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 "Waco knows all about it, I can tell by his actions. He's as restless as a wet hen. For two cents I'd have you hitch up the buckboard and I'd go after Tom and make him come back."

"We couldn't." Eudora shook her head slowly, in deep and somber conviction. "He'd make us feel as little as two pins the way he'd hold his head up and bite off his words. He can look worse insulted and say less about it than any man I ever saw."

"I guess it's the English style; they're said to be cold-hearted folks, although that's the last thing anybody could say of Tom."

"We ought to be the last to think that of him, all he's done for us. I wonder if he thought I blamed him for that horse gettin' killed?"

"A smaller man might 'a', the way you said it, but not Tom Simpson. He's quick to feel and know—quicker than any man I ever saw. He's a—I guess what you might call a gentleman, whatever his past may be."

"Mother! I don't believe he's got any past."

"Every man has, if he amounts to a hill of beans. I'll bet that Waco feller's got a history a mile long, and he's so downright honest it does a person good to look at him. Of course we can't blame him for keepin' Tom's trouble from us: he was told to. And men'I'll stick together—they will stick together—whatever other faults they've got."

If everything was all right with Tom he'd be about at this creek or that hill, Mrs. Ellison anxiously logged his progress through the day. At evening she computed the distance he had made if all had favored him, and the dreaded, unknown danger had not overtaken him on the