“Yes. I would know nearly all of them. What’s left of three is out there near the cottonwoods along Little River, but I don’t believe there’s enough to bury.”
“How is that?” inquired Bissell, who had evidently not heard of Larkin’s narrow escape from death at the rustler’s hands.
Bud told him briefly.
“You shore were lucky,” remarked the cowman with a Westerner’s appreciation of the situation. “Now, I’m the head of the cattlemen’s association in this part of the State, and o’ course it’s our business to clear the country of those devils. 131 You’re just the man we want, because you’ve seen ’em and know who they are. You tell me what yuh know and there’ll be the biggest hangin’ bee this State ever seen.”
As has been said, Bud Larkin had the legitimate owner’s hatred of these thieves who preyed on the work of honest men, and had sworn to help run them out of the country as soon as his own business was finished. Now, in the flash of an eye he saw where he could turn the knowledge he had gained to good account.
“You have rather queer ideas of me, Mr. Bissell,” he said. “First, you fight me until I am nearly ruined, then you expect I will turn around and help you just as though nothing had happened.”
“But in this,” cried the cowman, “you’ve got to help us. This is all outside of a war between the cows and the sheep. This is a matter of right and justice.”
“So is the matter of my sheep. The range is free and you won’t let me use it. Do you call that right or just, either one?”
Bissell choked on his own reply, and grew red with anger. Suddenly, without exactly knowing how, the tables had been turned on him. Now, 132 instead of being the mighty baron with the high hand, he was the seeker for help, and this despised sheepman held the trump cards.
Furthermore, Larkin’s direct question was capable of a damaging reply. Bissell sought desperately for a means of escape from the trap in which he found himself.