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They raced past the bluff where the officer was stationed, accompanied by four swarthy drivers, one of which was mounted upon a great chestnut horse whose magnificent stride and proportions fixed the captive's attention. He had heard of "Golden Eagle," and he had no doubt in his mind that this was he and the rider was the celebrated cattle-thief.
"So that I fancy the simpler the plan the better. Cameron will ride into the Piegan camp inquiring about his cattle, as, fortunately for the present situation, he has cause enough to in quite an ordinary way. I drop in on my regular patrol looking up a cattle-thief in quite the ordinary way. Seeing this strange chief, I arrest him on suspicion. Cameron backs me up. The thing is done.
Here's a feller robs you in the meanest way a man ken be robbed, an' you're yearnin' to hand him more a low-down cur of a stage-robber, a cattle-thief, the lowest down bum ever created an' you'd hand over this pore innercent little kiddie to him. Was there ever sech a white-livered sucker?
The cattle-thief seemed to be greatly relieved to see them go, but their extraordinary conduct made him very uneasy, and he looked toward George to see what the latter thought about it. "Never mind them," said the boy encouragingly. "They were employed on this ranche before I was born, and have finally come to think that they have more rights here than I have. Now, what did you want to see me for?
"Then you don't believe in penitence?" "Well," said the Colonel dryly, "I am, I hope, a Christian man, but it would be difficult to convince me that the gambler, cattle-thief, and whisky-runner who ruined every man and woman who trusted him will be admitted to the same place as clean-lived English gentlemen. There are, my dear, plenty of them still."
I loved him, and thou art a dog and cattle-thief coming by night. Strike! And I, being still blinded by her beauty, for, O my friend, the women of the Abazai are very fair, said: 'Hast thou no fear? And she answered: 'None but only the fear that I do not die. Then said I: 'Have no fear. And she bowed her head, and I smote it off at the neck-bone so that it leaped between my feet.
It was up in arms. There was no stronger appeal to its sympathies than the cry of "cattle-thief!" As a village it lived on the support of the surrounding ranches, and their ills became the scourge of this hornet's nest of sharp traders. McLagan had raised the cry here knowing full well the hatred he would stir, and the support that would be accorded him should he need it.
"I want that cattle-thief, Eagle Feather," he announced in a clear, firm voice that rang through the encampment from end to end. "Eagle Feather not here," was Trotting Wolf's sullen but disturbed reply. "Trotting Wolf, I will waste no time on you," said Cameron, drawing his gun. "I take Eagle Feather or you. Make your choice and quick about it!"
The cattle-thief gasped and coughed three or four times, as if he were trying to clear his throat of something that stuck there and choked his utterance, and finally nodded his head in reply. "Don't pay no attention to him, Mr. George!" exclaimed Bob. "He don't know nothin' but stealin' an' lyin', that feller don't, an' I wouldn't trust him as far as I could sling a yearlin'."
But from the day of Williams to this day the Cache has had its ruler, and when Whispering Smith rode with a little party through the Door into the Cache the morning after the murder in Mission Valley he sent an envoy to Rebstock, whose success as a cattle-thief had brought its inevitable penalty.
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