“Well, all right, all right,” said Jim Nabours. “I was just trying to tell the boss a few things she’d orter know.”
But in three minutes Jim Nabours was back in the room, gray under his grime and tan.
“Miss Taisie,” said he dully, “your trunk’s gone! It ain’t in the cart at all. The scrip in there was worth maybe five times as much as sixty thousand dollars. Lands’ll go up in Texas now. And here I’ve lost all the scrip that yore paw give you!
“Miss Taisie, it was all my fault. I never did once think of that trunk a-tall; I was only thinking of cows.”
“Why, Jim, who could have taken it?”
“I don’t know,” said Jim Nabours. “It’s gone oncet more.”
He stumbled into a chair.
“I reckon I’m too old now. I’ve let you get robbed oncet more.”
CHAPTER XLV
THE MAN HUNT
THE sun sank gently back of the grasslands encircling Abilene. The night chill came, the quavering wail of the coyotes crept closer to the outskirts of the town, the unbelievably brilliant stars came out to illuminate a many-splendored night. But to these things Abilene paid little heed. She held festival on her day of triumph.