"We ride out to-morrow. I
need your help."
"All-l right. When I get my pinto from Larsen."
"Never mind Larsen. If he got the better of you let the matter drop."
"Jeff got my pinto for a mustang with three legs. If I hadn't been drunk
I'd never have traded. So I'm looking for Jeff."
He bit out the last words with a peculiar snap of his long teeth, a
circumstance which caused Hare instantly to associate the savage clicking
with the name he had heard given this man. August Naab looked at him with
gloomy eyes and stern shut mouth, an expression of righteous anger,
helplessness and grief combined, the look of a man to whom obstacles had
been nothing, at last confronted with crowning defeat. Hare realized that
this son was Naab's first-born, best-loved, a thorn in his side, a black
sheep.
"Say, father, is that the spy you found on the trail?" Snap's pale eyes
gleamed on Hare and the little flames seemed to darken and leap.
"This is John Hare, the young man I found. But he's not a spy."
"You can't make any one believe that. He's down as a spy. Dene's spy!
His name's gone over the ranges as a counter of unbranded stock.
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