"Well, you write and tell him to come over. Seen anything of Hardy and his men lately?"
"Not since last Tuesday."
"Uh-uh. They're millin' around like a lot of burros—and gettin' nowhere. But Jim Waring's out after that bunch that got Pat. If I wasn't so hefty, I'd 'a' gone with him. I tell you the man that got Pat ain't goin' to live long to brag on it."
"They say it was the Brewster boys," ventured the stenographer.
"They say lots of things, son. But Jim Waring knows. God help the man that shot Pat when Jim Waring meets up with him. And I want to tell you somethin'. Be kind of careful about repeatin' what 'they say' to anybody. You got nothin' to back you up if somebody calls your hand. 'They' ain't goin' to see you through. And you named the Brewster boys. Now, just suppose one of the Brewster boys heard of it and come over askin' you what you meant? I bet you a new hat Jim Waring ain't said Brewster's name to a soul—and he knows. I'm goin' over to Stacey. Any mail the stage didn't get?"
"Letter for Mrs. Adams."
"Uh-uh. Lorry writes to his ma like he was her beau—reg'lar and plenty. Funny thing, you can't get a word out of him about wimmin-folk, neither. He ain't that kind of a colt. But I reckon when he sees the gal he wants he'll saddle up and ride out and take her." And Bud chuckled.
Bondsman rapped the floor with his tail. Bondsman never failed to express a sympathetic mood when his master chuckled.
"Now, look at that," said Shoop, grinning. "He knows I'm goin' over to Stacey. He heard me say it. And he says I got to take him along, 'cause he knows I ain't goin' on a hoss. That there dog bosses me around somethin' scandalous."
The stenographer smiled as Shoop waddled from the office with Bondsman at his heels. There was something humorous, almost pathetic, in the gaunt and grizzled Airedale's affection for his rotund master. And Shoop's broad back, with the shoulders stooped slightly and the set stride as he plodded here and there, often made the clerk smile. Yet there was nothing humorous about Shoop's face when he flashed to anger or studied some one who tried to mask a lie, or when he reprimanded his clerk for naming folk that it was hazardous to name.