"Wal, hit does look like a couple o' killin's en the expense of two funerals 'fore ye can git action. Old Matt, the daddy of 'em, is reported as havin' a private graveyard, scattered eround somewhar. Hit might come in handy in this emergency. In yer gaddin' around have ye ever seen enything like hit?" concluded Landy, turning to Davy.
"I never did!" said the midget emphatically. "It's got more entanglements than the time Solly Monheim took the bankrupt law to escape bankruptcy. That's the way Solly explained it after his show went on the rocks at Lincoln. And anyhow," he added to Logan, "why don't you peddle the thing to someone else and let them take the grief and do the slaughtering?"
"There's no slaughtering, as you call it, involved," said Logan with much dignity. "It's a lawful proceeding. If anyone is killed it will be done legally and in due process of enforcing the law."
"So you left the law out of it, left the sheriff at home, and went prowling on your own. If the old belligerent had cut down on one of these cow hands this morning, everything would have been legal and orderly?"
Davy's sarcasm struck home. Logan's face flushed. He realized that he was talking to an adult, not a child. He resented the criticism. But for the fact that the little man was a friend of Landy Spencer he would have made a harsh reply or ignored him entirely.
"Well, just what is your interest in the matter?" he questioned. "I don't see your name on the list of bank stockholders. Maybe you are kin to the Barrows, sort of looking after their interests?"
"No, I am not related to the Barrows. Never had the pleasure of ever seeing one of 'em. I don't know where they live, couldn't find the place without a guide. Wouldn't know how big it was after I'd seen it. I'm just an innocent bystander with big ears and a lot of curiosity. There is a rumor abroad that the ranch is in the hands of a receiver, that it's for sale, that the receiver is having some trouble about possession. If I could get just a few facts and find this receiver, I'd make him a proposition to buy it 'as is,' as the auctioneers sometimes say."
"You have never seen the ranch?" questioned the astonished Logan. "You would bid sight-unseen for a property that you don't know where it's located—would accept a deed without possession? Young man, you need a guardian."
"I had one once," retorted the midget, "and in the eight months of his management he turned over quite a lot of money to me, enough to gamble on, to buy a block of blue sky or a pig in a poke. Maybe there's enough to make a bid on a ranch, a property with a crazy man on it, armed with a gun and threatening to shoot intruders. If you are the receiver, I want to make a bid for the Bar-O ranch, as it is."
"No bids are solicited," said Logan severely. "The judgment is for forty-two hundred dollars. I bid it in for that, and must account for that amount. Then there are expenses and costs being added from time to time—"