“All here but General,” Roy murmured. “You said you saw him out on the range, Pop. Then dad must be inside.”
Coming nearer the ranch house, a mutter of voices reached them. Loud above the others, sounded Jake Trummer’s, with his repeated:
“You hear me, now—you hear me!”
“Hot times,” Bug Eye remarked.
Then they reached the side steps, and another speaker interrupted. The voice was low, but vibrant.
“That’s dad,” Roy said tensely. “He’s good and mad about something.”
“Jake Trummer,” Mr. Manley was saying, “I’ve known you for a long time. An’ I never thought you’d pull a low-down trick like this.”
“Bardwell Manley, you go careful! I kin only stand so much! You’re at my house, my guest, an’ as such I respect you. But you hear me when I tell you I didn’t touch your dogies, an’ I mean it. An’ if you’re wantin’ to call me a liar to my face, start now!”
“But, Jake you tole me you’d drive ’em into the river, an’ when I get here they’re gone! What would you say in a case like that? Don’t it look as if you’d done it?”
“But I tell you I didn’t! They was there last night. To-day they was gone. That’s all I know about ’em.”