of pure joy.

"Lord, how I do hate a Chink!" he cried, and dropped to the ground the
three shells in his hand that he might fire the two in his gun.

Pink yelled also. "Nab him, Cal!" and caught his gun arm the instant
Weary's last bullet left the barrel.

Cal leaned and caught Weary round the neck in a close hug. Jack Bates
and Happy Jack crowded close, eager to help but finding no place to
take hold.

"Now, you blame fool, come along home and quit disgracing the whole
community!" cried Cal, half angrily. "Ain't yuh got any sense at all?"

Weary protested; he swore; he threatened. He was not in the least like
his old, sweet-tempered self. He mourned openly because he had no
longer a gun that he might slay and spare not. He insisted that he
would take much pleasure in killing them all off--especially Pink. He
felt that Pink was the greatest traitor in the lot, and said that it
would be a special joy to him to see Pink expire slowly and in great
pain. He remarked that they would be sorry, before they were through
with him, and repeated, many times, the hint that he never forgot a
friend or forgave an enemy--and looked darkly at Pink.

"You're batty," Pink told him sorrowfully, the while they led him out
through the lane. "We're the best friends yuh got--only yuh don't
appreciate us."

Weary glared at him through a tangle of brown hair, and remarked
further, in tones that one could hear a mile, upon the subject of
Pink's treachery and the particular kind of death he deserved to die.

Pink shrugged his shoulder and grew sulky; then, old friendship growing
strong within him, he sought to soothe him.

But Weary absolutely declined to be soothed. Cal, serene in his
fancied favoritism, attempted the impossible, and was greeted with
language which no man living had ever before heard from the lips of
Weary the sunny. Jack Bates and Happy Jack, profiting by his
experience, wisely kept silence.

For this, the homeward ride was not the companionable gallop it usually
was. They tried to learn from Weary what he had done with Glory, and
whence came the mud-colored cayuse with the dim, blotched brand, that
he bestrode. They asked also where were the horses he had been sent to
bring.

In return, Weary began viciously to dissect their pedigree and general
moral characters.

After that, they gave over trying to question or to reason, and the
last two miles they rode in utter silence. Weary, tiring of venom t