"Branding it on the Walton range?"
"Yes."
"With its mammy?"
"Yes."
"Serve the boy right." Tip gave judgment. "You and your outfit are
getting too reckless for any use, Rafe. The territory is not a
Sunday-school. You can't pick a man's pocket openly any more. It
isn't safe. And you know it isn't safe. Who was the boy and what time
of day was it?"
"Ben Shanklin; and it was round noon."
"Worse and more of it. My Gawd, Rafe, you gimme a pain!"
Sam Larder shook a fat-cheeked head. "Dangerous, Rafe; dangerous.
You've got to consider a man's feelings now more than you used to.
Haven't you told your man to always work round sunrise and sunset, and
never to shoot a calf's mammy on her owner's territory?"
"Others do, and get away with it. Besides, he didn't shoot the cow."
"He might as well have shot her," declared Tom Driver. "He got caught,
didn't he?"
"Ben didn't get caught. He made the riffle all right with two holes in
his saddle-horn and one in his cantle that tore his pants."
"What range? Did he say?"
"About fourteen hundred."
"Fourteen hundred, huh? Then he couldn't have been recognized."
"Luckily not."
"Luck is the word--for you--for us."
"Wonder who did the shooting?"
"I don't know. Ben dug out one of the bullets from his horn. It was
fifty caliber--a Sharps."
"That was Tom Walton himself," declared Tom Driver. "He's the only one
in his outfit owning a Sharps, and he won't let any one else shoot it.
'Twas Tom Walton. And don't be so positive Ben wasn't recognized,
Rafe. I hear Walton carries field glasses now."
"He _is_ getting suspicious," smiled Tip O'Gorman.