would permit and snorted, and two
struggling forms squirmed away from his untrustworthy heels.

"Aw, leggo!" cried Happy Jack when he could breathe again.

"I won't. You've got to come back and square yourself with Annie. How
do yuh reckon she's feeling at the trick yuh played on her, yuh
lop-eared--"

Happy Jack jerked loose and stood grinning in the moonlight. "Aw,
gwan. Annie knowed I was goin' to do it," he retorted, loftily.
"Annie and me's engaged." He got into the saddle and rode off,
shouting back taunts.

Weary stood bareheaded in the cold and stared after him blankly.

WHEN THE COOK FELL ILL

It was four o'clock, and there was consternation in the round-up camp
of the Flying U; when one eats breakfast before dawn--July dawn at
that--covers thirty miles of rough country before eleven o'clock dinner
and as many more after, supper seems, for the time being, the most
important thing in the life of a cowboy.

Men stood about in various dejected attitudes, their thumbs tucked
inside their chap-belts, blank helplessness writ large upon their
perturbed countenances--they were the aliens, hired but to make a full
crew during round-up. Long-legged fellows with spurs a-jingle hurried
in and out of the cook-tent, colliding often, shouting futile
questions, commands and maledictions--they were the Happy Family:
loyal, first and last to the Flying U, feeling a certain degree of
proprietorship and a good deal of responsibility.

Happy Jack was fanning an incipient blaze in the sheet-iron stove with
his hat, his face red and gloomy at the prospect of having to satisfy
fifteen outdoor appetites with his amateur attempts at cooking. Behind
the stove, writhing bulkily upon a hastily unrolled bed, lay Patsy,
groaning most pitiably.

"What the devil's the matter with that hot water?" Cal Emmett yelled at
Happy Jack from the bedside, where he was kneeling sympathetically.

Happy Jack removed his somber gaze from the licking tongue of flame
which showed in the stove-front. "Fire ain't going good, yet," he said
in a matter-of-fact tone which contrasted sharply with Cal's
excitement. "Teakettle's dry, too. I sent a man to the crick for a
bucket uh water; he'll be back in a minute."

"Well, _move_! If it was you tied in a knot with cramp, yuh wouldn't
take it so serene."

"Aw, gwan. I got troubles enough, cooking chuck for this here layout.
I got to have some help--and lots of it. Patsy ain't got enoug