whisper. At the door he tilted his hat down at an angle over
his right eye and took long, eager steps toward an obscure
hotel and his meagre baggage.

There was no train going east until midnight, and he caught
that train. This time he actually got off at Dry Lake, ate a
hurried breakfast, got his horse out of the livery stable and
dug up the dust of the lane with rapid hoof-beats so that he
rode all the way to the first hill followed by a rolling,
gray cloud that never quite caught him.

When he rode down the Hog's Back he saw the Happy Family
bunched around some object on the creek-bank, and he heard
the hysterical screaming of the Kid up in the house, and saw
the Old Man limping excitedly up and down the porch. A man
less astute than Andy Green would have known that some thing
had happened. He hurried down the last slope, galloped along
the creek-bottom, crossed the ford in a couple of leaps and
pulled up beside the group that surrounded Silver.

"What's been taking place here?" he demanded curiously,
skipping the usual greetings.

"Hell," said the Native Son succinctly, glancing up at him.

"Old Silver looked over the fence into Kingdom Come," Weary
enlarged the statement a little. "Tried to take a drink with
a nose bag on. I guess he'll come through all right."

"What ails the Kid?" Andy demanded, glancing toward the house