TOM Laylander rode back to the camp which the two deputy sheriffs had visited to pick up their belongings on their way to McPacken. He found the negro cook hitched up and ready to follow Hank and Perry to town. This man, who enjoyed the euphoniously alliterative name of Russius Ransom, was an old-time range cook, a bony little black man with a wide showing of teeth and a high-pitched voice. He was greatly diverted by the account of the stampede which the two cowboys had given him, too old a hand to be fooled by any such tale.
The surprise of Russius was little less than his evident disappointment and disgust when Laylander came seeking his aid in working the herd back to Kansas.
"My soul, you Texas man! You mean to tell me you didn't steal them cattle yo-self? Go on, boy! Don't lose your nerve when you got 'em safe in the Nation. Go on, go on home."
Russius waved him away with a swimming motion, backing off, refusing to have a hand in any such folly as restoring well-stolen property.
Tom finally convinced him of his mistake, and his determination to have his help whether it suited his notion of proper procedure or not. It was no one-man job getting the scattered herd together and started back across the line. Russius saddled one of his team and went along, protesting that it beat his time, and that he never would have believed any Texas man capable of such enormous folly.
By sunset they had worked the cattle back to the vicinity of the wagon, when Tom dismissed Russius to get supper, himself standing by the cattle until they had settled down for the night.
They were too near the line to suit Laylander; he didn't want them straying over there singly and in bunches, as they were pretty sure to do, still thinking of them as his own. His feeling was that they were simply in pawn, soon to be relieved of their obligation under judgment of the law. He did not consider Cal Withers as a factor in the case at all. If it had stood solely between him and Withers, it would have been settled long ago.
Next day Laylander worked the cattle northward, moving them five or six miles. He had expected the sheriff down to relieve him of his charge long before noon, but neither sheriff nor anybody representing him had appeared at dusk. Tom left the contented cattle to their repose, expecting to be roused during the night by the coming of somebody to relieve him of his responsibility to his personal honor and the law.
Four days passed in this way, Tom edging the herd all the time a little nearer the river and McPacken. The cattle were still in the territory that he had bargained to lease from Cal Withers, but near the northern limit of it now, he believed. There would be danger of getting them mixed with other herds if he pushed them farther. Still the sheriff had not come; nobody had crossed his peaceful way.
Laylander knew that Withers had not learned of the herd's so-called stampede into the Nation, or he would have been down there hot-foot to get them back to Kansas. What Tom could not understand was the absence of the sheriff. He concluded at last that the two deputies had been ashamed to return to town. The sheriff thought they were still standing guard over the cattle, and all was well. Neither the sheriff nor Withers knew anything about the cattle having passed into his hands.
There was but one thing for him to do: go to McPacken and inform the sheriff. He knew that wise and worldly McPacken would laugh at his simplicity, that he would be the joke of cow camps for a hundred miles around. But he never could have gone back to Texas with the cattle, good start on the way that Jim Kelly had made for him in his mistaken generosity. He never could have held up his head among his neighbors, even though many would have admired him and given him credit for a mighty shrewd trick. As for Louise, she had closed the door. It seemed impossible that it ever could be opened again.
It was a time of inactivity in the county seat. The judge of the district court was away on vacation, only the clerk there to represent the judicial machinery until his return. Many of the heads of county offices were out on their ranches or farms; the court house, and the square in which it stood, the most uninteresting place for loafers in the town.
The sheriff was improving this lull in court business to push his campaign for re-election. He was at work in his large bare office, his desk slewed around out of its accustomed place, the incrustations of years on the floor marking the spot where it had stood, to bring it in line of the draft between the windows. There was a pile of mussy mimeographed letters before the sweating official, to which he was signing his name to give them the personal and intimate appeal.
It was a job for the sheriff, this going through twelve or fifteen hundred letters and attaching his name with a flourish at the end. At times he rather enjoyed taking his stub pen between his fingers and putting his signature to subpoenas, attachments, warrants; liked to see the impressive length of his name stretch out that way, swelling up with the thought that the papers wouldn't be worth a cent without that name, and the thought that it meant so much to the peace and dignity of the state. This was a different job; he regretted that she hadn't ordered a rubber stamp.
It was a hot, dry, hay-making day. Tom Laylander's boots were white with dust when he came in the door; dust was marked in the sweated wrinkles of his sleeves. He stood just inside the door, hesitating, apologetic, afraid of stepping on somebody's toes, or somebody's rights, or somebody's floor, as he always seemed. The sheriff put down his pen, slowly, in a dazed and astounded way, his chicken face as expressive of surprise as it ever depicted any emotion in his life.
"Well, I'll be damned!" said the sheriff.
"Yes, sir," said Tom, respectfully, all rattled and embarrassed, his face as red as if the sheriff had damned him, rather than his official and private self.
"I thought you was back on the Brazos by this time," said the sheriff, frowning on his visitor, greatly displeased, to all appearances, that he was not.
"No, sir," said Tom.
"I see you ain't. Well, where have you been? What're you doin' here?"
"I come up to tell you about them cows of mine."
"I don't want to hear nothin' about your damn cows," the sheriff declared. "If you've got 'em down in Texas, keep 'em there. I don't never want to see the color of their hides agin."
"They're not down in Texas. They're just down here a little ways, six or seven miles southwest of town."
The sheriff got up, leaned forward across his desk, his weight on his rigid arms. He seemed to be an injured and much wronged man, and that injury and that wrong imposed on him by a friend.
"You mean you drove them cows back from the Nation and brought 'em up here to the edge of town?" he demanded. "Well, what in the hell made you drive 'em down there in the first place if you didn't have nerve enough to go on?"
"I never drove 'em down there," Tom denied, with a stiffening of dignity and pride. "If I had 'a' done it, sir, I'd 'a' went right on. I wouldn't reach out my hand to take the most worthless trash in the world, sir, if the law had a claim on it. I've waited five days for you to come and take them cows off of my hands. I thought maybe the two boys that let 'em get away never come back to tell you."
"They come back, all right," said the sheriff, still pretty well up on the pinnacle of his astonishment. "Now, look a-here, kid: if you didn't drive them cattle off, who done it? Was it Maud Kelly and that other girl?"
"I think they just took it into their heads to move, the way cattle will do sometimes," said Tom.
"Only you know a dang sight better. Yes, them two boys come back and told me you was down there. What I can't see is what made you come back. Why in the devil didn't you go on home?"
The sheriff spaced the words of this question widely, speaking them in the slow, impressive, argumentative manner of a man who is trying to show another the enormity of his fault.
"I'm not a robber and a thief," Tom replied.
"You can't rob yourself, you darned fool! Everybody here, even Judge Burns, believes them cattle belong to you by rights. That note you brought into court fixed you—the judge had to decide for Withers on that. But this time—oh, hell!"
"I didn't expect many people up here to look at it the way I do."
"If there's anybody with as much sense as a rabbit that will, I'd like to see the color of his hair."
"If you'll be so kind as to send somebody down and take 'em off of my hands, I'll be obliged."
"You've lost for good this time," the sheriff said, entirely disgusted with such a simpleton. "Twice the cards turned your way, but you didn't have sense enough to go the limit either time. They'll never come up for you again, kid. Yes, I'll send somebody down—I'll have to send somebody, now you've got them damn cows up here under my nose."
"Thank you, sir," said Tom, turning to go.
"Say, hold on a minute," the sheriff hailed, jerking his head as if to pull Laylander back. "I'll tell you what I'm goin' to do; I'm goin' to deputize you to guard them cattle yourself till they're sold and delivered to the buyer on my bill of sale."
"Well, I don't know," Tom demurred. "If there's anybody else—"
"There ain't nobody else. This town's full of bums you couldn't pry off of them saloon chairs with a redhot crowbar. You might as well be makin' two dollars a day as hangin' around here doin' nothing. Your cows're gone now, anyhow. You might 'a'—oh, hell! what's the use! Hold up your hand and be sworn."
Tom thought it was just as well, perhaps better, for him to look after the cattle until they should pass out of the law's hands into Cal Withers's, when he would be free to act in the matter after his own way. He lifted his hand and was made a deputy sheriff in few words.
"When Withers—or whoever buys 'em, and it'll be him—comes down there with a bill of sale signed by me—here, this is my signature, take one of these along so you can identify it—you deliver the cattle to him, and then you step out. Your commission expires that minute, your official duty will be over. Come up here and get your pay."
Tom was not as keenly conscious of the ridiculous, ironical humor of the situation as the sheriff. While he recognized his unusual position as custodian of his own property waiting sheriff's sale, he was utterly blind to the opportunities which a less scrupulous, and perhaps wiser man, might have jumped to profit by. He did not even suspect that the sheriff hoped he might wake up to a realization of his own interest in thematter at last, and head the cattle back across the line.
They were his cows; his interest lay in seeing them put on as much meat as possible in the shortest time. Yet perhaps he was not quite as simple as the sheriff thought him. He grinned a little as he rode out of town, thinking that it was a kind of a joke on him sure enough.
But it was a joke with two sides to it, Tom realized. He could see one side, the sheriff could see the other. He rode past the Cottonwood Hotel, where he saw Banjo Gibson in his accustomed place. Banjo wondered what business that darn fool feller had with the station agent that time of the day when he saw Laylander dismount and go into the depot, leaving his horse beside the platform. Presently he came out and rode on, passing again within fifty feet of Banjo Gibson but not giving him as much as the favor of a glance.
Out the dusty country road toward the river, Tom went, crossed the shallow stream and followed its meandering way to the place where his cattle were grazing on the rich grass of the valley. As he rode he thought not of the cattle, nor of his new duty in connection with them, but of Louise.
Poor little lamb! he thought. Led away by her great desire to see him in possession of his own again, she had not considered the right or the wrong of the action she had urged him to take. By this time she would be sorry, he expected. She might come riding along almost any day to tell him she was sorry, and give him her little hand in contrition. Poor little lamb!
Russius Ransom was delighted to learn that Tom had been promoted, as he called it, to the job of deputy sheriff. He said he reckoned they would start for Texas in the morning, a conjecture which Tom corrected with unusual harshness. But Russius felt his hopes of seeing what kind of a country Texas was, and what sort of colored persons were down there, rise again the next day when he saw Tom looking off to the south every little while.
It was drawing him on, Russius said. He thought that Texas man would begin to show a streak of sense after a while and use the authority of his official position. A sheriff could take anything he wanted and go anywhere he pleased. Nobody could stop a sheriff; he was a man who could bust right through.
Tom was not thinking of Texas, his eyes on the south, but of Louise. Her conscience must be troubling her greatly by this time, he believed, remembering her earnest avowal that she was going to be right there to help him when he needed help to square his account with the man who had tried to rob him under the law. Tried to; Tom never would admit to himself that it had yet been done.
Conscience would burn in Louise when she thought of that vow, and urge her to strike out and find him, poor little dove! He did not want to drive the cattle any farther from McPacken; right about here was where he wanted to be when Cal Withers came to take them over on the sheriff's bill of sale. But he would keep them ranging along close to the old trail, so he would see Louise when she came in her sorrow. Then, when she came, half blinded by her tears, he would go to meet her, his heart in his hand.
In McPacken the sheriff was keeping his own counsel concerning the men in charge of the herd. He had not told anybody of Tom Laylander's appointment; he didn't want it to get to Cal Withers's ears. Withers would kick up a row over it. He couldn't be expected to appreciate the joke as the sheriff did.
Meantime, the days marched off. The day of the sale arrived, finding Tom ranging the cattle along the Arkansas River, a few miles from McPacken, by the side of the old Texas trail. His heart was in his hand, feeling as if it must wither away and perish of loneliness and despair. Louise had not come.