Me Smith

your life diggin’ up the dead. It’s too tame for a feller of any spirit.”
    “It’s nowise dang’rous,” Tubbs admitted.
    “If I thought you was my kind, Tubbs, I’d give you a chance. I’d let you in on a deal that’d be the makin’ of you.”
    “All I needs is a chanct,” Tubbs declared eagerly.
    “I believe you,” Smith replied, with flattering emphasis.
    A disturbing thought made Tubbs inquire anxiously:
    “This here chanct your speakin’ of—it ain’t work, is it?—real right-down work?”
    “Not degradin’ work, like pitchin’ hay or plowin’.”
    “I hates low-down work, where you gits out and sweats.”
    “I see where you’re right. There’s no call for a man of your sand and sabe to do day’s work. Let them as hasn’t neither and is afraid to take chances pitch hay and do plowin’ for wages.”
    Tubbs looked a little startled.
    “What kind of chances?”
    Smith looked at Tubbs before he lowered his voice and asked:
    “Wasn’t you ever on the rustle none?”
    Tubbs reflected.
    “Onct back east, in I-ó-wa, I rustled me a set of underwear off’n a clothes-line.”
    Smith eyed Tubbs in genuine disgust. He had all the contempt for a petty-larceny thief that the skilled safe-breaker has for the common purse-snatcher. The line between pilfering and legitimate stealing was very clear in his mind. He said merely,
    “Tubbs, I believe you’re a bad hombre .”
    “They is worse, I s’pose,” said Tubbs modestly, “but I’ve been pretty rank in my time.”
    “Can you ride? Can you rope? Can you cut out a steer and burn a brand? Would you get buck-ague in a pinch and quit me if it came to a show-down? Are you a stayer?”
    “Try me,” said Tubbs, swelling.
    “Shake,” said Smith. “I wisht we’d got acquainted sooner.”
    “And mebby I kin tell you somethin’ about brands,” Tubbs went on boastfully.
    “More’n likely.”
    “I kin take a wet blanket and a piece of copper wire and put an addition to an old brand so it’ll last till you kin git the stock off’n your hands. I’ve never done it, but I’ve see it done.”
    “I’ve heard tell of somethin’ like that,” Smith replied dryly.
    “Er you kin draw out a brand so you never would know nothin’ was there. You take a chunk of green cottonwood, and saw it off square; then you bile it and bile it, and when it’s hot through, you slaps it on the brand, and when you lifts it up after while the brand is drawed out.”
    “Did you dream that, Tubbs?”
    “I b’leeve it’ll work,” declared Tubbs stoutly.
    “Maybe it would work in I-ó-wa,” said Smith, “but I doubts if it would work here. Any way,” he added conciliatingly, “we’ll give it a try.”
    “And this chanct—it’s tolable safe?”
    “Same as if you was home in bed. When I says ’ready,’ will you come?”
    “Watch my smoke,” answered Tubbs.
    Smith’s eyes followed Tubbs’s hulking figure as he shambled off, and his face was full of derision.
    “Say”—he addressed the world in general—“you show me a man from I-ó-wa or Nebrasky and I’ll show you a son-of-a-gun.”
    Tubbs was putty in the hands of Smith, who could play upon his vanity and ignorance to any degree—though he believed that beyond a certain point Tubbs was an arrant coward. But Smith had a theory regarding the management of cowards. He believed that on the same principle that one uses a whip on a scared horse—to make it more afraid of that which is behind than of that which is ahead—he could by threats and intimidations force Tubbs to do his bidding if the occasion arose. Tubbs’s mental calibre was 22-short; but Smith needed help, and Tubbs seemed the most pliable material at hand. That Tubbs had pledged himself to something the nature of which he knew only vaguely, was in itself sufficient to receive Smith’s contempt. He had learned from observation that little dependence can be placed upon those who accept responsibilities too readily and lightly, but he was confident that he could utilize Tubbs as long as he should need him, and after that—Smith shrugged his shoulders—what was an I-ó-wan more or less?
    Altogether, he felt well satisfied with what he had accomplished in the short while since his return.
    When Susie came home from school, Smith was looking through the corral-fence at a few ponies which Ralston had bought and driven in, to give color to his story.
    “See anything there you’d like?” she inquired, with significant