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The Hiding of Black Bill

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery
eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los
Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat,
melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the
appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat--
seamy on both sides.

"Ain't seen you in about four years, Ham," said the seedy man. "Which
way you been travelling?"

"Texas," said the red-faced man. "It was too cold in Alaska for me.
And I found it warm in Texas. I'll tell you about one hot spell I
went through there.

"One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it
go on without me. 'Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses
than New York City. Only out there they build 'em twenty miles away
so you can't smell what they've got for dinner, instead of running 'em
up two inches from their neighbors' windows.

"There wasn't any roads in sight, so I footed it 'cross country. The
grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a
peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman's private estate that
every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite
you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a
ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated-
railroad station.

"There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink
handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front
of the door.

"'Greetings,' says I. 'Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even
work for a comparative stranger?'

"'Oh, come in,' says he, in a refined tone. 'Sit down on that stool,
please. I didn't hear your horse coming.'

"'He isn't near enough yet,' says I. 'I walked. I don't want to be a
burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water
handy.'

"'You do look pretty dusty,' says he; 'but our bathing arrangements--'

"'It's a drink I want,' says I. 'Never mind the dust that's on the
outside.'

"He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then
goes on:

"'Do you want work?'

"'For a time,' says I. 'This is a rather quiet section of the
country, isn't it?'

"'It is,' says he. 'Sometimes--so I have been told--one sees no human
being pass for weeks at a time. I've been here only a month. I
bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.'

"'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man
sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture,
float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.'

"'Can you herd sheep ?' asks the little ranch-man.

"'Do you mean have I heard sheep?' says I.

"'Can you herd 'em--take charge of a flock of 'em ?' says he.

"'Oh,' says I, 'now I understand. You mean chase 'em around and bark
at 'em like collie dogs. Well, I might,' says I. 'I've never exactly
done any sheep-herding, but I've often seen 'em from car windows
masticating daisies, and they don't look dangerous.'

"'I'm short a herder,' says the ranchman. 'You never can depend on
the Mexicans. I've only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of
muttons--there are only eight hundred of 'em--in the morning, if you
like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished.
You camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own
cooking, but wood and water are brought to your camp. It's an easy
job.'

"'I'm on,' says I. 'I'll take the job even if I have to garland my
brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe
like the shepherds do in pictures.'

"So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of
muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let 'em graze on a
little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions
about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving
'em down to a water-hole to drink at noon.

"'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the
buckboard before night,' says he.

"'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping
outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer,
ain't it?"

"'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.'

"'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint
Clair.'

"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the
wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next
to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. I've seen a lot of
persons more entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd
drive 'em to the corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my
corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a
table-cloth, and listen to the coyotes and whippoorwills singing
around the camp.

"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial
muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.

"'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep
are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton
suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank
along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a
parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on
a mental basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if
it's only to knock somebody's brains out.'

"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-
rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was
calm, and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in
Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer
for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken
to be his brother. I didn't care much for him either way; what I
wanted was some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost
sinners--anything sheepless would do.

"'Well, Saint Clair,' says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I
guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don't deny
that it's monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so
they won't stray out ?

"'They're shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer,'
says I. 'And I'll be back with them long before they'll need their
trained nurse.'

"So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. After five
days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When
I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in
Trinity. And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story
about the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.

"That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so much
that he'd be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or
Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell,
and you'll see him splitting his ribs laughing at 'Curfew Shall Not
Ring To-night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

"By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a
total eclipse of sheep.

"'Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,' says he,
'about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was
shot through the shoulder, and about $15,000 in currency taken. And
it's said that only one man did the job.'

"'Seems to me I do,' says I. 'But such things happen so often they
don't linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake,
overhaul, seize, or lay hands upon the despoiler?'

"'He escaped,' says Ogden. 'And I was just reading in a paper to-day
that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country.
It seems the bills the robber got were all the first issue of currency
to the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they've followed
the trail where they've been spent, and it leads this way.'

"Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.

"'I imagine,' says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal
boose, 'that it wouldn't be at all a disingenuous idea for a train
robber to run down into this part of the country to hide for a spell.
A sheep-ranch, now,' says I, would be the finest kind of a place.
Who'd ever expect to find such a desperate character among these song-
birds and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the way,' says I, kind of
looking H. Ogden over, 'was there any description mentioned of this
single-handed terror? Was his lineaments or height and thickness or
teeth fillings or style of habiliments set forth in print ?'

"'Why, no,' says Ogden; 'they say nobody got a good sight of him
because he wore a mask. But they know it was a train-robber called
Black Bill, because he always works alone and because he dropped a
handkerchief in the express-car that had his name on it.'

"'All right,' says I. 'I approve of Black Bill's retreat to the
sheep-ranges. I guess they won't find him.'

"'There's one thousand dollars reward for his capture,' says Ogden.

"'I don't need that kind of money,' says I, looking Mr. Sheepman
straight in the eye. 'The twelve dollars a month you pay me is
enough. I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my
fare to Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,' I
goes on, looking significantly at Ogden, was to have come down this
way--say, a month ago--and bought a little sheep-ranch and--'

"'Stop,' says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty
vicious. 'Do you mean to insinuate--'

"'Nothing,' says I; 'no insinuations. I'm stating a hypodermical
case. I say, if Black Bill had come down here and bought a sheep-
ranch and hired me to Little-Boy-Blue 'em and treated me square and
friendly, as you've done, he'd never have anything to fear from me. A
man is a man, regardless of any complications he may have with sheep
or railroad trains. Now you know where I stand.'

"Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he
laughs, amused.

"'You'll do, Saint Clair,' says he. 'If I was Black Bill I wouldn't
be afraid to trust you. Let's have a game or two of seven-up to-
night. That is, if you don't mind playing with a train-robber.'

"'I've told you,' says I, 'my oral sentiments, and there's no strings
to 'em.'

"While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks Ogden, as if the
idea was a kind of a casualty, where he was from.

"'Oh,' says he, 'from the Mississippi Valley.'

"'That's a nice little place,' says I. 'I've often stopped over
there. But didn't you find the sheets a little damp and the food
poor? Now, I hail,' says I, 'from the Pacific Slope. Ever put up
there?'

"'Too draughty,' says Ogden. 'But if you've ever in the Middle West
just mention my name, and you'll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.'

"'Well,' says I, 'I wasn't exactly fishing for your private telephone
number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off the
Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It don't matter. I just want you
to know you are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don't play
hearts on spades, and don't get nervous.'

"'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that
if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester
bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if I had any?'

"'Not any,' says I. 'A man who's got the nerve to hold up a train
single-handed wouldn't do a trick like that. I've knocked about
enough to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a
friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,'
says I, 'being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious
circumstances we might have been.'

"'Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,' says Ogden, 'and cut for
deal.'

"About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the water-
hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up rides
softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being he
wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City
detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His
chin and eye wasn't molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a
scout.

"'Herdin' sheep?' he asks me.

"'Well,' says I, 'to a man of your evident gumptional endowments, I
wouldn't have the nerve to state that I am engaged in decorating old
bronzes or oiling bicycle sprockets.'

"'You don't talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,' says he.

"'But you talk like what you look like to me,' says I.

"And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho
Chiquito, two miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells me
he's a deputy sheriff.

"'There's a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere in
these parts,' says the scout. 'He's been traced as far as San
Antonio, and maybe farther. Have you seen or heard of any strangers
around here during the past month?'

"'I have not,' says I, 'except a report of one over at the Mexican
quarters of Loomis' ranch, on the Frio.'

"'What do you know about him?' asks the deputy.

"'He's three days old,' says I.

"'What kind of a looking man is the man you work for ?' he asks.
'Does old George Ramey own this place yet? He's run sheep here for
the last ten years, but never had no success.'

"'The old man has sold out and gone West,' I tells him. 'Another
sheep-fancier bought him out about a month ago.'

"'What kind of a looking man is he ?' asks the deputy again.

"'Oh,' says I, ' a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and
blue specs. I don't think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I
guess old George soaked him pretty well on the deal,' says I.

"After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative information
and two-thirds of my dinner, the deputy rides away.

"That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. "'They're drawing the
tendrils of the octopus around Black Bill,' says I. And then I told
him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd described him to the deputy,
and what the deputy said about the matter.

"'Oh, well,' says Ogden, 'let's don't borrow any of Black Bill's
troubles. We've a few of our own. Get the Bourbon out of the
cupboard and we'll drink to his health--unless,' says he, with his
little cackling laugh, 'you're prejudiced against train-robbers.'

"'I'll drink,' says I, 'to any man who's a friend to a friend. And I
believe that Black Bill,' I goes on, 'would be that. So here's to
Black Bill, and may he have good luck.'

"And both of us drank.

"About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be
driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip
the fur off of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon
before the barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over
the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the
ranch-house, where I penned 'em in a corral and bade 'em my nightly
adieus.

"I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire,
lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by
anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to
the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed
like a second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to
just a few musings. 'Imperial Caesar,' says I, 'asleep in such a way,
might shut his mouth and keep the wind away.'

A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is
all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family
connections? He's at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his
friends. And he's about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against
the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of
Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how
she looks, you know it's better for all hands for her to be that way.

"Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to
be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his
table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical
culture--and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.

"After I'd smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H.
O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where
there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a
kind of a creek farther away.

"I saw five men riding up to the house. All of 'em carried guns
across their saddles, and among 'em was the deputy that had talked to
me at my camp.

"They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I
set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker
of this law-and-order cavalry.

"'Good-evening, gents,' says I. 'Won't you 'light, and tie your
horses?'

"The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in
it seems to cover my whole front elevation.

"'Don't you move your hands none,' says he, 'till you and me indulge
in a adequate amount of necessary conversation.'

"'I will not,' says I. 'I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not
have to disobey your injunctions in replying.'

"'We are on the lookout,' says he, 'for Black Bill, the man that held
up the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and
everybody on 'em. What is your name, and what do you do on this
ranch?'

"'Captain,' says I, 'Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my
name is sheep-herder. I've got my flock of veals--no, muttons--penned
here to-night. The shearers are coming to-morrow to give them a hair-
cut--with baa-a-rum, I suppose.'

"'Where's the boss of this ranch?' the captain of the gang asks me.

"'Wait just a minute, cap'n,' says I. 'Wasn't there a kind of a
reward offered for the capture of this desperate character you have
referred to in your preamble?'

"'There's a thousand dollars reward offered,' says the captain, 'but
it's for his capture and conviction. There don't seem to be no
provision made for an informer.'

"'It looks like it might rain in a day or so,' says I, in a tired way,
looking up at the cerulean blue sky.

"'If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or
secretiveness of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect,
'you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.'

"'I heard a fence-rider say,' says I, in a desultory kind of voice,
'that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin's store on the
Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a
sheepman's cousin two weeks ago.'

"'Tell you what I'll do, Tight Mouth,' says the captain, after looking
me over for bargains. 'If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill,
I'll pay you a hundred dollars out of my own--out of our own--pockets.
That's liberal,' says he. 'You ain't entitled to anything. Now, what
do you say?'

"'Cash down now?' I asks.

"The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all
produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the
general results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug
tobacco.

"'Come nearer, capitan meeo,' says I, 'and listen.' He so did.

"'I am mighty poor and low down in the world,' says I. 'I am working
for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together
whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,' says I, 'I
regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it's a
come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form
of chops. I'm pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled
ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R.
R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati--dry gin, French vermouth,
one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you're
ever up that way, don't fail to let one try you. And, again,' says I,
'I have never yet went back on a friend. I've stayed by 'em when
they had plenty, and when adversity's overtaken me I've never forsook 'em.

"'But,' I goes on, 'this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve
dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not
consider brown beans and corn-bread the food of friendship. I am a
poor man,' says I, 'and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You
will find Black Bill,' says I, 'lying asleep in this house on a cot in
the room to your right. He's the man you want, as I know from his
words and conversation. He was in a way a friend,' I explains, 'and
if I was the man I once was the entire product of the mines of Gondola
would not have tempted me to betray him. But,' says I, 'every week
half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood in camp.

"'Better go in careful, gentlemen,' says I. 'He seems impatient at
times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would
look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.'

"So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers
their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I
follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Stein on to Samson.

"The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then he
jumps up, and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was
mighty tough with all his slimness, and he gives 'em as neat a single-
footed tussle against odds as I ever see.

"'What does this mean?' he says, after they had him down.

"'You're scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,' says the captain. 'That's
all.'

"'It's an outrage,' says H. Ogden, madder yet.

"'It was,' says the peace-and-good-will man. 'The Katy wasn't
bothering you, and there's a law against monkeying with express
packages.'

"And he sits on H. Ogden's stomach and goes through his pockets
symptomatically and careful.

"'I'll make you perspire for this,' says Ogden, perspiring some
himself. 'I can prove who I am.'

"'So can I,' says the captain, as he draws from H. Ogden's inside
coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the Second National Bank of
Espinosa City. 'Your regular engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting-
card wouldn't have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than
this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to go with us and
expatriate your sins.

"H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they
have taken the money off of him.

"'A well-greased idea,' says the sheriff captain, admiring, 'to slip
off down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is
seldom heard. It was the slickest hide-out I ever see,' says the
captain.

"So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other
herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden's
horse, and the sheriffs all ride tip close around him with their guns
in hand, ready to take their prisoner to town.

"Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies' hands and
gives him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just
as if he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours
afterward one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho
Chiquito, might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars--wages
and blood-money--in his pocket, riding south on another horse
belonging to said ranch."

The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming
freight-train sounded far away among the low hills.

The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head
slowly and disparagingly.

"What is it, Snipy?" asked the other. "Got the blues again?"

"No, I ain't" said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But I don't like
your talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen
year; and I never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the
law--not no one. And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at
whose table you had played games of cards--if casino can be so called.
And yet you inform him to the law and take money for it. It never was
like you, I say."

"This H. Ogden," resumed the red-faced man, "through a lawyer, proved
himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard
afterward. He never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated
to hand him over."

"How about the bills they found in his pocket?" asked the seedy man.

"I put 'em there," said the red-faced man, "while he was asleep, when
I saw the posse riding up. I was Black Bill. Look out, Snipy, here
she comes! We'll board her on the bumpers when she takes water at the
tank."




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