"I didn't want it."

"You're out of practise on this law-and-order stuff--you've lived up
here too long among thieves, Jim. Find out who tore down your wire?"

Laramie replied in even tones but his voice was hard: "I trailed them
across the Crazy Woman. It was somebody from Doubleday's ranch."

"They had a story at Stormy Gorman's you'd gone over there to blow
Barb's head off."

"Barb wasn't home."

Hawk was conscious of the evasion. "Was Stormy's talk true?" he
demanded curtly.

"I expected to ask Barb whether he wanted to put my wire back. I was
going to give him a chance."

"It wouldn't be hard to guess how that would come out. Where was he?"
asked Hawk, with evident disappointment.

"They said he was in Sleepy Cat. I rode in and missed him there. He'd
gone to the mines. I took the train up to the Junction, There I
accidentally got switched off my job and came home."

"How'd you get switched off?" asked Hawk, resenting the outcome.

Laramie's manner showed he disliked being bored into. He leaned
forward with a touch of asperity and looked, straight at his visitor:
"By not 'tending strictly to my own business, Abe."

Hawk knew from the expression of Laramie's eyes he must drop the
subject, and though he lost none of his bantering manner, he desisted:
"They didn't have a warrant for me down at the marshal's office, did
they?"

"They were short of blanks," retorted Laramie coolly.

"How you fixed for flour?"

"Plenty of it." Laramie spoke loudly for fear Simeral might protest.
Then he called promptly to the kitchen: "Ben, get up some flour for
Abe."

Ben quavered a protest.

"Get it up now before you forget it," insisted Laramie.

"Is Tom Stone still foreman over at Doubleday's?"

"I guess he is," returned Laramie.

"What does Doubleday aim to do with Stone?" asked Hawk, cynically,
"steal his own cattle from himself?"

"A cattleman nowadays might as well steal his own cattle as to wait for
somebody else to steal 'em." Laramie spoke with some annoyance.
"There's going to be trouble for these Falling Wall rustlers."

"Meaning me?" asked Hawk, contemptuously.

"I never mean you without saying you, Abe--you ought to know that by
this time. But this running off steers is getting too raw. From the
undertalk in Sleepy Cat there's going to be something done."

"Who by?"

"By the cattlemen."

"I thought," Hawk spoke again contemptuously, "you meant by the
sheriff."

"But I didn'