I'm Going To Take You Out and Hang You

The trouble with a man like Buck Olney is that you can never be sure of his method, except that it will be underhand and calculated to eliminate as much as possible any risk to himself. Ward, casting back into his memory--he had known Buck Olney very well, once upon a time, and in his unsuspecting youth had counted him a friend--tried to guess how Buck would proceed when he went down to that corral and found how those brands had been retouched.

"He'll be running around in circles for awhile, all right," he deduced with an air of certainty. "Blotched brands he'd know was my work; and he could have put it on me, too, with a good yarn about trailing me so close I got cold feet. As it is--" Ward smoked two cigarettes and scowled at the scenery. As it was, he did not know just what Buck Olney would do, except-- "If he makes a guess I did that, he'll know I'm wise to the whole plant. And he'll get me, sure, providing I stand with my back to him long enough!" Ward had his back to a high ledge, at that moment, so that he did not experience any impulse to look behind him.

"Buck don't want to drag me up before a jury," he reasoned further. "He'd a heap rather pack me in all wrapped up in a tarp, and say how he'd caught me with the goods, and I resisted arrest."