“As like as not,” growled the assistant foreman.
“Then why don’t you have him arrested?” shot out the cattle buyer so suddenly that some of the cowboys jumped, steady as their nerves were.
Hinkee Dee paused for a moment before answering. Then he growled or grunted rather than replied:
“Huh! I would soon enough, if I could get the evidence against him. But he’s too slick. There’s nothing positive.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Munson, easily. Then he got up and went away. The incident ended so quickly and so unexpectedly that it left some of the auditors in a sort of gasping state. Hinkee Dee did not, apparently, know what to make of the way the wind had been taken out of his sails. He sat looking at the door through which Munson had limped and muttered, as he, himself, went out:
“I’ll get him yet!”
“Think there’ll be a fight?” asked Bob, apprehensively, of Gimp.
“Naw. It’s all talk. I’ve seen and heard lots like it before. But Hink was right; it was sort of brash for Munson to talk openly with Martin, who people is beginnin’ to suspect of bein’ a rustler.”
All of this served to strengthen the suspicions that had been growing in the minds of the boys that Munson was, somehow or other, more or less connected with the cattle thefts.
True, there was no direct evidence against him. The only point that looked bad, aside from his talk to Martin, was the story of his having been shot while witnessing the raid of some rustlers. That part of the story was a fake, surely enough, as Jerry could testify. And Munson still kept up the fiction about his injured leg. In fact, for some time he had been going to town twice a week, saying he had to have it treated by a doctor.