Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/219

 He was far from seeing, or even suspecting the trick that had been turned on them as the two green hands from town.

"You'll have to trot after 'em Tom," said Jim. "They'll cut diagonal across the Nation, only ninety or a hundred miles to home. That was a lucky little stampede for, you, old son."

"Do you reckon that old scoundrel drove that herd off?" Tom put it to Jim, eye to eye.

"Cal Withers, you mean? No-o-o. They stampeded. You never had a herd of Texas cattle up here in Kansas before, you don't know their tricks."

"Three or four men drove 'em off," said Tom, going right on with it in spite of Louise's hand put up to silence him, and Maud's shrill whistle to head him off.

"That's where these boys have been ridin' around," said Jim.

"We've got to go after 'em and drive 'em back," one of the deputies declared.

"If we don't," his companion said, "old Judge Burns he'll soak us for about a hundred years apiece. Will you give us a hand with 'em, Jim?"

"I guess we might as well all go along," said Jim. "I'm kind of curious to see how far they went."

Jim looked at Laylander curiously, almost reproachfully. Tom seemed sorry, judging from the look of his glum face, that the cattle had been put by chance or design—a generous man never would question how—where he could reach out and take them, and go on to