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"Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he
laughs, amused.

"'You'll do, Saint Clair,' says he. 'If I was Black Bill I wouldn't
be afraid to trust you. Let's have a game or two of seven-up to-

night. That is, if you don't mind playing with a train-robber.'
"'I've told you,' says I, 'my oral sentiments, and there's no strings

to 'em.'
"While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks Ogden, as if the

idea was a kind of a casualty, where he was from.
"'Oh,' says he, 'from the Mississippi Valley.'

"'That's a nice little place,' says I. 'I've often stopped over
there. But didn't you find the sheets a little damp and the food

poor? Now, I hail,' says I, 'from the Pacific Slope. Ever put up
there?'

"'Too draughty,' says Ogden. 'But if you've ever in the Middle West
just mention my name, and you'll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.'

"'Well,' says I, 'I wasn't exactly fishing for your private telephone
number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off the

Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It don't matter. I just want you
to know you are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don't play

hearts on spades, and don't get nervous.'
"'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that

if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester
bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if I had any?'

"'Not any,' says I. 'A man who's got the nerve to hold up a train
single-handed wouldn't do a trick like that. I've knocked about

enough to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a
friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,'

says I, 'being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious
circumstances we might have been.'

"'Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,' says Ogden, 'and cut for
deal.'

"About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the water-
hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up rides

softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being he
wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City

detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His
chin and eye wasn't molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a

scout.
"'Herdin' sheep?' he asks me.

"'Well,' says I, 'to a man of your evident gumptional endowments, I
wouldn't have the nerve to state that I am engaged in decorating old

bronzes or oiling bicycle sprockets.'
"'You don't talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,' says he.

"'But you talk like what you look like to me,' says I.
"And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho

Chiquito, two miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells me
he's a deputysheriff.

"'There's a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere in
these parts,' says the scout. 'He's been traced as far as San

Antonio, and maybe farther. Have you seen or heard of any strangers
around here during the past month?'

"'I have not,' says I, 'except a report of one over at the Mexican
quarters of Loomis' ranch, on the Frio.'

"'What do you know about him?' asks the deputy.
"'He's three days old,' says I.

"'What kind of a looking man is the man you work for ?' he asks.
'Does old George Ramey own this place yet? He's run sheep here for

the last ten years, but never had no success.'
"'The old man has sold out and gone West,' I tells him. 'Another

sheep-fancier bought him out about a month ago.'
"'What kind of a looking man is he ?' asks the deputy again.

"'Oh,' says I, ' a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and
blue specs. I don't think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I

guess old George soaked him pretty well on the deal,' says I.
"After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative information

and two-thirds of my dinner, the deputy rides away.
"That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. "'They're drawing the

tendrils of the octopus around Black Bill,' says I. And then I told
him about the deputysheriff, and how I'd described him to the deputy,

and what the deputy said about the matter.
"'Oh, well,' says Ogden, 'let's don't borrow any of Black Bill's

troubles. We've a few of our own. Get the Bourbon out of the
cupboard and we'll drink to his health--unless,' says he, with his

little cackling laugh, 'you're prejudiced against train-robbers.'
"'I'll drink,' says I, 'to any man who's a friend to a friend. And I

believe that Black Bill,' I goes on, 'would be that. So here's to
Black Bill, and may he have good luck.'

"And both of us drank.
"About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be

driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip
the fur off of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon

before the barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over
the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the

ranch-house, where I penned 'em in a corral and bade 'em my nightly
adieus.

"I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire,
lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by

anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to
the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed

like a second-handbicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to
just a few musings. 'Imperial Caesar,' says I, 'asleep in such a way,

might shut his mouth and keep the wind away.'
A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is

all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family
connections? He's at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his

friends. And he's about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against
the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of

Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how
she looks, you know it's better for all hands for her to be that way.

"Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to
be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his

table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical
culture--and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.

"After I'd smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H.
O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where

there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a
kind of a creek farther away.

"I saw five men riding up to the house. All of 'em carried guns
across their saddles, and among 'em was the deputy that had talked to

me at my camp.
"They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I

set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker
of this law-and-order cavalry.

"'Good-evening, gents,' says I. 'Won't you 'light, and tie your
horses?'

"The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in
it seems to cover my whole front elevation.

"'Don't you move your hands none,' says he, 'till you and me indulge
in a adequateamount of necessary conversation.'

"'I will not,' says I. 'I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not
have to disobey your injunctions in replying.'

"'We are on the lookout,' says he, 'for Black Bill, the man that held
up the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and

everybody on 'em. What is your name, and what do you do on this
ranch?'

"'Captain,' says I, 'Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my
name is sheep-herder. I've got my flock of veals--no, muttons--penned

here to-night. The shearers are coming to-morrow to give them a hair-
cut--with baa-a-rum, I suppose.'

"'Where's the boss of this ranch?' the captain of the gang asks me.
"'Wait just a minute, cap'n,' says I. 'Wasn't there a kind of a

reward offered for the capture of this desperatecharacter you have
referred to in your preamble?'

"'There's a thousand dollars reward offered,' says the captain, 'but
it's for his capture and conviction. There don't seem to be no

provision made for an informer.'
"'It looks like it might rain in a day or so,' says I, in a tired way,

looking up at the cerulean blue sky.
"'If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or

secretiveness of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect,
'you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.'

"'I heard a fence-rider say,' says I, in a desultory kind of voice,
'that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin's store on the

Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a
sheepman's cousin two weeks ago.'

"'Tell you what I'll do, Tight Mouth,' says the captain, after looking
me over for bargains. 'If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill,

I'll pay you a hundred dollars out of my own--out of our own--pockets.
That's liberal,' says he. 'You ain't entitled to anything. Now, what

do you say?'
"'Cash down now?' I asks.

"The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all
produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the

general results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug
tobacco.

"'Come nearer, capitan meeo,' says I, 'and listen.' He so did.
"'I am mighty poor and low down in the world,' says I. 'I am working

for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together
whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,' says I, 'I

regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it's a
come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form

of chops. I'm pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled
ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R.

R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati--dry gin, French vermouth,
one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you're

ever up that way, don't fail to let one try you. And, again,' says I,
'I have never yet went back on a friend. I've stayed by 'em when

they had plenty, and when adversity's overtaken me I've never forsook 'em.
"'But,' I goes on, 'this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve

dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not
consider brown beans and corn-bread the food of friendship. I am a

poor man,' says I, 'and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You
will find Black Bill,' says I, 'lying asleep in this house on a cot in

the room to your right. He's the man you want, as I know from his
words and conversation. He was in a way a friend,' I explains, 'and

if I was the man I once was the entire product of the mines of Gondola
would not have tempted me to betray him. But,' says I, 'every week

half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood in camp.
"'Better go in careful, gentlemen,' says I. 'He seems impatient at

times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would
look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.'

"So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers
their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I

follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Stein on to Samson.
"The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then he

jumps up, and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was
mighty tough with all his slimness, and he gives 'em as neat a single-

footed tussle against odds as I ever see.
"'What does this mean?' he says, after they had him down.

"'You're scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,' says the captain. 'That's
all.'

"'It's an outrage,' says H. Ogden, madder yet.
"'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


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