Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/274

 "I told you he'd spring it!" said Withers. "Pass it over to me—that's mine."

The sheriff backed up to the window, running his eye over both sides of the bill of sale.

"It looks straight enough," he said. "That's your writin', ain't it, Withers?"

"I told you how I come to write it," Withers said, holding himself in with difficulty. "I demand that paper!"

"This seems to be your night for demandin' things and not gittin' 'em," the sheriff said. "You acknowledge you wrote the bill of sale, and signed it, and took value received. Nothing for me to do, that I can see."

The railroad men applauded the sheriff's decision.

"I didn't come to you to be made a damn fool of!" Withers blustered. "Are you goin' to act, or ain't you?"

"It's a civil case," the sheriff declared, with judicial equanimity, handing the bill of sale back to Laylander, whose hopes leaped up in a new flame as if somebody had dashed a cup of kerosene over their paling embers.

"If there's a question of ownership over these cattle," the sheriff continued, "it's a civil case. Bring a suit against Laylander and prove his bill of sale ain't genuine. That's all you can do."

"I'll lay this before the prosecutin' attorney, I'll demand a warrant!"

"Well, colonel, you'll have to go down in the Nation somewhere if you do. He's gone off on a fishin' trip with Judge Burns."