"What d'ye say, boys?"
"I say he's lyin'," observed a squatter, whom Thomas Ransom had discovered ear-marking an unbranded calf.
"Smoky knows that Pap done it," remarked another.
This bolt went home. Smoky's face during the preceding five minutes had been worth studying. He was quite sure that the old man was lying, and upon his ingenuous countenance such knowledge, illuminated by admiration and amazement, was duly inscribed.
"Pap's yarn is too thin," said a gaunt Missourian.
"It's thin as you air," said Ransom contemptuously. "Do you boys think that I'd spring so thin a tale on ye, if it wasn't true?"
At this they wriggled uneasily. The 'Piker,' with some experience of fickle crowds, said peremptorily--
"The old man done it, and the young 'un knows he done it. They're jest two of a kind. Those in favour of hangin' 'em both hold up their hands. One hand apiece will do."
Slowly, inexorably, the hands went up. The judge pronounced sentence--
"Ye've five minutes. Say yer prayers, if ye feel like it."