CHAPTER XX SHORTY TALKS Later, while the outlaw was watering and feeding his horse, he went over his talk with the girl. He knew from her last lie that she feared Spur and that for some reason all talk to strangers about her father's death was taboo. He decided he would like to see that last note written by John Reed. The whole thing sounded natural enough, for two of the rustlers had been killed--yet he felt there was something wrong. He believed in Slivers, believed the boy had been framed by some one; and the fact that Spur Treadwell had taken trouble to fasten on Slivers this second killing and rustling went to prove that perhaps the boy was right in his belief that the big manager of the Double R was the one who had framed him. If he had not known Slivers, Allen would have unquestionably accepted, as others had apparently done, Spur Treadwell's story of the killing of John Reed. Two of the rustlers had been killed, and if a murder is committed and you produce the bodies of the murderers, people will usually accept your story and not inquire further. Allen told himself grimly, that he had known other men who had double crossed their tools. Perhaps these two rustlers knew too much, and Spur Treadwell had killed two birds with one stone, shut their mouths and got rid of John Reed. "Shucks, it's plumb easy to talk an' figger out things for yourself, but it's a cow of another color makin' other folks see along with yuh. An', Mr. Jim-twin Allen, if that there hombre, Spur, gets one little suspicion yuh're snoopin', you'll take a ride one day an' never come back," he told himself seriously. Later, Spur Treadwell turned Allen over to Bill McAllister, the boss horse wrangler, and told him to put the boy to work with the cavvy. The Double R was a large outfit and employed between twenty to forty men, depending on the season, so there were always two or three hundred horses in the cavvy. Bill McAllister was a weather-beaten man of fifty. His lined and seamed face had been tanned by wind and sun to the color of leather. His grizzled hair was thin over his temples, and his blue eyes were faded. He was a taciturn man whose jaws got their exercise from chewing, not talking. His greeting to Allen was short but friendly enough. The little outlaw decided McAllister was honest and could be trusted. This bothered him for a time. He could not see how McAllister could be honest and yet be a sort of foreman for Spur Treadwell; especially as the few punchers he had seen loafing about the ranch were obviously more used to handling their Colts than their ropes. Their smooth hands, free of callouses, marked them as gunmen rather than cow-punchers. "I'm sure in luck to get a job like this," Allen said, grinning. "I've worked aroun' hosses since I was a kid, but I never been on such a big outfit as this before. Yep, I'm sure in luck."