'S BACK AND DIGS HIS HEELS
IN HIS SIDE]

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out
into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid,
stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill
stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his face with a red handkerchief.
The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.

"Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't
help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of
self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and
predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off.
There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death
rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever
was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to
be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit."

"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him.

"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring
an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand
ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to
explain to him why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both
ways, and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only
stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him
down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the
knees down; and I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand
cauterized.

"But he's gone"--continues Bill--"gone home. I showed him the road to
Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm
sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the
madhouse."

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and
growing content on his rose-pink features.

"Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is
there?"

"No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?"

"Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look behind you."

Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down
plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little
sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that
my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we wou