“Pshaw, what are you fussing about. This recount is the best thing that ever happened. I saw Dugan to-day and he said they had the sheep hidden as snug as a bug in a rug.”
“They’re hidden, all right,” Jed sneered.
“Then why worry? After the recount we can trot them out again and we’ll be stronger than ever. Nobody will have the nerve to order another recount for some time.”
“You may ‘trot out’ some of them after the recount, but there’s others you won’t.”
The bitter sarcasm in Jed’s tone made Dawson sit up in alarm. “What’s up?” he asked anxiously.
“A lot you don’t seem to know anything about,” Jed retorted angrily. “We lost three thousand sheep this afternoon, that’s what I’m fussing about.”
“Through that cursed patrolman of yours, that’s how.” Jed was so angry that he was almost beside himself.
“Can now if he wants to,” Jed raved, “they’re dead enough to eat.”
“Yes, dead! What did you think I meant? Lost in the brush?”
“Don’t be a fool, Jed,” Dawson answered quietly, “you are acting like a crazy man. If the sheep are dead it cannot be helped now, but I would like to know how it happened.”
Jed finally told the story of the lost sheep, interrupted at frequent intervals by uncontrollable bursts of profanity.
Dawson listened calmly. “How do you know this?” he asked.
“Bob left Sancho up there to watch the sheep in the other cañon and came down to tell me. Nine thousand dollars gone to smash in one afternoon and all through that—”
“Don’t get to raving again,” Dawson interrupted. “It’s tough luck but we can both stand it.”
At this confession of partnership Scott’s eyes popped wide open with amazement. He had already suspected Dawson of levying graft money for allowing extra sheep on the forest but such a far-reaching fraud as this had never occurred to him.
“We _could_ stand it, yes, but I’m not going to.”
“I mean that I am going to own up to running on some extras, let ’em cancel my permit if they want to, and get into some more profitable game.”
“You talk like a baby,” Dawson answered coldly. “You know how much we have made out of this thing in the past and how much more we can make in the future, and you talk about throwing up the whole thing just for one stroke of bad luck. Now listen to a little reason. If you give up now, all those sheep, including the twenty-five hundred in that other cañon, will have to be sold on a losing market. Nobody knows anything about this except our own men. We’ll put the recount through to-morrow, clean up all suspicion, and carry the twenty-five hundred extras through the summer. Then if you still want to get out we can sell to a good market in the fall. That’s the sensible way to do it.”