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Page 22
"'It was,' says the peace-and-good-will man. 'The Katy wasn't
bothering you, and there's a law against monkeying with express
packages.'
"And he sits on H. Ogden's stomach and goes through his pockets
symptomatically and careful.
"'I'll make you perspire for this,' says Ogden, perspiring some
himself. 'I can prove who I am.'
"'So can I,' says the captain, as he draws from H. Ogden's inside
coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the Second National Bank of
Espinosa City. 'Your regular engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting-
card wouldn't have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than
this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to go with us and
expatriate your sins.
"H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they
have taken the money off of him.
"'A well-greased idea,' says the sheriff captain, admiring, 'to slip
off down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is
seldom heard. It was the slickest hide-out I ever see,' says the
captain.
"So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other
herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden's
horse, and the sheriffs all ride tip close around him with their guns
in hand, ready to take their prisoner to town.
"Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies' hands and
gives him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just
as if he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours
afterward one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho
Chiquito, might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars--wages
and blood-money--in his pocket, riding south on another horse
belonging to said ranch."
The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming
freight-train sounded far away among the low hills.
The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head
slowly and disparagingly.
"What is it, Snipy?" asked the other. "Got the blues again?"
"No, I ain't" said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But I don't like
your talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen
year; and I never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the
law--not no one. And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at
whose table you had played games of cards--if casino can be so called.
And yet you inform him to the law and take money for it. It never was
like you, I say."
"This H. Ogden," resumed the red-faced man, "through a lawyer, proved
himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard
afterward. He never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated
to hand him over."
"How about the bills they found in his pocket?" asked the seedy man.
"I put 'em there," said the red-faced man, "while he was asleep, when
I saw the posse riding up. I was Black Bill. Look out, Snipy, here
she comes! We'll board her on the bumpers when she takes water at the
tank."
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS
I
Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East
Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a down-town broker, so rich that he
could afford to walk--for his health--a few blocks in the direction of
his office every morning, and then call a cab.
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