ing up his eyes, "people
trusts you and you get a good chancet to make money. Look at this here
hotel and livery stable, Danny. Twenty years ago I didn't have no more'n
you've got, Danny. But I always went by them mottoes--hard work and
being honest. You GOTTO nail them shoes on, Danny, and fix that wheel."

"Well, all right, Jake," says I, "if you feel that way about it. Jest
give me a chaw of tobacco and come around and help me hitch 'em up."

Si Emery was there asleep on a pile of straw guarding that property. But
Ralph Scott wasn't around. Si didn't wake up till we had hitched 'em up.
He says he will ride around to the shop with me. But Jake says:

"It's all right, Si. I'll go over myself and fetch 'em back purty soon."
Which Si was wore out with being up so late the night before, and goes
back to sleep agin right off.

Well, sir, they wasn't nothing went wrong. I drove slow through the
village and past our shop. Hank come to the door of it as I went past.
But I hit them hosses a lick, and they broke into a right smart trot.
Elmira, she come onto the porch and I waved my hand at her. She put her
hand up to her forehead to shut out the sun and jest stared. She didn't
know I was waving her farewell. Hank, he yelled something at me, but I
never hearn what. I licked them hosses into a gallop and went around the
turn of the road. And that's the last I ever seen or hearn of Hank or
Elmira or that there little town.

CHAPTER V

I slowed down when I got to the schoolhouse, and both them fellers piled
in.

"I guess I better turn north fur about a mile and then turn west, Doctor
Kirby," I says, "so as to make a kind of a circle around that town."

"Why, so, Rube?" he asts me.

"Well," I says, "we left it going east, and they'll foller us east; so
don't we want to be going west while they're follering east?"

Looey, he agreed with me. But he said it wouldn't be much use, fur we
would likely be ketched up with and took back and hung or something,
anyhow. Looey could get the lowest in his sperrits sometimes of any man
I ever seen.

"Don't be afraid of that," says the doctor. "They are not going to
follow us. THEY know they didn't get this property by due process of
law. THEY aren't going to take the case into a county court where it
will all come out about the way they robbed a couple of travelling men
with a fake trial."

"I guess you know more about the law'n I do," I says. "I kind o' thought
mebby we