I
guess you can if you can prove the ownership of the cattle. Did you
notice the brand?"

Feigning not to have heard the question, I still gazed silently out of
the window, but Mrs. Horton was not to be put off so easily; she
repeated the inquiry, her voice suddenly grown sharp with anxiety.
"Did you notice the brand, Leslie?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

She would not be put off, and, for a wicked moment, my heart was hot
against all that bore her husband's name.

"The brand was, 'R, half-circle, A,'" I said, and bolted out of the
house to hide myself and my boiling indignation in the hayloft, but,
as I went, I heard Mrs. Horton sobbing out an explanation to Jessie:

"Jake started out early this morning, long before sun-up, it was, to
drive the cattle from the upper range to the north pasture--he said. I
told him I was afraid that he couldn't handle such a big bunch
alone--there's nigh three thousand of them, if there's a dozen--but he
thought that he could, and they must have got away from him after
all!"

Jessie made no comment, but lying at full length in the seclusion of
the hayloft, I thought of the relative positions of the upper range,
where Mr. Horton's cattle usually grazed, and the north pasture, and
knew that, in order to reach our fields, the herd must have "strayed"
at least five miles out of their proper course.

I was still lying in the hayloft when, as my ears informed me, Mrs.
Horton came out, climbed soberly into her wagon, and drove away. With
my eyes shut I still seemed to see her drooping head and shamed face.
I had so far recovered my reason by this time that I could feel for
her; she believed in her husband. He would soon be able to convince
her that what had occurred was due to an unavoidable accident; the
cattle had broken away from their one herder, and she would expend her
indignation on the fact that he had attempted to drive them alone,
and--she would try to make him pay damages. She would fail. One did
not need an intimate acquaintance with her husband to know that.

The sound of approaching wheels aroused me from my unhappy
meditations. Joe was returning. I sprang up, slid down the ladder, and
went out into the yard to meet him. Mr. Wilson, the ranchman, who was
to be one of our witnesses, was with him. Joe had found him at the
blacksmith shop, and, as his homeward route led past our house, had
invited him to ride with him. The two were talking earnestly as the
horses stopped before th