“We’re plumb lucky,” he announced. “If I know my book, old Bissell will forget all about a few missin’ calves when he knows this feller has sent sheep up his range. Now we’ve got to run off about a hundred more head to that railroad camp north of here, and I think we can use this Larkin.”
A dark, sullen-looking puncher shook his head slowly.
“It’s takin’ chances,” he growled. “String him up, I say. He knows us all now, and I’d sooner he’d look through a rope than me.”
“You shore are ornery, Pete,” said a third, “an’ plumb set on stretchin’ yore neck. Cain’t yuh see that if yuh hang this feller we’ll have both the sheep and cattlemen ag’in us?”
“Shore, that’s sense,” broke in another. “Less hear Joe’s scheme.”
“’Tain’t so blame much, boys,” countered the chief modestly. “We’ll make this Larkin swear never to give word agin us if we don’t kill him. Then we’ll run him off into the hills for four or five days with a guard, finish our own drive, and clear out, lettin’ him go. What d’ye think of that?” 72
“It’s a reg’lar hum-dinger, Joe,” said one man, and the others concurred in the laudatory opinion.
But at the first sentence to Larkin, that young man upset their well-laid plans.
“Larkin,” said Joe, “we allow as how we’d like to make a bargain with yuh?”
“If you are going to bargain with me to break the law, you had better not say anything about it,” was the reply.