Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/227

 "Um-m-m," said Simpson, his lips clamped hard around the stem of his empty pipe.

Sheriff Treadwell, seeing how it was, offered a red tobacco box. Doubtless it was not any higher grade than sheriffs usually smoke, but to Tom Simpson's palate and hard-pulled nerves it was equal to the best that ever came from old England with the king's warrant on the can. The grimness of his features relaxed; his eyes beamed so friendly and appreciative of his company that Sheriff Treadwell thought for a little while he was going to grin.

They made Coburn's camp a little after noon, just as the cowboys and the boss were licking their tin plates. Coburn was so surprised to see that big band of horses coming up from the direction of the Nation that his eyes could have been scraped off his face with a shingle. He didn't give Simpson what could have been called a brotherly greeting, not knowing what part he had taken in the enterprise, whatever it was. While the cook was frying a fresh batch of steak in a pot of grease the sheriff enlightened the cowman. Wallace, meantime, was putting the story into the ears of his comrades, Tom Simpson sitting apart on the saddle he had taken from his horse, smoking that delectable plug-cut out of the sheriff's red box.

So up bounced Sid Coburn and came stalking over to where Tom sat smoking, direct as a man who had a crow to pick. He stuck out his hand while yet ten feet away. Tom rose and met him with a demonstration no more reserved.

"Simpson, I take off my hat to you," Coburn said, and he took it off with the declaration, jerking it as if it