'-one bet, down there."

Andy merely grunted.

"Say," asked the Old Man sud