“No.”
“Two weeks?”
“Yes.”
“You had been away some time?”
“The better part of a year,” confessed Langford, with engaging candor.
“Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, I should like you to tell me about how many cattle you range—in round numbers.”
“About five thousand head.”
“Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, you who count your cattle by the thousands, on your own sworn word you have been out of the country a year. Don’t you think you are asking this jury to swallow a pretty big mouthful when you ask them to believe that you could so unmistakably distinguish this one poor ornery steer, who has so little to distinguish him from thousands of others?”
“I have owned that spotted steer for years,” said Langford, composedly. “I have never sold him because he was rather an odd creature and so cantankerous that we dubbed him the Three Bars mascot.”
Gordon called Jim Munson.