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 I was about to throw and brand loped off and left me gappin' after it like a fool. I don't guess I'll ever overtake it any more."

"How long were you in the university, Tom?"

"I left in the middle of my junior year, Miss Louise. But how did you know? The brand must be so dim on me by now it'd take a spyglass to see it."

"Not so dim," she said. "Do you plan to go back?"

"No, I'll turn my face elsewhere, Miss Louise. I'll go on tryin' to pick up something on the start I've got while I'm waitin' for the road to run a little plainer under my feet."

"But you could go back, Tom."

"Ma'am?" said Tom, the cowboy in complete possession again, staring into her animated face with bewildered eyes.

"When you sell you cattle, I mean."

"When I sell 'em, ma'am? I ain't even got 'em to sell."

"You will have them; you're bound to beat that old thief."

"My lawyer says we'll beat him. He says the note Withers holds over me was outlawed in this state five years ago, if it never was paid. But I tell you, Miss Louise, if my father ever owed that man ten thousand dollars that long ago, it was paid."

"He ought to have been careful to get his note back," she said.

"They were awful careless about such little things in those days, Miss Louise."