Those cattlemen had been quick to jump to his condemnation; they had planned this task for him, and the work of their own scheming had fallen and buried them. He had a sardonic pleasure in the anticipation of their various expressions of face when they should see him riding up to the corral.
Hartwell saw that they had recognized him while he was half a mile away. They came out of the house bareheaded, leaving the dinner-table he suspected, to look at him. Then they ducked in again, for their hats and vests and guns.
This picture of their preparation to receive him provoked a smile. A cow-man couldn't do anything but eat without his vest. He must have it on for any serious business, as a Freemason his ceremonial-apron. They would come out buttoning themselves up in corduroy and duck and velveteen in a minute, ready to take him right when he arrived.
But it was a serious matter for him, about as serious as a man ever faced, and he knew that, too. Yet there was that background of humor in the fact that he had stampeded the herd fifteen or twenty miles in the very direction that its owners wanted it to go, which he could not altogether dismiss. If Duncan, or even Dee Winch, could get a glimpse of it he would come out of that queer adventure without a fight.
