er saw, all
pimply, and pink, and with five points to 'em. She's got two. When yuh
go over, you ask her to let yuh see 'em." Andy was in bed, then, and
he spoke through the dusk toward the voices. What those voices had
just then been saying seemed to have absolutely no effect upon him.

"Oh, dry up!" Irish commanded impatiently. "Nobody's thinking uh
riding over there, yuh chump. What kind of easy marks do yuh think we
are?"

Andy laughed audibly in his corner next the window. "Say, you fellows
do amuse me a lot. By gracious, I'll bet five dollars some of yuh take
the trail over there, soon or late. I--I'll bet five dollars to _one_
that yuh do! The bet to hold good for--well, say six weeks. But yuh
better not take me up, boys--especially Irish, that ain't got a girl
at present. Yes, or _any_ of yuh, by gracious! It'll be a case for
breach-uh-promise for any one uh yuh. Say, she's a bird! Got goldy
hair, and a dimple in her chin and eyes that'd make a man--"

With much reviling they accepted the wager, and after that Andy went
peacefully to sleep, quite satisfied for the time with the effect
produced by his absolute truthfulness; it did not matter much, he told
himself complacently, what a man's reputation might be, so long as he
recognized its possibilities and shaped his actions properly.

It is true that when he returned from Dry Lake, not many days after,
with a package containing four new ties and a large, lustrous silk
handkerchief of the proper, creamy tint, the Happy Family seemed to
waver a bit. When he took to shaving every other day, and became
extremely fastidious about his finger-nails and his boots and the knot
in his tie, and when he polished the rowels of his spurs with Patsy's
scouring brick (which Patsy never used) and was careful to dent his
hat-crown into four mathematically correct dimples before ever he
would ride away from the ranch, the Happy Family looked thoughtful and
discussed him privately in low tones.

But when Andy smilingly assured them that he was going over to call on
Take-Notice's girl, and asked them if they wouldn't like to come along
and be introduced, and taste a ripe olive, and look at the
star-fishes, and smell a crumpled leaf of bay, they backed
figuratively from the wiles of him and asserted more or less
emphatically he couldn't work _them_. Then Andy would grin and ride
gaily away, and Flying U Coulee would see him no more for several
hours. It was mere good fortune--fr