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 whether that bald-faced agent intended to place the order at all. It looked like a hopeless prospect for bones.

Thus turning the several obstacles of discouragement in his mind, Tom went back to the wagon and drove across the track into the street, the gap in his wheel-team unfilled, the balky horse in tow at the endgate. For the trip home he intended to rearrange the horses, move the lead-team back and hitch the willing horse by a singletree to the end of the tongue, with a rope around the balky fellow's neck behind. There he could travel with the rest of them or drag, according to his perverse inclination. If he hung back and got his fool head pulled off it would be a good riddance of the pestiferous pelter.

Tom was puzzled, but not betrayed into any feeling of false security, by the disappearance of the lumberman and the apparent indifference of everybody in town to his presence. The marshal had not come forward to display the authority he was fonder of asserting than he was successful in enforcing, in Tom Simpson's case, at least.

Many horses were hitched in front of stores and restaurants, cowboys were jangling up and down the board sidewalks with spurs on their heels, but a few moments out of their saddles, their sweating horses close by, while mixed groups of cowpunchers and farmers chatted amiably here and there.

The cowboys laughed at this granger's queer way of hitching a harnessed horse behind his wagon and leaving that comical gap in his wheel-team. Some of them guyed him goodnaturedly as he drove down the street looking for a place to hitch, but drew in their horns quickly when they got a nearer look at the face of the