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Updated: May 14, 2025
Two days later Barbee reported to him again. The boy's face was haggard and drawn, his eyes burned sullenly. "Six head more gone!" he announced defiantly. His look said plainly: "What are you going to say about it? They're gone." "So you've turned cattle-thief, have you, Barbee?" was what Steve said. A sickly flush stained Barbee's hollow cheeks. "No!" he snapped hotly. "I ain't. But "
He had caught the fever; and the cattleman's fever is not easily shaken off. As McLagan would show no mercy to his own brother were he a proven cattle-thief, so Jim loathed the crime in little less degree. And he was about to face the world, his world, branded with that crime.
That ain't giving Will away, is it?" But Peter ignored the boy's defense. His shrewd mind was working swiftly. Here was his own unspoken suspicion of the man verified. The whole situation was all too clear. He turned to Eve with a sharp inquiry. "So Will's the cattle-thief. You knew it?" The girl shook her head and wrung her hands piteously. "No, no; I didn't know it. Indeed, indeed, I didn't.
"Springer," exclaimed George, "I am glad to see you again; and without your crutches, too! I hope you have entirely recovered." Yes, the man who had made his entrance into George's room in so unusual a manner was Springer, whom we have often spoken of as the wounded cattle-thief.
Robber, cattle-thief, outlaw he might have been in another century; for he filled the figure of any robber hero in life or romance, and yet he was only the Senator from Bell, as he was known in the little Kentucky capital; or, as he was known in his mountain home, just the Senator, who had toiled and schemed and grown rich and grown poor; who had suffered long and was kind.
"You've had your say, and now, I guess, I'll have mine. You know just as much as all the rest of the folk here; no more and no less. No more and no less than I do. When you or anybody else gets definite proof that I'm a cattle-thief you are at liberty to talk, but, until then, if I hear you, or of you, publicly charging me with cattle stealing, I'll smash you, if I swing for it.
All eyes were at once turned upon the window, and Smallbones again tasted the sweets of public prominence. "Say," he cried, "he's comin' right here. The nerve of it. I 'lows it's up to us to get busy. I say he's a cattle-thief, an' " But Jake turned on him furiously. "Shut your ugly face," he cried, "or or I'll break it." The baker's threat was effective.
As for your son, he got less than he deserved." He turned to the rancher. "You came just in time, it seems. Please see that he leaves the house." Johnson waved with his gun significantly towards the door. "Move right along lively," he added. "And I'll go along with you to see that you don't hamstring my horses, which I don't put past an underhanded cattle-thief like you."
"You have been proving something too much for him to swallow whole and boots on; your chipping in with us that time you took the mortgage over made him hungrier than ever to gobble up the crowd of us. So he plays the dirty trick of making it appear my father is a cattle-thief." "Blenham might do a trick like that. My grandfather wouldn't. That is, I don't think he would." "Better hedge!
Then he assisted the man to his feet, and taking his hand in his own shook it cordially. "Well, I will be blessed!" repeated Jake, who stood looking the very picture of astonishment. "Won't you, Bob?" "I should say I would," replied the latter, who was equally amazed. "That's something I never expected to see an Ackerman shaking hands with a cattle-thief!"
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