Eudora, busy with the after-supper work around the big, home-feeling room, came to the table where her mother sat across from Tom. She was shrouded in a checked apron, her short, curly black hair—it fell about midway of her rather long slender neck—pushed back from her forehead and held by a curved comb. There was eagerness in her eyes, a color of excitement in her bright handsome face.
"I've been wondering, mother," she said, dividing a Jook between her parent and guest, "if we couldn't get Mr. Simpson to go in with us on the bone business? I could pick them up and haul them here, and T— Mr. Simpson, could do the long hauling to town."
"That's what's he's going to do," Mrs. Ellison replied calmly. "I had it all decided on when I spoke."
"There's no big money in it," Eudora explained, taking it for granted that Tom had been drafted and wouldn't refuse to serve, "but it will beat a cowboy job. All that worries me is that gang of horsethieves. They'll lay for you—either in Drumwell or along the road."
"I'm going to take it up with Sheriff Treadwell," Mrs. Ellison announced in her final way. "He's paid to rid the country of that kind of people, even if we never did call on him when we had men of our own to keep them in their proper places. If he can't do it, or won't do it, I'll know the reason why."
"I rather think they can be managed," Tom said quietly.
"You'll help us, then, will you, Tom? You'll go in with us?" Eudora fairly sparkled with eagerness as she
