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 "Them two girls suspicion you got something in your hoof down at Drumwell, Tom," he said.

"Um-m-m," Tom grunted, bending over the pile of bones, pretending little concern in their suspicions.

"Missus Ellison's as uneasy as a cow with a calf hid in the brush," Waco went on, resorting to such homely simile not through any want of respect but because he made his comparisons with the most familiar things. "She'll not sleep a wink till she sees you drivin' up that road agin. I don't know, but I think sometimes it's worse to raise up a woman's suspicions by keepin' something from her than to tell her straight out. A woman's funny that way; she can sense things."

"You seem to know them pretty well," Tom remarked, turning on him a quick humorous eye.

"I ort to," Waco sighed.

As he volunteered no additional information on how he came to master the female psychology, Tom was too polite to inquire. But he supposed Waco's education had come through practical channels, perhaps by marrying. He must have gone quite extensively into the adventure, judging by his oracular declaration.

Tom knew that cowboys of Waco's type, the roving, restless, more or less romantic-minded, frequently had a wife on every range, sometimes not confining the number to one. They were as light-minded about it as certain Mexicans whom Tom had known, who boasted of a priest wife and'a judge wife as ingenuously as another man might speak of a second pair of boots.

Eudora stood looking their way a little while as if she considered joining them, hesitated, appearing some-