e. I'll be good; honest,
I will, and when I get rested, you can hit a faster gait to even up. I get
tired just the same as honest folks do. Come, now, won't you?"

In a flash she had taken advantage of this oasis of shade that beckoned
enticingly to the passer-by.

He followed reluctantly.

"This is Heaven let loose," she said, lolling luxuriously against the
trunk of a tree. "You're the only nice sheriff man that ever run me in."

He sat down near her and looked gloomily ahead.

"Cheer up!" she urged, after a short silence. "It may not be so bad. Any
one would think you were the prisoner instead of poor little me."

"I wish I were," he said shortly.

She looked at him curiously.

"Say, what's eating you, anyway? If you hate your job so, what did you
take it for?"

"It was forced on me. I'm only sworn in as acting sheriff for the county
until the sheriff returns."

"How long you been 'it'?"

"Two weeks. You're my second--arrest."

"Who was the first?"

"So Long Sam."

She sat upright.

"Are you the man who caught So Long Sam? Every one has been afraid to
tackle him. I'd never have thought it of you!"

"Why?" he asked curiously, not proof against the masculine enjoyment of
hearing himself analyzed in spite of his reluctance to talk to her. "Do I
seem such a weakling I couldn't take one man?"

"No; you look like you'd take a red-hot stove if you wanted to; but they
said--Say; is your maiden name 'Kurt?' No! It can't be."

"Why not?"

"Because they called the man who took So Long Sam, 'Kind Kurt.' You
haven't been over-kind to me till just lately. Whirling me over sands in
that awful fore-shortened car."

"It must be better," he said dryly, "than the kind you've been used to."

"You mean the jail jitney. Do you know, they never yet put me in one.
Always conveyed me other ways. Weren't so bad to me either. I guess maybe
your heart is in the right place or you wouldn't have let me rest and
given me the drink, even if you did wait till the eleventh hour. Can't you
look pleasant like you were going to sit for a picture to give to your
best girl instead of posing for 'Just before the battle, Mother'? You look
so sorry you came."

"I am," he said angrily. "I guess 'Kind Kurt' is a blankety blank fool, as
some people say. I've been a lot kinder to you than you know. When I heard
of your case and Bender pointed you out to me and said he'd got you locked
up, I thought you were one of the many young city