Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/248

 told him briefly how the two strange men had accosted him, and charged him with having stolen property belonging to the one who had paid for the false claim with his life.

"I believe it was a framed-up job. He couldn't tell me the brand on that horse. Do you know either of them?"

"No, they're strangers to me. But it's dreadful, Will-ium, the way you've got to go on killin' and slayin'. I wish to God—"

"So do I, but that don't help me any now. I tell you, MacKinnon, those two men were sent here to get me."

"I don't doubt it. And what are you goin' to do now?"

"I'm goin' on my way if nobody else shoves in to stop me. I wonder where that damn horse went?"

Plainly it had gone through the barn and out the door left open by the liveryman in his hurry to escape being drawn into the quarrel. Dunham expected to find the animal in the corral back of the building, wondering why the liveryman had shown such panic over the fuss, when no blame could attach to him. He had acted as agent for the cowboy who left the horse there to be sold. His bill of sale stated as much, in the cautious custom of those days, when the discrimination of ownership was not so very finely drawn by certain gentry who rode horses round about the land.

There were no horses in the corral, the gate of which swung open, and Dunham's horse was nowhere in sight. There was plenty of territory for a horse to throw its feet in behind the scene of Pawnee Bend's principal