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 "Coburn thought him and you framed it up to rob him of that dang money, Tom. He swore you and Waco was old trail pardners; said you framed it for him to miss the train and you to take his place so you could git away with that fool gripsack. He's kind of huffy yit 'cause it didn't turn out that way."

"Damn fool!" said Sheriff Treadwell, spitting contemptuously as only a sheriff can.

"He turned me a high compliment, thinking I had brains enough to plot out a thing like that," Tom said, but looking so grim and humorless that Wallace thought he saw trouble ahead for Sid Coburn.

"Well, you know it's natural for a man to suspicion a stranger when he hops the wrong horse and rides off with thirty-five thousand dollars," Wallace explained placatively. "I guess it's cowman nature to feel kind of sore, too, when he rides home and finds a feller's beat him there with that money, down to the last bal'-facted dime. Well sir, even Sid's wife had the laugh on him over the way you beat him home with that money, Tom. And I'm here to tell you when you make that woman laugh, you've done somethin', pardner."

"I believe you," Tom agreed solemnly.

"You can make a skinned cow laugh easier 'n you can that woman."

"She's got a streak of Cherokee in her," the sheriff remarked significantly. He said it as he might have disclosed the fact that she was afflicted with epilepsy, or some unfortunate ailment that cast a continual shadow over her days. Knowing it, one must excuse her faults.

"She's got a streak of sompin' a foot wide," Wallace