eat its dang head off. If Waco didn't show up in a reasonable time, Simpson could buy it for its board bill. A horse was about as much one man's as another's, anyhow, in those uncertain times.
To all of which Tom Simpson nodded when a nod was coming, and kept a tight tongue. He didn't feel like a man with a job ahead of him, when all was simmered down, for he had more faith in the return of Waco Johnson than the boss. He hoped Waco would come back. There was something in his name that appeared promising.
After supper they went to the big barroom for a game of cards, everybody feeling fine and at peace with the world. The boss was carrying the little handbag around with him, standing it down casually when he stopped to chat with some friend of the range. Tom Simpsom, certainly, had no more notion of what it contained than the brakeman on the train, who had kicked it contemptuously, if not vindictively, every time he passed through the car.
It was a common practice for cattlemen to lug money around with them that way in those days. The custom came down from the old time when cattlemen lived in the isolation of vast uninhabited places, where checks were as useless as they were unknown. Nothing but money went on the range then, and a cattleman always had considerable loose change kicking about, or none at all.
Even when banks came into the cattle country along with the railroads and other business, cowmen for a long time stuck to the old habit of cashing in on their sales and
