Chapter 10. Wherein Andy Green Lies to a Lady

In the soft-creeping dusk came Andy Green, slouched in the saddle with the weariness of riding since dawn; slouched to one side and singing, with his hat far back on his head and the last of a red sunset tinting darkly the hills above him. Tip-toe on a pinnacle a great, yellow star poised and winked at him knowingly. Andy's eyes twinkled answer as he glanced up that way. "We've got her going, old-timer," he announced lazily to the star.

Six miles back toward the edge of the "breaks" which are really the beginning of the Badlands that border the Missouri River all through that part of Montana, an even five hundred head of the Flying U's best grade cows and their calves were settling down for the night upon a knoll that had been the bed-ground of many a herd. At the Flying U ranch, in the care of the Old Man, were the mortgages that would make the Happy Family nominal owners of those five hundred cows and their calves. In the morning Andy would ride back and help bring the herd upon its spring grazing ground, which was the claims; in the meantime he was leisurely obeying an impulse to ride into One Man coulee and spend the night under his own roof. And, say what you will, there is a satisfaction not to be denied in sleeping sometimes under one's own roof; and it doesn't matter in the least that the roof is made of prairie dirt thrown upon cottonwood poles. So he sang while he rode, and his voice boomed loud in the coulee and scared long stilled echoes into repeating the song:

"We're here because we're here, because we're here, because we're here, We're here because we're here, because we're here, because we're here--"

That, if you please, is a song; there are a lot more verses exactly like this one, which may be sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne with much effectiveness when one is in a certain mood. So Andy sang, while his tired horse picked its way circumspectly among the scattered rocks of the trail up the coulee.

"It's time you're here, it's time you're here, It's time that you were here--"

mocked an echo not of the hills.

Andy swore in his astonishment and gave his horse a kick as a mild hint for haste. He thought he knew every woman-voice in the neighborhood--or had until the colony came--but this voice, high and sweet and with a compelling note that stirred him vaguely, was absolutely strange. While he loped forward, silenced for the moment, he was conscious of a swift, keen thankfulness that Pink had at the last minute decided to stay in camp that night instead of accompanying Andy to One Man. He was in that mood when a sentimental encounter appealed to him strongly; and a woman's voice, singing to him from One Man cabin, promised undetermined adventure.

He did not sing again. There had been something in the voice that held him quiet, listening, expectant. But she also was silent after that last, high note--like a meadow