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Sheriff Treadwell came around next day while Tom was greasing the wagons and making ready to go into the business of transporting bones. The sheriff had taken his own time about making a start to investigate Coburn's appeal for help in recovering his money, and had been stimulated to push his investigations that far only by the the vague report of a fight at the Ellison ranch. A homesteader had heard the shooting and seen the defeated party pass by carrying a man across a saddle. He had told a neighbor, who had passed the news along until it finally reached the sheriff.

The sheriff was a small solemn man of clerical appearance. He arrived in a buckboard drawn by two horses, more in the state of a judge than a sheriff, no arms buckled on him, his badge of office carefully concealed under his short double-breasted black coat. He wore a narrow-brimmed derby hat and shoes with large black buttons, and he was altogether a trim and spick, metropolitan appearing man, about as far removed from the general type of Kansas cow-county sheriff as well could be imagined. He had a sharp and wide-awake look about him which was sufficient evidence to Tom Simpson that if he didn't break a hamestring in his efforts to catch the thieves who plagued the borders of his jurisdiction it was for very good reasons of his own.