Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/147

 "Not even distantly. I'm almost a stranger to them; I've known them only a short time."

"I didn't git a chance to mention it to the ladies, but maybe you can tell me: has there been a feller goin' under the name of Simpson been along here the last day or two?"

"I never have gone under any other name," Tom replied stiffly.

"The hell you say!" said the horse-breaker.

He turned his head in that listening, sharp, chickenlike way and looked at Tom with the queerest sort of grin that ever distorted human features. Instead of opening his lips, or spreading his face as a grin usually spreads out the countenance of a man, this horse-breaker's smile worked the other way. He closed his mouth, half-shut his eyes, pursed his features in a way to gather the main portion of them around his nose, and looked very much as if about to cry. Then, sudden as a explosion, the whole thing changed, his face lit up with amazing animation, he threw his head back and let out a roar of laughter that made the horses jump.

Tom regarded this amazing conduct with stiff neck and high chin. It was the first time in his experience that his commonplace name had evoked such an outburst of mirth. It passed; the fellow's features gathered again in that lugubrious expression that seemed a certain forecast of tears.

"You're the feller the horse run off with and carried around that full of money all night and didn't know it. Coburn was a sold man when he got that money back; he was a—sold—man!"