Free Slaughter's way by John Thomas Edson Page A

imflustered. "I want to jaw out a few things with them."
    "Bring them along," Bess replied. "I'll go lay the table while you tend to tibe horses and wash up."
    Watdiing his wife depart in the direction of the house, Slaughter grinned a little to himself. He reckoned he had slipped out of that tricky situation real neatly, even though he needed to waste a few words to do it. Apart from having to settle the final details for cutting the petalta^ deciding whether they would need to gather in any more cattle to complete the trail herd, and picking the members of the ranch crew who would go along on the drive, Slaughter wanted company when he first went into the house.
    Given good cause, Bess could blister a mans hide with her tongue, and John Slaughter reckoned he might have handed his wife that cause. He had not failed to notice the expression of mingled anxiety and relief on her face as she came toward him, and knew Bess must have been worried almost sick by his long absence. Now, after worrying her for hours, he rode up all bright, chirpy and without a scratch on his ornery hide. Knowing women in general, and Bess in particular. Slaughter figured Bess was likely to be fit to be tied after fretting for so long, then to see him ride up all unharmed and

    uninjured. One way or another he reckoned he deserved a good spur-raking for making her worry, but nobody could blame a man for tr>ing to avoid one.
    Slaughter knew danged well that after attending to the mending of the Taggert brothers' ways he ought to have sent Washita Trace home with word of what had happened, so as to reheve Bess's anxietv'. However, toting in the three bodies had been a two-man chore, so Slaughter did not send word to his wife. On reaching Blantyre City with the bodies. Slaughter learned that the coimty sheriff was due in at around sundown. The town marshal's legal jurisdiction ended on the edge of city limits and the affair of the Taggerts' redemption did not come into his baihwick. So Slaughter and Trace waited for the sheriff to arrive, turned over the bodies to his care and made their statement of w^hat had happened. The sheriff pronounced that not only had Slaughter acted in the best possible manner, but that he ought to have gotten around to it earlier. A search of the brothers produced the three hundred dollars Chisum paid for the fatal hundred head, and this the sheriff turned over to Slaughter, who promised to have it de-Hvered to the Cattle King as soon as possible.
    The trouble was that all this took time, and while Slaughter was attending to the legal aspects of the affair, his wife sat at home worrying her heart out over his welfare.
    "Anyway,'' Slaughter thought, as he turned to his horse and watched the hands heading back to the bunk-house, "I got out of that real sUck."
    Or had he?
    In the kitchen Bess ladled hot stew from a saucepan onto three plates, w^hile Coonsldn poured out coffee made in the range tradition of being strong enough for one to stand a spoon upright in it. After putting out the stew, Bess took up a pepper pot and began to sprinkle a liberal amount over one of the plates.
    "Give John the plate with the red border. Coon-skin," she ordered.
    "Yes-sir, Miz Bess," the cook replied, his eyes stand-

    ing out like twin organ stops. "But Mr. John don t like pepper on his food, ma'am.''
    "I know."
    Looking at Bess, the Negro grinned to himself and said no more, although he thought plenty. Any way a man looked at it, ladies was the same no matter what color their skin. Once a man got them all riled up, they siure enough knew a devil of a load of ways to make him suffer for it. Yes sir, and that Miz Bess there, she sure knew how to teach Mr. John a lesson. Not that Coonskin disapproved of the lesson in this case. Him and the rest of the boys had been worried near as much as Miz Bess when Mr. John and Mr. Wash didn't come back. Not that they figured the boss and Mr. Wash couldn't deal with diem Taggert trash, only one never knowed