Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/224

 Dingwell grinned across at Roy. "Some thorough our friends are. A bulldog has got nothing on them. They 're hanging around to help me dig up that gunnysack when I get ready."

The two men rode straight to the office of the sheriff and had a talk with him. From there they went to the hotel where Dave usually put up when he was in town. Over their dinner the cattleman renewed an offer he had been urging upon Roy all the way down from Hart's place. He needed a reliable man to help him manage the different holdings he had been accumulating. His proposition was to take Beaudry in as a junior partner, the purchase price to be paid in installments to be earned out of the profits of the business.

"Course I don't want to take you away from the law if you 're set on that profession, but if you don't really care—" Dave lifted an eyebrow in a question.

"I think I'd like the law, but I know I would like better an active outdoor life. That's not the point, Mr. Dingwell. I can't take something for nothing. You can get a hundred men who know far more about cattle than I do. Why do you pick me?"

"I 've got reasons a-plenty. Right off the