“No, but I wisht I had,” he said calmly. “He’d oughter be dead, the old
skunk, trying to poison all them sheep.”
“Poison the sheep; what sheep?”
“Your sheep,” Bill’s brows contracted as he looked at me. “Your
sheep,” he repeated, his voice rising as I scarcely seemed able to
grasp his meaning. “All the sheep at Hay Gulch Camp, that’s what he
came out here for, and he’d a done it, too, if it hadn’t been for that
kid in there.” Bill jerked his head in the direction of my room.
“Ted?” I asked, my emotion stifling my voice.
“Ted,” Bill affirmed, “he caught him at it red-handed, and probably
saved two thousand sheep from bein’ dead this minute.”
“How on earth did he find out?”
Bill straightened up in his chair.
“Them eyes of his’n don’t miss much, I’m here to tell you, and his
everlastin’ snoopin’ around done some good after all.” Bill’s eyes
glowed with pride. “Yesterday, before Bohm left, Ted come across him
mixin’ a lot of stuff with some grain, and, of course, had to know all
about it. The old man finally told him he was fixin’ to poison the
prairie-dogs on his claim, bit he was so peevish about it, Ted said he
didn’t believe him, and mistrusted somethin’ was wrong.
“The kid didn’t say nothin’ to me about it; had some fool notion about
playin’ detective, I reckon, at any rate he got up along about four
o’clock and rode out to Bohm’s claim to do a little reconorterin’.”
Bill reluctantly put the glass down and tipped back in his chair. “He
hid his horse in the gulch and crope up in the grass like an Injin.
The herder wasn’t nowhere in sight and the sheep was still in the
corral, but old Bohm was there all right, fixin’ little piles of that
poisoned wheat just where the sheep would come acrost it the first
thing.”
“Oh, Bill, that’s the worst thing I ever heard!” I was sick at the
mere thought.
Bill was too engrossed to pay attention to the interruption.
“Ted said he was comin’ back to tell me, but he got so excited when he
seen what Bohm was up to, he never thought of nothin’ but stoppin’
him. The old man was stoopin’ over with his back to Ted, and the kid
gave a yell for the herder and ran for Bohm and before he could
straighten up Ted was on top of him.”
Bill scarcely paused for breath—“the old man reached for his gun, but
Ted was too quick for him and knocked it out of his hand, and when I
came up, there they was rollin’ all over the prairie, first one on top
and then the other.”
Bill looked toward the door of my room, reflectively—“I kinder felt
there was somethin’ wrong when I left here, and believe me, I didn’t
spare my cayuse none gettin’ there neither, and I didn’t get there
none too soon.”