"Hello, Ross!" Leslie called in a voice which he tried to make matter-of-fact, but which bubbled over with jubilation. "I stopped in at the post-office and got your word and a letter from dad. It’s only a month old! He thinks we’re mewed up over here, you know, working your claims. And he says he and Sue want me to come home as soon as I get this letter. He says if I’m willing to work he’ll give me better wages than I can get anywhere else! He doesn’t know yet," here Leslie grinned broadly, "that I want to do now the very thing he has fought all my life to make me do–go to school. That doctor business has sort of sunk in. But say, Ross, here’s a thing that bothers me." Leslie pulled the letter from his pocket and read:
"’A few days ago I got hold of the fourth man that ran my sheep off into the river two years ago. The fellow came and gave himself up to me.’"
The reader looked up tentatively. "Ross, if it was Weston dad would have said––"
Ross’s hand descended on the other’s shoulder in a mighty whack as he shouted: "It isn’t Weston. Now you listen and give me an inning on the talk!"
For half an hour they stood outside the shack while Ross got his inning–Sandy’s hand, the work, Weston’s strange actions were all reviewed hurriedly and listened to excitedly. Then, seeing Weston approaching, the boys went inside.
Weston crossed the valley slowly, looking down at something which he held in the palm of his hand, something in a small gilt frame that he slipped into his breast pocket when he entered the shack.
Completely absorbed in his own thoughts–cheerful thoughts too, apparently–he went directly to his bunk, and began gathering his few possessions together not noticing that the group had been augmented by Leslie.
"I guess," he explained abstractedly, "that I’ll go on at once–I’m going to Oklahoma and not Missouri." Then he looked over his shoulder at the sheep-herder, adding abstractedly: "Waymart says I ain’t the fourth, and never was. He’s been makin’ up his mind to tell me this good while."
The blank expression on the sheep-herder’s face brought Weston back to a sense of his surroundings.
"I forgot," he muttered turning to Ross, who stood beside the bunk, "that you may not know about this Quinn business."