"When?"
"Last night." It seemed to him that he could keep just one jump ahead of this dominant man's menacing questions.
"Howcome that?"
"I shot a prairie-hen, and when I got down to get it—I don't know—my horse got frightened and jerked away. I tried to catch it. The brute wouldn't let me. Then night came."
"What were you doin' so far from town?" cut in one of the two who were covering him. He was a short, heavy-set man.
"That's right, Dave. Looks funny to me." Gurley seemed fairly to ooze malice. "Just happened to drift here to this herd, I reckon. It sure was yore unlucky day."
Arthur looked from one to another despairingly. He found no hope anywhere, not even in the expressionless face of Homer Dinsmore, who as yet had not spoken a word. There came over the boy what he afterward described as a "gone" feeling. It was the sensation, intensified many times, felt when an elevator drops from under one in swift descent.
"I—don't know what you mean," he faltered.
"You will," said Gurley brutally.
"Been across the valley to the herd yet?" asked Overstreet, elaborately careless.