“I know he carries them on his person, and he’s got a little revolver handy, bless the luck. There now, I have let the cat out of the bag! There’s no one around who can hear what we say, is there? Sit down.”
I tell you things were going a great deal further than I meant to have them. I had come out there on purpose to induce Johnson to drop a hint whether or not he was in Clifford Henderson’s employ, but I had succeeded almost too well. It looked as though the man was going to take me into his confidence. It was a dangerous piece of business, too, for I knew if I did anything out of the way, I would be the mark for the bullets in one of Johnson’s shining revolvers.
“I don’t see why I should sit down,” I replied.
“Sit down a minute; I want to talk to you. You have had bad luck with your cattle,” said the man, as I picked out a comfortable place to seat myself. “You once possessed a large drove, but they were taken away from you at one pop.”
“That’s so,” I said. “If I could find the men who did it, I wouldn’t ask the law to take any stock in them. I would take it into my own hands.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that,” said the man. “I wasn’t there, although, to tell you the truth, I have been in at the bouncing of more than one herd of cattle that was all ready to drive to market.”
“What got you in this business, anyway?” I asked suddenly.
“What business?”
“Oh, you know as well as I do. A man of your education can make a living a great deal easier than you do.”
“Look a-here, young fellow, I did not agree to make a confidant of you in everything. Perhaps I will do that after a while. What I want to get at now is this: Are you willing to work with me to have this property go where it belongs?”