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 remount, hopped into the saddle and started after the sheriff.

"One of them got by me, the sheriff's gone after him," he explained.

Wallace demurred about rushing off like that.

"Say, Tom," he said in astonishment, "you ain't a-goin' to leave your good saddle on that dead horse, air you?"

"It don't belong to me—I don't want to burden myself with it."

"Well, if it's all the same to you, then," said Wallace, one leg tentatively over the saddle, a polite request for permission in his ingenuous face.

"Help yourself," Tom granted, curbing his impatience to be away after the sheriff.

Wallace had the saddle off in two jerks of a lamb's tail and was up again with it in front of him.

"I hate to see a good saddle throwed away," said he, frugally reflective as if he had seen it done in his time. "This here one's worth sixty dollars, cold money. But that's a Block E horse, Tom,"—quizzically puzzled; "how come your horse and somebody else's saddle?"

"I stole it," Tom explained, directly to the point.

"The hell you did! From that gang down on the Salt Fork?"

"But I'll give you a bill of sale for it if your conscience"

"Conscience hell! I ain't got no conscience. That saddle's worth a million dollars to me now!"

Carrying the saddle didn't appear to encumber Wallace in the least. He loped on beside Simpson, silent quite a little while, so overcome by the flock of thoughts set