about it!"

"I betche he lays for Andy yet, and gits him," predicted Happy Jack
felicitously. "He won't rest whilst an eye-witness is running around
loose. I betche he's cached in the hills right now, watching his
chance."

"Oh, go to hell, the whole lot of yuh!" flared Andy, rising to an
elbow. "What the dickens are yuh roosting around here for? Why don't
yuh go on out to camp where yuh belong? You're a nice bunch to set
around comforting the sick! _Vamos_, darn yuh!"

Whereupon they took the hint and departed, assuring Andy, by way of
farewell, that he was an unappreciative cuss and didn't deserve any
sympathy or sick-calls. They also condoled openly with Pink because he
had been detailed as nurse, and advised him to sit right down on Andy
if he got too sassy and haughty over being shot up by a real outlaw.
They said that any fool could build himself a bunch of trouble with a
homicidal lunatic like Blink, and it wasn't anything to get vain over.

Pink slammed the door upon their jibes and offered Andy a cigarette he
had just rolled; not that Andy was too sick to roll his own, but
because Pink was notably soft-hearted toward a sick man and was prone
to indulge himself in trifling attentions.

"Yuh don't want to mind that bunch," he placated. "They mean all
right, but they just can't help joshing a man to death."

Andy accepted also a light for the cigarette, and smoked moodily. "It
ain't their joshing," he explained after a minute "It's puzzling over