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 gathered up Sid Coburn's scattered possessions and returned them to the sack.

Mrs. Ellison was frankly curious about the contents of the brown bag. It must be money, she said, or those rapscallions wouldn't have been so hot after it and nothing else. Not unlikely. Some cattlemen were as simple as children over money, packing it around as if nobody ever had been robbed in that country, when robbery had been the principal industry for a long time, and was pretty well followed yet. Ellison had kept as much as twenty thousand dollars in the house at times, making her so uneasy that it would have been a relief, she declared, if somebody had come and stolen it.

Simpson was not so much concerned over the contents of the bag. He was pretty well satisfied the thieves had not taken anything out of it, as it still was weighty and appeared to be fairly well filled. He did not take so much as a peep into it. He balanced the sack by putting the little bag in one end, the box of candy in the other, rolled it all up in the slicker as Coburn had done, and lashed it to the cantle rings.

He said he'd like to borrow a horse, if they felt they could trust him, to take the stuff on over to Coburn's ranch. He said nothing about the awkward fix he expected to find himself in there when it came to explaining what had become of the horse he had ridden away from Drumwell. Coburn might take it reasonably, and he might be mean. It would have to wait the issue, and no use worrying over it in advance.

If Coburn had any gratitude in him he'd gladly let the return of the other stuff, granting that it had any