Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/26

 bottle went round, to all appearances entirely comfortable and in his proper place. Sid Coburn studied him from this angle and from that, finally making the proposal that, if Tom had nothing definite at the end of the trail in the Panhandle, he go on to Drumwell with them and take a job on the Bar-Heart-Bar in case Waco Johnson did not stray back in due time.

Of course there was not anything certain about it, Coburn said. Waco might ramble in on the next train, in which case Tom would be pretty sure to hook up with somebody else. He could stick around in Drumwell a few days, and Coburn would let him know.

Simpson accepted the proposal calmly, as if it made little difference to him where the railroad ended, Panhandle or on the southern Kansas border, which probably was the case. Coburn liked him better for his undemonstrative way, no glib talk on his tongue, nothing at all that a man could read in his inscrutable poker face. The cowman thought more and more as he studied that mouth clamped on its secrets—rather grimly for a young man's mouth—that here was a lad for a particular job, chance it that a respectable cowman like himself had something of the kind to be done.