wa'an't pumped full
of lead out of hand they was hanged. Sort o' queer, too, the way we
got 'em. I'd set up a reward. Ten thousand dollars. It was right out
o' my own bank roll. Wal, I set it up--the notice o' reward--one
night, an' next day got the news we was all yearnin' for. Bob
Whitstone, as he called himself, brought it right along to me. I
hadn't no use fer the feller up to then. He was weak-kneed. And, in a
way, had fallen fer Ju Penrose's rye. He'd come to me once before on
the subject o' these all-fired grazin' rights. Y'see, he'd been tryin'
to git ahead raisin' wheat in a country where ther' was only a market
fer cattle an' rye whisky. Anyway, he cut most o' the wheat racket,
an' guessed he'd travel the same road as other folks, an' asked me for
permission to graze. I was kind o' sorry about him, an' his
good-lookin' wife--both city-raised folk--an' I did as he ast. I said
he could graze up to two hundred head. Git a line on that. Them
rights was verbal between him an' me to help him out. Ther' wa'an't no
sort o' deed, an' he knew it wa'an't no saleable proposition. Wal,
when he come along in with his news I set him right through it, an' I
allow, before I quit him, I got the notion that fer all his addled ways
there was a heap to him I hadn't guessed. He started by sayin' he'd
located the rustlers, got their camp set in the hills, an' could hand
over the whole blamed bunch right away quick. That was elegant. But I
ast him how it come he'd on'y located 'em twelve hours after I'd set up
a ten thousand dollar reward. Y'see, they'd been rustlin' around fi'
years. Wal, to cut a long yarn, I got the whole thing out of him in
quick time--he was like a kid in my hands. He hadn't located that
camp, he wasn't goin' to touch a cent of them ten thousand. He called
it 'blood money,' an' cussed it good an' plenty with an elegant flow.
It was his wife. Yes, siree, it was the woman driving the man. She'd
located them rustlers by chance only the day before, while he was
around Ju's place sousin' rye. When he got home an told her of the
reward, she was nigh crazy to git her hands on the dollars. Seems to
me ther' must have been a mighty scrap-up. I guess she told him of his
ways, an' what he'd brought her to--in a way some women-folk can. I
didn't git it all clear. Y'see, he did his best to screen her.
Anyways, she made him promise to fix things so she touched those
dollars. An' that's why he c