"I know. You did an awful punk job. A person could tell in the dark it was the work of a greenhorn. Why didn't you let Peter do it, or Marthy? You could have done a better job than that, couldn't you, Marthy?" Poor old Marthy, with her rheumatic knees and a gray hardness in her leathery face, had come down the path and stood squarely before Billy Louise, her hands knuckling her flabby hips, her hair blowing in gray, straggling wisps about her bullet head. "Better than what? Come in, Billy Louise. I'm right glad to see ye back and lookin' so well, even if yuh do 'pear to be in one of your tantrums. How's yer maw?" Billy Louise gasped and went white. "Mommie's dead," she said. "She died the ninth." She drew another gasping breath, pulled herself together, and went on before the others could begin the set speeches of sympathy which the announcement seemed to demand. "Never mind about that, now. I'm talking about those Seabeck cattle you folks stole. I was telling Charlie how horribly careless he is, Marthy. Did you know he let them drift down the river? And a blind man could tell a mile off the brands have been worked!" Billy Louise's tone was positively venomous in its contempt. "Why didn't you make Charlie practise on a cowhide for awhile first?" she asked Marthy cuttingly. Marthy ignored the sarcasm. Perhaps it did not penetrate her stolid mind at all. "Charlie never worked any brands, Billy Louise," she stated with her glum directness. "Oh, I beg his pardon, I'm sure! Did you?" "No, I never done such a thing, neither. I don't know what you're talkin' about." "Well, who did, then?" Billy Louise faced the old woman pitilessly. "I d'no." Marthy lifted her hand and made a futile effort to tuck in a few of the longest wisps of hair. "Well, of all the--" The stern gray eyes of Billy Louise flew wide open at the effrontery of the words. If they expected her to believe that! "That's it, Miss Louise. That's the point we'd like to settle, ourselves. I know it sounds outrageous, but it's a fact. Peter and I found those cattle up in the hills, with our brand worked over the V. On my word of honor, not one of us knows who did it." "But you've got them down here--" "Well--" Charlie threw out a hand helplessly. His eyes met hers with appealing frankness. "We couldn't rub out the brands; what else could we do? I figured that somebody else would see them if we left them out in the hills, and it might be rather hard to convince a man; you see, we can't even convince you! But, so help me, not one of us branded those cattle, Miss Louise. I believe that whoever has been rustling stock around here deliberately tried to fix evidence against us. I'm a stranger in the country, and I don't know the game very well; I'm an easy mark!"