EASY MONEY By Bertrand W. Sinclair Author of “Hands Off!” “The Land of Frozen Suns,” Etc. When Charlie Shaw, the carefree cow-puncher, was accused of being a shallow josher, and therefore worthless for rounding up cow thieves, Charlie got angry and proved that even a “kidder” can get down to business. The cool autumn wind riffled across Lonesome Prairie. It fluttered the manes and tails of a dozen saddled horses standing in a compact group, awaiting the pleasure of their riders, who stood and squatted in various postures, casting occasional glances at a number of flat, wrinkled objects in the grass of a tiny hollow. They had come upon these objects quite unexpectedly and had stopped to examine them. One rider had gone galloping back toward camp. The rest waited. “Gosh, old Elmer’ll go straight in the air when he sees this,” one remarked. Two miles distant a herd was stringing south. Heavy-loaded wagons, tooled respectively by a cook and a night herder, with a comet’s tail of saddle stock following behind, bore in the same direction. And from that direction three men were now riding full tilt toward the dismounted cow-punchers. When they pulled up at the group, Elmer Duffy gave an immediate exhibition of what his rider had termed “going straight in the air.” Elmer was past forty, a sandy-haired Texan, with a capacity for irritable conduct that remained mostly hidden beneath a placid exterior. He had a long, solemn face. He took his position as the active head of a big cow outfit rather more seriously than range bosses usually did. This attitude, together with his slumbering crabbedness, did not make him popular with his men. “What’s all this?” he demanded. “Well,” one sunny-faced young fellow explained, “as near as we can see, it’s eight beef hides with the Seventy-seven brand, that’s been skinned off their rightful wearers and laid out to dry in the sun by some kind soul. We happened on ’em an’ sent Mike back to tell you, because we thought maybe you’d be interested.” Mr. Duffy prowled from one hide to the other. The skulls and shin bones and hoofs of the defunct animals were scattered about for all and sundry to behold, where the coyotes had gnawed them. But they knew very well that neither wolf nor coyote had pulled down a bunch of mature cattle like that. And, as the foreman of the Seventy-seven gathered the import of these remains, he grew red in the face, and his language became eloquent but unprintable. “Some dirty thieves has been butcherin’ beef an’ gettin’ away with it,” he stormed. “I’d give five hundred dollars cold cash to lay hands on ’em.” “If you’d advertise that in the _River Press_,” the same youngster laughed, “maybe they’d come in and give themselves up for the reward.” Elmer glared at him. “Don’t get fresh,” he growled. “This here’s serious.” “So it seems,” Charlie Shaw replied carelessly. “But there’s no law against joshin’.”