Langford of the Three Bars Part 19

"He was not."

"Did you look elsewhere for him?"

"We did."

"Where?"

"We rode the free ranges for several days-wherever any of my cattle held out."

"How many days did you say you rode?"

"Why, we continued to look sharp until my boy, Munson, found him the day before the preliminary at the Velpen stock-yards, on the point of being shipped to Sioux City."

"You went to Velpen to identify this steer?"

"I did."

"It was your steer?"

"Yes."

"The same for which you had been searching so long?"

"The very same."

"It was wearing your brand?"

"It was not."

"What brand was it wearing?"

"J R."

"Where was it?"

"On the right hip."

"Where do you usually put your brand, Mr. Langford?"

"On the right hip."

"Do you always brand your cattle there?"

"Always."

"Do you know any J R outfit?"

"I do not."

Gordon nodded to Small. His examination had been straightforward and to the point. He had drawn alert and confident answers from his witness.

Involuntarily, he glanced at Louise, who had not seemed to be working at all during this clean-cut dialogue. She flashed a fleeting smile at him.

He knew he was out of sympathy with the great majority of the people down there in front. He did not seem to care so much now. A great medicine is a womanly and an understanding smile. It flushed his face a bit, too.

Langford was most unsatisfactory under cross-examination. He never contradicted himself, and was a trifle contemptuous of any effort to tangle him up in threads of his own weaving. The little man touched Small on the arm and whispered to him.

"Mr. Langford," said Small, in a weighty voice, "you travel a great deal, I believe?"

"I do."

"For pleasure, maybe?" with a mysterious inflection.

"Partly."

"Business as well?"

"Business as well."

"Just prior to the arrest of the defendant," insinuatingly, "you were away?"

"How long prior do you mean?"

"Say a week."

"No."

"Two weeks?"

"Yes."

"You had been away some time?"

"The better part of a year," confessed Langford, with engaging candor.

"Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, I should like you to tell me about how many cattle you range-in round numbers."

"About five thousand head."

"Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, you who count your cattle by the thousands, on your own sworn word you have been out of the country a year. Don't you think you are asking this jury to swallow a pretty big mouthful when you ask them to believe that you could so unmistakably distinguish this one poor ornery steer, who has so little to distinguish him from thousands of others?"

"I have owned that spotted steer for years," said Langford, composedly.

"I have never sold him because he was rather an odd creature and so cantankerous that we dubbed him the Three Bars mascot."

Gordon called Jim Munson.

"What is your name?"

"Gosh!"

The question was unexpected. Was there any one in the county who did not know Jim Munson? And d.i.c.k Gordon of all people! Then he remembered that the Boss had been asked the same question, so it must be all right. But the ways of the court were surely mysterious and ofttimes foolish.