“What! Again?” shouted the Overlanders.
“Yes. Why not? He was a cowboy, and I dreamed that he had just shot a man who made eyes at me. Wasn’t that a perfectly adorable thing for him to do?”
“Which man to do what?” questioned Stacy.
“For my fiancé to shoot the other fellow, of course. I just loved him for that.”
“Emma, we will have you in a strait-jacket yet,” retorted Grace laughingly. “How many does this one make?”
“Two real ones and a spiritual one. You know the one last night wasn’t a real fiancé—”
“Just an imponderable quantity or quality,” suggested Stacy Brown, which brought a laugh from the Overlanders, and made Hippy grin despite the fact that it hurt him to twist his swollen face.
Hippy, while feeling much improved, was sore and weak, and when Joe Bindloss rode up, as the Overlanders were eating breakfast, he said he had arranged to have them move their camp up near the ranch-house, as it would be some time before Lieutenant Wingate would again be able to ride.
“He can stay at my house and I’ll take all the care of him that he needs. You folks can make trips out and stay as long as you want to. What about it?”
The Overlanders agreed, and the rancher said the buckboard would be down later in the morning to fetch the wounded man. Bindloss sat down and ate breakfast with his new friends, and they had just finished the meal when Sam Conifer called to them that the cowboys were coming back, one of them leading an extra mustang.