Me Smith

eloquence; “but where have you been all night?”
    “Ah, where have I not been? Walking—walking under the stars! Under the stimulus of success, I have covered miles with no feeling of fatigue. Have you ever experienced, my dear sir, the sensation which comes from the realization of a life-dream?”
    “Not yet,” Ralston replied prosaically. “Where was your horse?”
    “Ah, yes, my horse. Where is my horse? I asked myself that question each time that I stopped to remove one of the poisonous spines of the cactus from my feet. Whether my horse lost me or I lost my horse, I am unable to say. I left him grazing in a gulch, and was not again able to locate the gulch. I wandered all night—or until Fate guided me into a barbed wire fence, where, as you will observe, I tore my trousers. I followed the fence, and here I am—I and my companion”—McArthur patted the skull lovingly—“this giant—the slayer of mastodons—whose history lies concealed in ‘the dark backward and abysm of time’!”
    As he looked into Ralston’s non-committal eyes with his own burning orbs, he realized that great joy, like great sorrow, is something which cannot well be shared.
    “Forgive me,” he said with hurt dignity; “I have again forgotten that you have no interest in such things.”
    “You are mistaken. I wanted to hear.”
    After McArthur had retired to his pneumatic mattress, Ralston lay wide-eyed, more mystified than before. Had Bear Chief’s eyes deceived him, or was McArthur the cleverest of rogues?
    Breakfast was done when Ralston said:
    “Will you be good enough to step into the bunk-house, Mr. McArthur?”
    Something in his voice chilled the sensitive man. Ralston, whom he greatly admired, always had been most friendly. He followed him now in wonder.
    “You are sure this is the man, Bear Chief?”
    The Indian had stepped forward at their entrance.
    “Yas, I know him,” he reiterated.
    McArthur looked from one to the other.
    “Bear Chief accuses you of stealing his horses, Mr. McArthur,” explained Ralston bluntly.
    “What!”
    “You slick little horse-thief, but I see you good. Where you cache my race-pony?” The Indian’s demand was a threat.
    For reply, McArthur walked over and sat down on the edge of a bunk, as if his legs of a sudden were too weak to support him.
    “Bear Chief swears he saw you, McArthur.” Ralston’s tone was not unfriendly now, for something within him pleaded the bug-hunter’s cause with irritating persistence.
    “Me a horse-thief? Running off race-ponies?” McArthur found himself able to exclaim at last: “But I had no horse of my own!”
    “Have you any credentials—anything at all by which we can identify you?”
    “Not with me; but certainly I can furnish them. The name of McArthur is not unknown in Connecticut,” he answered with a tinge of pride.
    “Where are your riding-breeches? Bear Chief says you were wearing them yesterday. Can you produce them now?”
    McArthur, with hauteur, walked to the nails where his wardrobe hung and fumbled among the clothing.
    They were gone!
    His jaw dropped, and a slight pallor overspread his face.
    Susie, who had been listening from the doorway, flung a flour-sack at his feet.
    “Search my trunk, pardner,” she said with her old-time impish grin.
    McArthur mechanically did as she bade him, and his riding-breeches dropped from the sack.
    “I hope you’ll ’scuse me for makin’ so free with your clothes, like,” she said, “but I just naturally had to have them yesterday.”
    A light broke in upon Ralston.
    “You!”
    “Yep, I did it, me—Susie.” Her tone and manner were a ludicrous imitation of Smith’s. She added: “I saw you all pikin’ in here, so I tagged.”
    “But why”—Ralston stared at her in incredulity—“why should you steal horses?”
    “It’s this way,” Susie explained, in a loud, confidential whisper: “I’ve been playin’ a little game of my own. When the right time came, I meant to let Mr. Ralston in on it, but when Bear Chief saw me, I knew I’d have to tell, to keep my pardner here from gettin’ the blame.”
    “But the beard,”—Ralston still looked sceptical.
    “Shucks! That’s easy. I saw Bear Chief before he saw me, and I just took the black silk hankerchief from my neck and tied it hold-up fashion around the lower part of my face. Bear Chief was excited when he saw his running horse travelling out of the country at the gait we was goin’ then.”
    “I don’t see