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
