uld be the same
as it is now. This would only be the beginning, of course, and after a
while every qualified voter who did not feel like exerting himself so
much, need only give his name and proxy to the salaried thinker employed
by the National Think Retort and Supply Works. We talk a great deal
about the union of church and state, but that is not so dangerous, after
all, as the mixture of politics and independent thought. Will the coming
voter be an automatic, legless, hairless mollusk with an abnormal ear
constantly glued to the tube of a big tank full of symmetrical ideas
furnished by a national bureau of brains in the employ of the party in
power?

EARNING A REWARD

XVI

Those were troublous times indeed. All-wool justice in the courts was
impossible. The vigilance committee, or Salvation army, as it called
itself, didn't make much fuss about its work, but we all knew that the
best citizens belonged to it, and were in good standing.

It was in those days that young Stewart was short-handed for a
sheep-herder, and had to take up with a sullen, hairy vagrant called by
the other boys, "Esau." Esau hadn't been on the ranch a week before he
made trouble with the proprietor and got from Stewart the red-hot
blessing he deserved.

Then Esau got madder and skulked away down the valley among the little
sage brush hummocks and white alkali wasteland, to nurse his wrath.
When Stewart drove into the corral that night, Esau rose up from behind
an old sheep dip-tank, and without a word except what may have growled
around in his black heart, he leveled a Spencer rifle and shot his young
employer dead.

That was the tragedy of that week only. Others had occurred before and
others would probably occur again. Tragedy was getting too prevalent for
comfort. So as soon as a quick cayuse and a boy could get down into
town, the news spread and the authorities began in the routine manner to
set the old legal mill to running. Some one had to go down to "The
Tivoli" and find the prosecuting attorney, then a messenger had to go to
"The Alhambra" for the justice of the peace. The prosecuting attorney
was "full," and the judge had just drawn one card to complete a straight
flush, and had succeeded.

So it took time to get square-toed justice ready and arm the sheriff
with the proper documents.

In the meantime the Salvation army was fully half way to Clugston's
ranch. They had started out, as they said, "to see that Esau didn