athen. Yuh sure are an ungrateful cuss."

"Give him some good, hot coffee, Patsy, and anything he wants to eat,"
commanded Chip, more sharply than was his habit. "And don't be all day
about it, either."

That settled it, of course; Chip, being foreman, was to be
obeyed--unless Patsy would rather roll his blankets and hunt a new job.
He took to muttering weird German sentences the while he brought out
two pies and poured black coffee into a cup. The reveler drank the
coffee--three cups of it--ate a whole blueberry pie, and was consoled.
He even wanted to embrace Patsy again, but was restrained by the
others. After that he went over and laid down in the shade of the
bed-wagon, and straightway began to snore with much energy and
enthusiasm.

Chip watched him a minute and then went and sat down on the shady side
of the bed-tent and began gloomily to roll a cigarette. The rest of
the Happy Family silently followed his example; for a long while no one
said a word.

It certainly was a shock to see Weary like that. Not because it is
unusual for a man of the range to get in that condition--for on the
contrary, it is rather commonplace. And the Happy Family had lived the
life too long to judge a man harshly because of an occasional
indiscreet departure from the path virtuous; they knew that the man
might be a good fellow, after all. In the West grows Charity sturdily,
with branches quite broad enough to cover certain defections on the
part of such men as Weary Davidson.

For that, the real shock came in the utter unexpectedness of the
thing--and from the fact that a man, even though prone to indulge in
such riotous conduct, is supposed to forswear such indulgence when he
has other and more important things to do. Weary had been sent afar on
a matter of business; he had ridden Glory, a horse belonging to the
Flying U. His arrival without the strays he had been sent after;
without even the horse he had ridden away--that was the real disaster.
He had broken a trust; he had, apparently, appropriated a horse that
did not belong to him, which was worse. But the Happy Family were
loyal, to a man. They did not condemn him; they were only waiting for
him to sleep himself into a condition to explain the mystery.

"Somebody's doped him," said Pink with decision, after three hours of
shying around the subject. "You'll see; somebody's doped him and
likely took Glory away when they'd got him batty enough not to know the
di