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 "Yes, and if you hurt a hair of his head I'll put a bullet between your eyes if it takes me forty years!" she told him. "I did double-cross you, and I'm glad of it, and Ed do it—"

He drowned her in a volley of abuse, yelled an order to somebody, and Fannie was taken away, protesting and defying as she went. The man who had cursed her came and bent over Texas, trying his bonds from shoulders to ankles, tightening them here and there, saying nothing.

Texas was so securely tied that he could move nothing but his fingers. For a little while the fellow stood looking down at him, as if he considered some additional precaution.

"It's purty tough medicine, Bud, but you'll have to stand it," he said.

"You might loosen the slip-knot around my arms a little if you're aimin' to leave me here, pardner. It's cuttin' off the blood from my hands. I'll be paralyzed."

The man laughed. "You're too damn handy with 'em anyhow," he said, and walked away, leaving Texas staring at the clouded sky.

Texas wondered whether one of them intended to come back and release him after they had driven their herd across, or whether it was their purpose to leave him there to die. The man who had spoken to him seemed to know something about