iss MacDonald, she would
feel like talking business for a few minutes?"

"Oh, yes; if she's like me, she'll want to get the agony over with."
Billy Louise turned with a twitch of the shoulders. She felt chilled,
somehow. She had not quite expected that Seabeck would want to talk
about his stolen stock at all. She had rather taken it for granted
that he would let that subject lie quiet for awhile. Oh, well, he was
a cattleman, after all.

Marthy did not attempt to rise when Seabeck followed Billy Louise into
the sitting-room. She caught up her apron and wiped her eyes and her
nose, however, and she also slid Charlie's picture under the cheap
cushion. After that she faced Seabeck with harsh composure and waited
for the settlement.

"Hm-mm! I have been looking over the cattle," he began, sitting on the
edge of a chair and turning his black hat absently round and round by
the brim. "You--mm-mm--you tell me there were seven head of grown
stock--"

"That they shot and throwed in the river, with the brands cut out,"
interpolated Marthy stolidly. "I heard 'em say that's how they would
git rid of 'em, an' I heard 'em shootin' down there."

"Hmm-mm, yes! Do you know just what--"

"Five dry cows 'n' two steers--long two-year-oles, I jedged 'em to be."
Marthy was certainly prompt enough and explicit enough. And her lips
were grim, and her faded blue eyes hard and steady upon the face of
Seabeck.

"Hmm-mm--yes! I find also," he went on in his somewhat precise voice
that had earned him the nickname of "Deacon" among his punchers, "that
there are more young stock vented and rebranded than I--er--sold your
nephew. Fourteen head, to be exact. With the cattle you tell me which
were--mm-m--disposed of last night, that would make twenty-one head of
stock for which--mm-mm--I take it you are willing to pay."

"I ain't got the money now," Marthy stated, too apathetic to be either
defiant or placating. "You c'n fix up the papers t' suit yerself.
I'll sign anything yuh want."

"Hmm-mm--yes! A note covering the amount, with legal rate of interest,
will be--quite satisfactory, Mrs. Meilke. I shall make a lump sum at
the going price for mixed stock. If you have a blank note, I--"

"You kin look in that desk over there," permitted Marthy. "If yuh
don't find any there, there ain't none nowhere."

Seabeck did not find any blank notes. He found an eloquent confusion
of jumbled letters and accounts and papers, and gues