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 Stott sat up with a sudden wrench, making his chair complain.

"Nobody in this country would believe that drunken burn on oath, any more than they would you two buzzards!" he declared, seeming to gather a breath of new courage.

"It might be that a jury in a court-room wouldn't take much stock in him, sir, but a jury of cattlemen on the open range is a different set of men," said Texas very solemnly. "Mackey wasn't willing to take the chance, and he was only your hired hand."

"You can't prove it—you can't prove a word of it!"

"But we can prove southern cattle on you to a fare-you-well."

Stott sat in heavy meditation a little while, the two who had brought him to such unexpected and heavy judgment waiting silently by.

"It's blackmail—I'll never pay it!" he muttered.

"You couldn't hire us to touch a cent of your money, Stott," Texas corrected him, his voice like the word of judgment in the banker's ear.

"Then what do you want?" Stott appealed, lifting his miserable face, staring at them in a dumb wonder, turning his glance from one to the other of that unaccountable pair.

"There's an old debt that's stood cryin' to your