“No, sir, I don’t. He passed down the road whilst I was up with old bossie here right early.”
The sheriff complimented his humor by repeating it. “At three o’clock this mo’ning a.m.?”
“Yessir. I figured he must be going somewheres to be settin’ off at that time o’ day.”
“Alone, was he?”
“Why, no, I reckon there was some one with him.”
Daniels threw a leg across a feed-rack, drew out a knife from his pocket, and began to sharpen it on the leather of his boot. “Dark as all git out, wasn’t it? How’d you know it was Don?”
The homesteader grinned. “Every daisy in the dell knows his story too darned well,” he parodied.
“Singin’ ‘Sweet Marie,’ was he?”
“Yep. Say, what kind of a mash would you feed her? She’s right feverish yet, I shouldn’t wonder.”
The sheriff gave advice out of his experience before he came back ten minutes later to a subject that interested him more.