Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/174

 who it was, wanted to see Jim particularly. And Andy got into the way of starting when a message or call came from "home," just as Jim would start at the gleam of a "mounted trooper's" cap.

And they blamed Andy for every misfortune. No matter what it was, the blame would be screwed, by the family mental twist, round on to Andy. It was Andy's blundering—who never blundered from the right thing; or it was Andy's "thick tongue"—who had a silent and "straight" one. If Andy hadn't done this; or if Andy hadn't done that. If Andy hadn't said this; or if Andy hadn't said that. If Andy hadn't told.

There is a gap in the catalogue of family troubles, for I was away from the district; but the first day of my return it was my misfortune to have to ride on to Mathews', which meant Andy, with the cheerful message that Bob had been thrown from his horse on the way home from his last shed; or rather, that both his horses and he had fallen into a gully, and one horse had broken his neck and the other her leg (and had to be shot), and Bob was lying more or less broken-up at the Halfway House, where his recovery would be doubtful.

I found Andy rigging a Spanish windlass over a shaft in Sapling Gully, above the farm, where one of the plough horses had fallen down in the night. Old Mathews had just run home for tools, a pole, or fencing-wire, or something.

Billy Leonard, Mrs. Mathews' brother, arrived with me, having been sent for, and he was wild. He thought