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Next morning early, while they were still miles from the Ellison ranch, Sheriff Treadwell parted company with Simpson. There was where he turned off, the sheriff said; it was a short cut to the county seat. Simpson, more disturbed by the prospect of driving that band of horses into the neighborhood alone than he had been concerned over the desperate business of recovering them, protested vehemently at being deserted this way.

"Oh, I say now!" he expostulated, feeling hurt at the sheriff's slipping out of it. "You can't leave me with all this business on my hands this way, Treadwell."

"I didn't recover 'em," the sheriff disclaimed bluntly, as if some taint of disgrace attended the exploit, "and I ain't goin' to go paradin' through that settlement like the credit was even part mine. I didn't have a damn thing to do with it."

"Oh, I say, now!" Tom protested, feeling as weak and abandoned as if the sheriff had closed the door on his very last hope. "I only started something I couldn't finish. You know very well"

"You'd 'a' cleaned 'em out in five minutes more if me and that cowboy had 'a' kep' out of it," the sheriff declared. "You go on home with them horses, Tom. Hand 'em around among the people they belong to, and if you have any left over let me know. I'll advertise for the