Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/243

 you'd drove them cows down to the Nation. If you had 'a', Withers he'd 'a' sued me on my bond."

Tom had not made any reply to this. He was weary of insinuations and suggestions, disgusted with the warped and dishonest grain of Kansas people in general, if those around McPacken were to be taken as a fair sample of the whole. The sheriff went back to town, feeling safe, knowing that Tom could not get the cattle out of Kansas now before the sale, even if he should experience a change of heart.

The sheriff knew Laylander was a bigger fool than he ever had thought him. This had settled it beyond any doubt. Neither bravery nor cunning, sagacity nor reason, had brought that kid through his adventure with the bank robbers; nothing but that inscrutable supervision, that divine insurance, of fools.

Withers did not wait to get his dinner. With two men at his back he galloped off to the place where the sheriff said he would find the herd. He kept a sharp watch for Tom Laylander while in town, knowing very well that the lanky young Texan had not said his last word in that controversy. Withers wanted to get the cattle away from McPacken, his brand put on them, his ownership made complete. There was something like a cold chill of impending disaster at his back, urging him away from town, making it a torture to resist the impulse to twist in the saddle every little while and look behind.

That look of uneasiness grew in the cattleman's face as he rode, that strange coldness of threat at his back