Promise of day was flushing the eastern sky and faintly warming the gray semi-darkness when Pendleton’s eyes flew open, to instant conviction of illness. From head to foot he ached with weariness, and he felt wretchedly sick. For a moment he kept quiet, feeling that it would be more comfortable to lie still and die than to try to move. But presently he thought, “I’ll never live to die of consumption if I don’t get up quick and find my whiskey!”
He scrambled to his feet and looked around. Not nearly so many men were stretched on the ground as he had expected to see, and his friend was not in sight. He looked for his saddle-bags, where he kept his flask. Conrad had taken them from the horse when they unsaddled, and Pendleton had not noticed what he did with them. He could not find the bags, everybody left in camp was sound asleep, and Curtis had disappeared. Wrapped in his blanket he was wandering around forlornly, squirming with pain, when he saw some one moving in the group of horses farther down the hill. He started in that direction and saw the man stoop beside Conrad’s mare, Brown Betty.
“Hello, pard! Where’s Curt?” Pendleton called loudly. The man straightened up quickly, and put away a knife. He looked at the curious figure coming toward him, and burst into a loud guffaw. “Gee whillikens, stranger! where’d you drop from?” he shouted back.
Pendleton explained, and asked the other to help him find his saddle-bags. They were discovered in the chuck-wagon, and the invalid offered his flask, with a cordial admonition to “drink hearty, pard.” The cowboy responded literally, and made several other visits to the saddle-bags before breakfast. By that time he was good-naturedly obstreperous, and had the camp in an uproar with his horse-play and noisy pranks. Conrad asked Peters where Andy got his whiskey. The foreman did not know, and said that this was the first time he had shown any signs of drink. The superintendent went to Pendleton.
“Has Andy Miller been taking a pull at your flask?”
“The cow-punch that’s feeling so happy? Sure, Curt. He helped me find my saddle-bags, and I thought I’d be sociable with him. I told him to drink hearty; and by thunder, Curt! you ought to have seen him. He sure had a worse thirst on him than I had yesterday.”
“I’ll have to ask you not to do it again with any of them. And you’d better let me put your flask in a locked box I have in the chuck-wagon, if you don’t carry it in your pocket, or you may not have any left by night.”
Gonzalez came up with a question, and Conrad remembered the letter he had for him. The Mexican took it with an unconcerned face, and went off behind the chuck-wagon. “I don’t need to see the inside of it,” thought Curtis; “but I’d like to all the same. Well, he’ll be all right now, and I’m glad of it, for I’d hate to have to kill as good a roper as he is.”
A few minutes later José strolled toward the cook’s fire, twisting the letter in his fingers. He was about to thrust it into the coals when Andy Miller jumped at him with a yell, and caught his hand. “Here, boys; José’s got a love letter! Let’s read it!” he shouted. Gonzalez resisted; Miller bore him down; and they rolled, struggling, over the ground. José’s dark face was pale with anger and his teeth were set as he gripped the bit of paper in one fist and pummelled Andy’s face with the other. Miller tried to shield himself from the blows with his arms, while he bent his energies to getting possession of the letter.