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On the plea of seeing whether their package had come, both Stratton and Jessup escorted him over to the station platform and did not quit his side until the train had departed, carrying the mail-sack with it. There were a few odds and ends of mail for the Shoe-Bar, but no parcel. When this became certain, Bud got his horse and the two mounted in front of the store.
He hinted that rumors of the cattle-stealing had reached the sheriff, who, debarred from taking up the matter openly by the absence of any complaint from the owner of the Shoe-Bar, had dispatched Stratton on a secret investigation.
"I've got to get to work right soon at something." Daggett took a swift step or two across the sagging porch, his face grown oddly serious. "Wal, I wouldn't try the Shoe-Bar, nohow. There's the Rockin'-R. They're short a man or two. Yuh go see Jim Tenny an' tell him " "What's the matter with the Shoe-Bar?" persisted Buck. Pop's glance avoided Stratton's.
If it had been merely part of a scheme to loot the Shoe-Bar for his own benefit, Tex would never have allowed his rustler accomplices to touch a steer from that middle pasture herd, which he must feel by this time to be thoroughly and completely infected.
Then he remembered that for all he knew she might not be the only one of her sex on the Shoe-Bar, and when the meal was over and the men were straggling back toward the bunk-house, he put the question to Bud Jessup, who walked beside him. "Huh?" grunted the youngster, with a sharp, inquiring glance at his face. "What d'yuh want to know that for?" Stratton shrugged his shoulders.
Stranger around these parts, ain't yuh?" he added curiously. For a tiny space Buck hesitated. Then, moved by an involuntary impulse he did not even pause to analyze, he shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I was out at the Shoe-Bar a couple of times about two years ago," he answered. "Haven't been around here since." "The Shoe-Bar? Huh?" Pop Daggett looked interested. "You don't say so!
"I'll tell you," he replied slowly at length, "but for the present I'd like to have you keep it under your hat. My name isn't Green at all, but Stratton." "Stratton?" repeated the sheriff in a puzzled tone. "Stratton?" A sudden look of incredulity flashed into his eyes. "You're not trying to make out that you're the Buck Stratton who owned the Shoe-Bar?" Buck flushed a little.
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