Our host named the sum without hesitation, adding that he would be glad to show us over it; and Boone's face grew somber as he said: "It is more than twice what it was sold for when it was stolen from me."
We walked around the plowed land, inspected the stock, stables, and barns, and when, after a cordial parting with our hosts, we rode away, Boone turned to me: "It was an ordeal, and harrowing to see what might have been but for an insatiable man's cunning and my poverty. Another half-hour of the memories would have been too much for me. Well, we can let that pass. They were kind souls, and this last lesson may have been necessary. Strange, isn't it, that the simple are sometimes shrewder than the wise?"
"For instance?" I said; and Boone smiled significantly.
"Yonder very plain farmer has hit upon a weak spot in Lane's armor which the keenest brain on this prairie—I don't mean my own, of course—has hitherto failed to see."
Soon afterwards we separated, each going his different way.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WORK OF AN ENEMY
Whatever action the police took concerning Lane's descent upon Crane Valley was not apparent, and Thorn may have been justified in deciding that they took none at all. However that may have been, Lane left us in peace for a while, and it was not by his own hands that the next bolt was launched against me. He preferred, as a rule, to strike through another person's agency, and usually contrived it so that when trouble resulted the agent bore the brunt of it.
I was tramping behind the seeder one fine morning, alternately watching the somewhat unruly team and the trickle of golden grain into the good black loam, when two horsemen appeared on the prairie. They headed for the homestead, and living in a state of expectancy, as we then did, I shared the misgivings of Thorn. "They're coming our way in a hurry, sure; and the sight of anyone whose business I don't know worries me just now," he said.
"If it's bad news we'll learn it soon enough," I said. "Go on to the end of the harrowing. That we'll have a frost-nipped harvest if we're not through with the sowing shortly is the one thing certain."