. 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