ses, and unlimbers their
ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I follows,
like Delilah when she set the Philip Steins 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 up 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