“Well, what’s the joke?” asked Harp. “You’ve made a lot of medicine over that piece of eppy-der-mis. What was the matter with the old critter—have dandruff?”
“’s delight!” roared Silent. “That’s a Nine-Bar-Nine cow. Somebody killed it and burned the hide. But they missed on the important part of the thing. See where it was burnt?”
“Where did yuh find it, Silent?” queried Brick seriously.
Silent sat down and rolled a cigaret. He had excited their curiosity and now he was going to take his own sweet time in answering their question.
“Yuh hadn’t ought to have asked him that, Brick,” said Harp. “He prob’ly don’t remember.”
“Yeah?” Silent shaped his cigaret and scratched a match on the sole of his boot.
“I found that hide in Big Elk Canon.”
“Yo’re the one that’s tellin’ the story,” reminded Brick.
“I got to thinkin’ about that poor little kid,” stated Silent thoughtfully. “I knowed it wasn’t no use lookin’ for him after all this time, but I went anyway. I rode in close to the mouth of the cañon and took plenty of time. About a mile or so up the bottom I cut into one of them side gulches, kinda lookin’ around.
“I seen horse-tracks and cow-tracks, and I got to figurin’ that was why the grizzly was hangin’ around the cañon. Pretty soon I runs onto the remains of an old fire. It’s several days old, and right there I discovers a piece of cow-hide.