Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/272

 it wasn't to be any other way. It had been arranged when the map of his life was drawn, for that person to cut his trail that afternoon and set Cal Withers free. It was the order of life, and nobody could alter that. But he sure would like to see the color of that man's hair!

Russius Ransom had yielded to the pressure of conscience, or some other equally insistent call, and merged into the night. Tom sat on the running-board laid along the top of the high white fence, considering his situation. The cattle were lying down, as happy in one place as another, puffing out big sighs after their comfortable way as they switched cuds.

Sitting there in the dark, the subdued noises of the town familiar in his ears, Tom confessed he had made a bad business of this undertaking. It would have been better to have worked to his original plan of confronting Withers when the law got through with the case, and settling it between them in his own way. He could have gone back to Texas then and related to them how he had been tolled up into Kansas and sheared like a sheep, for he would have done the least that his neighbors down there expected of a man in such case. If the law will not give a man justice, it rests with him' self to get something on account, at least. That was the way they looked at it in Texas.

Now, what was there to be done? It looked as if things had been framed to make a public spectacle out of him, first getting himself in as deputy sheriff to watch his own cattle, next putting into his mind what