A slow heat ran along his veins.

“Lineville shore looks daid,” he said, tentatively.

“It is dead, Jim. But you know it’s comin’ on winter. An’ this Lineville outfit is like a lot of groundhogs. They hole up when the snow flies. There’s more travel along the road than ever before. Three stages a week now, an’ lots of people stop here for a night. I get a good many; been busy all summer an’ fall.”

“Travel on the road? Wal, that’s a new one for Lineville. Prospectors always came along. But travel. What you mean, Mother Wood?”

“Jim, where have you been for so long?” she asked, curiously. “Sure you must have been buried somewhere. There’s a new minin’ town—Salisbar. An’ travel from north has been comin’ through here, in spite of the awful road.”

“Salisbar? Never heard aboot it. An’ stagecoaches—goin’ through Lineville. By golly!”

“Jim, there’s been only couple of hold-ups. None of this outfit, though. We hear the stage line will stop runnin’ soon, till spring.”

“You mentioned aboot a cattleman named Holder buyin’ heah since I’ve been away. Shore he’s not the only one?”

“No. But cattle deals have been low this summer. Last bunch of cattle come over in June.”

“Wal, you don’t say! Lineville is daid, shore enough.”

“Jim, that sort of thing has got to stop sometime, even if it is only a lot of two-bit rustlin’.”

“Two-bit? Ha! Ha!”

“Jim, I’ve seen thousands of longhorns rustled in my day.”

“Ahuh! Reckon you have, I’m sorry to say,” responded Nevada, looking up at her ruddy face again. “Shore you never took me for a rustler, did you, Mother?”

“Goodness, no! You was only a gun-packin’ kid, run off the ranges. But, Jim, you’ll fall into it some day, sure as shootin’. You’ll be in bad company at the wrong time. Now I’m from Texas an’ I always loved a good clean hard-shootin’ gunman, like Jack was. There wasn’t nothin’ crooked about Jack for years an’ years. But he fell into it. An’ so will you, Jim. I want you to go so far away from Lineville that you can’t never come back.”

“I’ll go in the spring. Shore I’m not hankerin’ for the grabline ride these next few months.”

“Fine. That’s a promise, my boy.