"Lord, be merciful unto me, a skinner!" exclaimed Heine Schultz, seating himself on a prostrate pine. "Wild Cat, you say one o' these Jaspers was bendin' over Jo with this here razoo?"
"I'm sure it was that that he had in his hand," Hiram replied. "He was the second one that I soaked, and I saw him drop it."
"Boy! Boy! That musta been some fight," observed Jim McAllen. "Think of our ol' Wild Cat puttin' the three of 'em on the run! Man, how comes it I miss all the good things in this life? Jo, was they aimin' to cut your pretty throat?"
Jo shuddered. "Thank Heaven I was blindfolded!" was her grateful thought. "But how ridiculous, boys! A razor! If they'd wanted to kill me, at least one of them had a gat. Ask Hiram."
"Maybe they was just goin' to cut you loose and tell you why they'd swiped you, when the Gentle Wild Cat went wild again," suggested Gulick.
"Cut a perfectly good lariat!" Jo picked it up. "Couldn't they have untied the knots?"
Gulick took the lariat and examined it. "Thirty-five feet," he said. "Rawhide—six-strand plait Been rubbed with cow's liver to soften 'er, too. What else? Whoop! What's this?"
He was studying the honda, also of rawhide, pressed flat when soaked and riveted in shape, a plaited button on the end of the lariat proper to keep it from slipping through the hole.
"Letters cut in this," Gulick announced. "T. H.' Who's that stand for?"
All went silent for a time, thinking; then Hiram Hooker said quietly, as if what he suggested mattered but little: