this county if I can get it. Don't go get me in bad."

"I won't," Bud promised and hurried back to Mrs. Hanson's house.

That estimable lady was patting butter in a wooden bowl when Bud went
in. She turned and brushed a wisp of gray hair from her face with her
fore arm and sh-shed him into silent stepping, motioning toward an inner
room. Bud tiptoed and looked, saw Ed Collier fast asleep, swaddled in a
blanket, and grinned his approval.

He made sure that the sleep was genuine, also that the blanket swaddling
was efficient. Moreover, he discovered that Mrs. Hanson had very
prudently attached a thin wire to the foot of the blanket cocoon,
had passed the wire through a knot hole in a cupboard set into the
partition, and to a sheep bell which she no doubt expected to ring upon
provocation--such as a prisoner struggling to release his feet from a
gray blanket fastened with many large safety pins.

"He went right to sleep, the minute I'd fed him and tied him snug,"
Mrs. Hanson murmured. "He was a sulky divvle and wouldn't give a decent
answer to me till he had his stomach filled. From the way he waded into
the ham and eggs, I guess a square meal and him has been strangers for a
long time."

Sleep and Ed Collier must have been strangers also, for Bud attended the
inquest of Lew Morris, visited afterwards with Sheriff Cummings, who
was full of reminiscence and wanted to remind Bud of everything that had
ever happened within his knowledge during the time when they had been
neighbors with no more than forty miles or so between them. The sheriff
offered Bud a horse and saddle, which he promised to deliver to the
widow's corral after the citizens of Crater had gone to bed. And while
he did not say that it would be Ed's horse, Bud guessed shrewdly that
it would. After that, Bud carefully slit the lining of his boots tucked
money and checks into the opening he had made, and did a very neat
repair job.

All that while Ed Collier slept. When Bud returned for his supper Ed had
evidently just awakened and was lying on his back biting his lip while
he eyed the wire that ran from his feet to the parting of a pair of
calico curtains. He did not see Bud, who was watching him through a
crack in the door at the head of the bed. Ed was plainly puzzled at the
wire and a bit resentful. He lifted his feet until the wire was well
slackened, held them poised for a minute and deliberately brought them
down hard on the floor.

The result was