n dollars he had, with an income
steadily increasing.

Long Bill was a graduate of the camp and trail. Luck and thrift, a
cool head, and a telescopic eye for mavericks had raised him from
cowboy to be a cowman. Then came the boom in cattle, and Fortune,
stepping gingerly among the cactus thorns, came and emptied her
cornucopia at the doorstep of the ranch.

In the little frontier city of Chaparosa, Longley built a costly
residence. Here he became a captive, bound to the chariot of social
existence. He was doomed to become a leading citizen. He struggled
for a time like a mustang in his first corral, and then he hung up
his quirt and spurs. Time hung heavily on his hands. He organised the
First National Bank of Chaparosa, and was elected its president.

One day a dyspeptic man, wearing double-magnifying glasses, inserted
an official-looking card between the bars of the cashier's window of
the First National Bank. Five minutes later the bank force was dancing
at the beck and call of a national bank examiner [94].

[FOOTNOTE 94: O. Henry was not fond of national bank examiners.
One (F. B. Gray) accused him of embezzling funds
from the First National Bank of Austin, where he
worked as a teller. The owners of the bank wanted to
let the matter drop, possibly because some of them
were guilty, but the examiner persisted. O. Henry
(then William Sidney Porter) was convicted and spent
three years in prison. To this day no one knows
whether he was really guilty; he often claimed
he took the blame for what others had done, but
occasionally he made comments that might be
construed as admissions of guilt.

Prison was good for O. Henry in one respect: it gave
him the opportunity to write. At least a dozen of
his stories were published (under various pen names)
before his release in 1901, including "Georgia's
Ruling," which, to this annotator, is one of his
three best stories.]

This examiner, Mr. J. Edgar Todd, proved to be a thorough one.

At the end of it all the examiner put on his hat, and called the
president, Mr. William R. Longley, into the private office.

"Well, how do you find things?" asked Lon