om Andy's viewpoint--that duty did
not immediately call the Happy Family, singly or as a whole, to ride
across the hills toward the cabin of Take-Notice Johnson. Without a
legitimate excuse, he felt sure of their absence from the place, and
he also counted optimistically upon their refusing to ask any one whom
they might meet, if Take-Notice Johnson had a daughter visiting him.

Four weeks do not take much space in a calendar, nor much time to
live; yet in the four that came just after Andy's discovery, he
accomplished much, even in his own modest reckoning. He had taught the
girl to watch for his coming and to stand pensively in the door with
many good-bye messages when he said he must hit the trail. He had
formed definite plans for the future and had promised her quite
seriously that he would cut out gambling, and never touch liquor in
any form--unless the snake was a _very_ big one and sunk his fangs in
a vital spot, in which dire contingency Mary absolved him from his
vow. He had learned the funny marks that meant his name and hers in
shorthand and had watched with inner satisfaction her efforts to learn
how to fry canned corn in bacon grease, and to mix sour-dough biscuits
that were neither yellow with too much soda nor distressfully "soggy"
with too little, and had sat a whole, blissful afternoon in his
shirtsleeves, while Mary bent her blond pompadour domestically over
his coat, sewing in the sleeve-linings that are prone to come loose
and torment a man. To go back to the first statement, which includes
all these things and much more, Andy had, in those four weeks,
accomplished much.

But a girl may not live forever in that lonely land with only Andy
Green to discover her presence, and the rumors which at first buzzed
unheeded in the ears of the Happy Family, stung them at last to the
point of investigation; so that on a Sunday--the last Sunday before
the Flying U wagons took again to the trailless range-land, Irish and
Jack Bates rode surreptitiously up the coulee half an hour after Andy,
blithe in his fancied security, had galloped that way to spend a long
half-day with Mary. If he discovered them they would lose a dollar
each--but if they discovered a girl such as Andy had pictured, they
felt that it would be a dollar well lost.

In the range-land many strange things may happen. Irish and Jack
pulled up short when, off to their right, in a particularly, lonely
part of that country, broken into seamed coulee