ack so that they could see
his face, and struggled for calm. In a minute he sat up and merely
gurgled.

"Well, say, I had to do something or die," he explained, gasping.
"I've gone through a heap, the last few hours, and I was right where I
couldn't do a thing. By gracious, I struck the ranch about as near
bug-house as a man can get and recover. Where's a cigarette?"

"What you've gone through--and I don't give a cuss what it is--ain't a
marker for what's going to happen if yuh don't loosen up on the
history," said Jack Bates firmly.

Andy smoked hungrily while he surveyed the lot. "How calm and innocent
yuh all look," he observed musingly, "with your hats on and saying
words that's rude, and smoking the vile weed regardless, never
dreaming what's going to drop, pretty soon quick. Yuh make me think of
a hymn-song my step-mother used to sing a lot, about 'They dreamed not
of danger, those sinners of old, whom--"

"Hand me the water bucket," directed Pink musically.

"Oh, well--take it from the shoulder, then; I was only trying to lead
up to it gradual, but yuh _will_ have it raw. You poor, dear cowboys,
that live your lonely lives watching over your cattle with your
_faithful dogs_ and the stars for company, you're going to be
_improved_. (You'll sure stand a lot of it, too!) A woman's relief
club back East has felt the burden of your no-accountness and general
orneriness, and has sent one of its leading members out here to reform
yuh. You're going to be hazed into a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and
Social Society, and quit smoking cigarettes and cussing your hosses
and laying over Rusty's bar when yuh ride into town; and for pleasure
and recreation you're going to read Tennyson's poems, and when yuh get
caught out in a blizzard yuh'll be heeled with Whittier's _Snowbound_,
pocket edition. Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and Gatty" (Andy
misquoted; he meant Goethe) "and all them stiffs is going to be set
before yuh regular and in your mind constant, purging it of unclean
thoughts, and grammar is going to be learnt yuh as a side-line. Yuh--"

"Mama mine," broke in Weary. "I have thought sometimes, when Andy
broke loose with that imagination uh his, that he'd gone the limit;
but next time he always raises the limit out uh sight. He's like the
Good Book says: he's prone to lie as the sparks fly-upward."

Andy gazed belligerently at the skeptical group. "I brought her out
from town," he said doggedly, "and whilst