"He couldn't get out in a million years; not after I'm through staking him out to the anvil with a log-chain." He smiled maliciously into Dunk's fear-yellowed countenance, and waved him a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk did without a word of protest while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.
"What's it all about, Weary ?" Irish asked, when the three were gone.
"What is it they've got on Dunk?
Must be something pretty fierce, the way he wilted down into the saddle." "You'll have to wait and ask the boys." Weary rode off to hurry the herders on the far side of the band.
So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the subject and for that they said hard things about Weary, and about Andy and Miguel as well.

They believed that they were entitled to know the truth, and they called it a smart-aleck trick to keep the thing so almighty secret.
There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and the dam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always sweep down upon those who have provoked the disaster.

Frequently it happens that perfectly innocent victims are made to suffer.

The Happy Family had been extremely forbearing, as has been pointed out before.

They had frequently come to the boiling point of rage and had cooled without committing any real act of violence.