Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/227

 Maud?" Louise pressed him. "They'll never forgive you, spurning their help, insulting them this way. You as much as say they stole the cattle when they tried to help you."

"I take it for all they meant it to be," Tom said seriously. "It was different with them, the law hadn't laid a hand on their property and told them to stand off. But if I go on with the cattle I'll be stealin' them. There's no two ways about that, Miss Louise."

"It would be all right for you to go on with them," she insisted, "since they strayed off this way into your hands. Or for all that anybody ever will know, need know, they strayed. Nobody in Texas will ask you how you came to get hold of them, I'll bet you, Tom."

"They'd think it was a pretty smooth trick, I expect," Tom admitted, obliged to grin a little in appreciation of it himself.

"They'd tell you in Texas you did right to drive the cattle on from here."

"I expect likely some of them would," Tom agreed.

"Wouldn't everybody?" she insisted, convinced that she was right.

"I expect most everybody would, Miss Louise."

"Then go on."

"A man's got to begin, and end, standin' right with himself, Miss Louise. There's so many things all along the road that he does, that nobody but his ownself knows anything about. When a man begins to cheat himself he'll turn out the biggest scoundrel that ever was. I told you once I was goin' to wait on the law