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 his saddle in, or come rummaging around after something. In addition to the danger of betrayal by the traitorous horse—he gave it another dig with knuckle and thumb at the thought of its treason—it was too light in that stall.

He crouched to see if the shadow of the manger would hide him, discovering that it was possible to slip from stall to stall between the bottom of the sloping manger and the stall divisions. Accordingly, he wormed through into the adjoining stall, where it was darker. The occupant was another Block E horse. It gave him a sidelong look of curiosity and turned indifferently to nosing its hay.

Unfriendly outfit, those Block E horses, Simpson thought; apparently not a particle concerned whether they ever saw the old home place again. But business, not sentiment, was the motive for rescuing stolen horses, as well as being the actuating factor in their thieves' design. Whether those indifferent, hostile animals wanted to be taken home or not, he was there to return them if the desperate contrivance of one man could acomplish it.

It looked like a cloudy venture to Tom Simpson as he stood in the gloom of that big stable running his eye over the horses. How many of them belonged to the Block E, how many to the homesteaders in the neighborhood, he did not know. Those near enough to be seen distinctly were splashed to the withers with mud. They had been on the road, a long road and a heavy one. If there were any more of the Ellison horses among them he could not see the brand.

Simpson waited developments with nerves drawn as