Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/179

 curiosity, glowing with pride in his good fee and easy victory.

"Why didn't you tear that note up, Laylander?" he asked loudly. "Then you'd 'a' had us."

"No gentleman would have thought of it, sir," Tom replied, with dignity and severity alike lost on a conscience that never had been big enough to give its owner any trouble.

Louise was not in court to hear the case go against Tom, it being a Saturday afternoon, with many ranchers in to pay their taxes. Besides, it was Maud Kelly's last day in the office. She was closing up her affairs preparatory to taking her two weeks' vacation, at the end of which time Louise was to succeed her. Tom was rather glad than sorry that she had not been present to witness his defeat. He returned to the hotel with a smile for Mrs. Cowgill on the bench beside her door, the void of his great disappointment and loss hidden under his cougar-skin vest.

"Well, Tom, did you beat him?" Mrs. Cowgill inquired, lively interest in her thin face.

"No ma'am, I didn't beat him yet."

Tom stopped before her, hat off in his respectful way that Mrs. Cowgill admired sa greatly, and prized all the more highly when she was the object of it, so few marks of deference falling in her barren life.

"Didn't the judge decide it yet?"

"Yes, he decided it, ma'am. Colonel Withers won this throw. The judge ordered the sheriff to put my herd up for sale at public auction ten days from today."