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 "The best way you can do it, Mr. Hughes, will be to tell Moore and Garland and the rest of them that Bill Dunham said it wasn't a money consideration with him. Tell them he said he lost more, maybe, than you gained, and you never paid him a damn cent. Tell them that, and make it strong."

"Trust me to make it strong," Hughes said, bearing down hard on his words, turning to Dunham with a mystified look, yet a look of respectful admiration.

They rode on in silence, too much in the thoughts of each for many words. There was no sound but the clicking of the cattles' hoofs as they marched on in that uneasy, jogging way of starts and flurries.

"I'll stop to let 'em feed about two o'clock," Hughes said after a while. "If that crowd keeps hands off we ought to make nine or ten miles by then."

"I'll stay with you till evening," Dunham said, not for any assurance there might be in the promise, for he seemed to be speaking apart from his thoughts, his eyes far ahead where heat was beginning to waver like oil in water over the trail, "and then I'll go my way."