ing point. The liar was about to lie.

"Talk about a guilty conscience giving a man dead away," Andy began,
quite unconscious of the mental attitude of his fellows, and
forgetting also his anger of the afternoon, "it sure does work out
like that, sometimes. I followed that old devil, just out uh
curiosity, to see if he headed for Dry Lake like he said he was going.
_We_ didn't have any reason for keeping cases on him, or suspicioning
anything--but he acted like we was all out on his trail, the fool!

"I kinda had a hunch that if he had been up to any deviltry, it would
show on him when he left here, and I was plumb right about it. He went
all straight enough till he got down into Black Coulee; and right
there it looked like he got kinda panicky and suspicious, for he
turned square off the trail and headed up the coulee."

"He must uh had 'em," Weary commented, quite as if he believed.

"Yuh wait till I'm through," Andy advised, still wholly unconscious of
their disbelief. "Yuh was all kinda skeptical when I told yuh he had a
guilty conscience, but I was right about it, and come mighty near
laying out on the range to-night with my toes pointing straight up,
just because you fellows wouldn't--"

"Sun-stroke?" asked Pink, coming closer, his eyes showing purple in
the softened light.

"No--yuh wait, now, till I tell yuh." Whereupon Andy smoked
relishfully and in silence, and from the tail of his eye watched his
audience squirm with impatience. "A man gets along a whole lot better
without any conscience," he began at last, irrelevantly, "'specially
if he wants to be mean. I trailed this jasper up the coulee and out on
the bench, across that level strip between Black Coulee and Dry Spring
Gulch, and down the gulch a mile or so. He was fogging right along,
and seemed as if he looked back every ten rods--I know he spotted me
just as I struck the level at the head uh Black Coulee, because he
acted different then.

"I could see he was making across country for the trail to Chinook,
but I wanted to overhaul him and have a little casual talk about Dan.
I don't suppose yuh noticed I took his rope along; I wanted some
excuse for hazing after him like that, yuh see."

"Uh course, such accommodating cusses as you wouldn't be none strange
to him," fleered Cal.

"Well, he never found out what I was after," sighed Andy. "It wasn't
my fault I didn't come up with him, and my intentions were peaceful
and innocent. But do yuh know