They were beginning to quit laughing at us, and were starting to get
supper, when suddenly I heard horse's hoofs, and down the bridle path
that led along an edge of the park rode a man. He heard the noise and he
saw us tied, I guess, for he came over.

"What's the matter here?" he asked.

The gang calmed down in a twinkling. They weren't so brash, now.

"Nothin'," said Bill.

"Who you got here? What's the rumpus?" he insisted.

"They've taken us prisoners and are keeping us, and they've got our
burros and flags and a message," spoke up the general.

He was a small man with a black mustache and blackish whiskers growing.
He rode a bay horse with a K Cross on its right shoulder, and the saddle
had brass-bound stirrups. He wore a black slouch hat and was in black
shirt-sleeves, and ordinary pants and shoes.

"What message?" he asked.

"A message we were carrying."

"Where?"

"Across from our town to Green Valley."

"Why?"

"Just for fun."

"Aw, that's a lie. They were to get twenty-five dollars for doing it on
time. Now we cash it in ourselves," spoke Bill. "It was a race, and they
don't make good. See?"

That was a lie, sure. We weren't to be paid a cent--and we didn't want
to be paid.

"Who's got the message now?" asked the man.

"He has," said the general, pointing at Bill.

"Let's see it."

Bill backed away.

"I ain't, either," he said. Which was another lie.

"Let's see it," repeated the man. "I might like to make that twenty-five
dollars myself."

Now Bill was sorry he had told that first lie. The first is the one that
gives the most trouble.

"Who are you?" he said, scared, and backing away some more.

"Never you mind who I am," answered the man--biting his words off short;
and he rode right for Bill. He stuck his face forward. It was hard and
dark and mean. "Hand--over--that--message. Savvy?"

Bill was nothing but a big bluff and a coward. You would have known
that he was a coward, by the lies he had told and by the way he had
attacked us. He wilted right down.

"Aw, I was just fooling," he said. "I was going to give it back to 'em.
Here 'tis. There ain't no prize offered, anyhow." And he handed it to
the man.

The man turned it over in his fingers. We watched. We hoped he'd make
them untie us and he'd pass it to us and tell us to skip. But after he
had turned it over and over, he smiled, kind of grimly, and stuck it in
his hip pocket.

"I reckon I'd like to make that twenty-