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 more said. Louise looked at Tom reproachfully, indignantly, now and then, a flash in her eyes, a lift to her chin that seemed little short of disdain. Couldn't the man understand, or wouldn't he understand? Was it density, rising out of his fine notions of honor, that kept him from seeing the hands behind this bold stroke for the restoration of his property? He seemed even incapable of thinking his friends would do a thing like that, instead of whooping it up and thanking them, as a natural man ought to do.

An Indian cowboy rode up with the two deputies, who looked very deeply troubled, and exceedingly wild about the eyes.

"This feller says they stopped them cows when they come rairin' and stampedin' through here last night," the livery stable wrangler, whom they called Hank, explained. "He's tryin' to hold us up for a dollar a head charges before he'll let us drive 'em back to Kansas."

"What do you think of that for a chunk of gall? A dollar a head!" said the other deputy, familiarly called Perry by Maud and her brother.

"That's the customary charge for stock"—Jim pronounced it stalk—"that stampedes off down here." Jim took it very easily, as a thing that fell in every day usage, although he could not have cited a precedent in all his years on the border range.

"Well, I ain't got no dollar a head to pay for nobody's cows," Perry declared.

"Here too," voted Hank.