He found Yerby whittling out a boat for his baby. The Texan looked up with a faint, apologetic smile in his faded blue eyes. “I was making a pretty for my little trick at home, Sheriff. He’s the dad-blamedest kid you ever saw—keeps his old dad humping to make toys for him to bust. Don’t you blame Steve for loaning me this two-bit Barlow. He takes it back every night. Steve’s a good jailer all right.” The Southerner was a shabby little man, tobacco-stained, with a week’s growth of red stubble on his face. But it was impossible to deny him a certain pathetic dignity. “I’ve come to talk to you for that little kid, Sam. You don’t want him to be an orphan, do you?” “I reckon that don’t rest with me.” Matson cut straight to business. “That’s just who it rests with. Sam, it’s a show-down. Will you come through with the evidence I want, or won’t you?” “I won’t-you. We done talked that all out, Aleck. I wisht you-all wouldn’t bother me if it’s not unconvenient for you to let me alone.” He offered the officer a chew of tobacco to show that he was not peevish about the matter. The sheriff waved the plug aside impatiently. “One of the boys can’t stand the gaff. He’s breaking, Sam. But you’ve got a wife and a kid. He hasn’t. I want you to have first chance. Come clean and I’ll look out for you. After the trial I’ll see you get out of the country quietly. You can take your folks back to Texas.” Sam looked out of the window. The little boat and the jackknife hung limp in his hands. In a cracked, falsetto voice he took up a song of the range that he had hummed a hundred times in the saddle: “I woke one mo’ning on the old Chisum Trail, Rope in my hand and a cow by the tail.” He thought of the rough and turbulent life that had come at last to the peaceful shoals of happy matrimony. A vision rose before him of his smiling young wife and crowing baby. They needed him. Must he give them up for a point of honour? If someone was to go clear, why not he? “We have evidence enough. It isn’t that. I’m giving you a chance, Sam. That’s all.” The lips of the Texan murmured another stanza, but his thoughts were far afield: “Oh, a ten-dollar hoss and a forty-dollar saddle— And I’m goin’ to punchin’ Texas cattle.” “Never again, Sam. Not unless you take your chance now.” The sheriff put a hand on his shoulder. “For the sake of the wife and the little man. You’re not going to throw them down, are you?” “We hit Caldwell and we hit her on the fly, We bedded down the cattle on the hill close by.” The faded eyes were wistful. It was his chance for freedom, perhaps his chance for life, too. What would Missie and the baby do without him? Who would look after them? “No chaps, no slicker, and it’s pourin’ down rain, And damn my skin if I night-herd again!”