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I'll get you to handle her yourself. I'm goin' to ride her, an' don't want no fool broncho-buster tearing her mouth out." "Right-ho, boss." Jim was smiling happily at the man's broad back as he stood facing out of the door. "But, if you've half a minute, I've got something else to get through me." "Eh?" McLagan turned. His Irish face was alight with sudden interest.
"Look here, McLagan," he cried, vainly trying to keep his tone cool, "I've been with you about four years. You know something of my history, and the folks I spring from. You know more than any one else of me. For four years I've worked for you in a way, as you, yourself, have been pleased to say in odd moments of generosity, in a way that few hired men generally work out here in the West.
He turned on the two men waiting with their shouldered saddles. "I'll take your report up at the shack." And he pointed at his hut, fifty yards away. The men moved off obediently. And Jim, left to his own unpleasant thoughts, followed them up. Half-way to the hut he was joined by McLagan. The Irishman had seen the cattle come in, and was anxious to learn the particulars.
Ther's Will Henderson," he turned over the pages of his book. "Um, healthy, drinks a bit. Hasty temper, but good for fifty year 'less he gits into a shootin' racket. 'Tain't him now?" he inquired looking up. "No, 'tain't him. I see him this mornin'. He was soused some. Kind o' had a heavy night. Wot about McLagan of the 'AZ's'?" Again the butcher turned over the pages of his note-book.
He did so with another nervous laugh. "I'm 'fired, Eve. Kicked out by Dan McLagan, and branded by him as a suspected cattle-thief, as surely as surely as they've found a bunch of his cattle branded with my brand." They had reached the gate, and Eve turned facing him. There was a curious look in her eyes. It was almost one of relief. Yet it was not quite. There was something else in it.
It was such an evening on the ranch of the "AZ's." All these conditions were prevailing, except that the mind of Dan McLagan, the owner, was disturbed. Six of his boys were out on the special duty of searching for stolen cattle. This was bad enough, but Dan was fretting and chafing at the unpleasant knowledge that the epidemic of cattle stealing was spreading all too quickly.
After I'd made up my mind to hunt the devil down McLagan informed me, not in so many words, of course, that to do so was the only way to convince folks of my innocence himself included. So I'm going to hunt him down, if it takes months, and costs me my last cent. And when I find him" his eyes lit with a terrible purpose "may God have mercy on his soul, for I won't."
The boss wants to hear where you found those cattle of his re-branded with my own brand." McLagan sat up with a jerk. "Eh?" His face was a study. But chiefly it expressed a belief that he was being laughed at. Jim looked squarely into his half-resentful eyes and nodded. "Those cattle they've just brought in are branded with my brand. You know the brand. You helped me design it.
After consulting these Officers as well as McLagan, the Australian Brigadier, cabled Lord K. to say Alexandria must be our base as "the Naval Division transports have been loaded up as in peace time and they must be completely discharged and every ship reloaded," in war fashion. At Lemnos, where there are neither wharfs, piers, labour nor water, the thing could not be done.
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