Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/236

 "You mean you drove them cows back from the Nation and brought 'em up here to the edge of town?" he demanded. "Well, what in the hell made you drive 'em down there in the first place if you didn't have nerve enough to go on?"

"I never drove 'em down there," Tom denied, with a stiffening of dignity and pride. "If I had 'a' done it, sir, I'd 'a' went right on. I wouldn't reach out my hand to take the most worthless trash in the world, sir, if the law had a claim on it. I've waited five days for you to come and take them cows off of my hands. I thought maybe the two boys that let 'em get away never come back to tell you."

"They come back, all right," said the sheriff, still pretty well up on the pinnacle of his astonishment. "Now, look a-here, kid: if you didn't drive them cattle off, who done it? Was it Maud Kelly and that other girl?"

"I think they just took it into their heads to move, the way cattle will do sometimes," said Tom.

"Only you know a dang sight better. Yes, them two boys come back and told me you was down there. What I can't see is what made you come back. Why in the devil didn't you go on home?"

The sheriff spaced the words of this question widely, speaking them in the slow, impressive, argumentative manner of a man who is trying to show another the enormity of his fault.

"I'm not a robber and a thief," Tom replied.

"You can't rob yourself, you darned fool! Every-