Me Smith

ain’t worth stealin’, so I don’t hardly think your feelin’ means any wrong for us. More’n likely it’s jest somebody dead.”
    This thought, slightly consoling to Meeteetse, did not seem to comfort the Indian woman, who continued to squirm on the rickety seat and to strain her eyes into the darkness.
    “If anybody ud come along and want to mix with me—say, do you see that fist? If ever I hit anybody with that fist, they’ll have to have it dug out of ’em. I don’t row often, but when I does—oh, lordy! lordy! I jest raves and caves. I was home on a visit onct, and my old-maid aunt gits a notion of pickin’ on me. Say, I ups and runs her all over the house with an axe! I’m more er less a dang’rous character when I’m on the peck. Is that feelin’ workin off of you any?” he inquired anxiously.
    “It comes stronger,” she answered, and her grip tightened on the flour-sack she held under her blanket.
    “I wisht I knowed what it was. I’m gittin’ all strung up myself.” His popping eyes ached from trying to see into the darkness around them. “If we kin git past them gulches onct! That ud be a dum bad place to roll off the side. We’d go kerplunk into the crick-bottom. Gosh! what was that?” He stopped the weary horses with a terrific jerk.
    It was only a little night prowler which had scurried under the horses’ feet and rustled into the brush.
    “You see how on aidge I am! I’ll tell you,” he went on garrulously—the sound of his own voice was always pleasant to Meeteetse: “I take more stock in signs and feelin’s than most people, for I’ve seen ’em work out. Down there in Hermosy there was a feller made a stake out’n a silver prospect, and he takes it into his head to go back to Nebrasky and hunt up his wife, that he’d run off and left some time prev’ous. As the date gits clost for him to leave, he got glummer and glummer. He’d skerce crack a smile. The night before the stage was comin’ to git him, he was settin’ in a ’dobe with a dirt roof, rared back on the hind legs of his chair, with his hands in his pockets.
    “‘Boys,’ he says, ‘I’ll never git back to Genevieve. I feels it; I knows it; I’ll bet you any amount I’m goin’ to cash in between here and Nebrasky. I’ve seen myself in my coffin four times hand-runnin’, when I was wide awake.’
    “Everybody had their mouths open to let out a holler and laff when jest then one of the biggest terrantuler that I ever see dropped down out’n the dirt and straw and lands on his bald head. It hangs on and bites ’fore anybody kin bresh it off, and, ’fore Gawd, he ups and dies while the medicine shark is comin’ from the next town!”
    His companion did not find Meeteetse’s reminiscence specially interesting, possibly because she had heard it before, so at its conclusion she made no comment, but continued to watch with anxious eyes the clouds and the road ahead.
    “Now if that ud been me,” Meeteetse started to say, in nowise disconcerted by the unresponsiveness of his listener—“if that ud——”
    “Throw up your hands!” The curt command came out of the night with the startling distinctness of a gun-shot. The horses were thrown back on their haunches by a figure at their head.
    Meeteetse not only threw up his hands, but his feet. He threw them up so high and so hard that he lost his equilibrium, and, as a result, the ill-balanced seat went over, carrying with it Meeteetse and the Indian woman.
    The latter’s mind acted quickly. She knew that her errand to the bank had become known. Undoubtedly they had been followed from town. As soon as she could disentangle herself from Meeteetse’s convulsive embrace, she threw the flour-sack from her with all her strength, hoping it would drop out of sight in the sage-brush. It was caught in mid-air by a tall figure at the wagon-side.
    “Thank you, madam,” said a hollow voice, “Good-night.”
    It was all done so quickly and neatly that Meeteetse and the Indian woman were still in the bottom of the wagon when two dark figures clattered past and vanishing hoof-beats told them the thieves were on their way to town.
    “Well, sir!” Meeteetse found his feet, also his tongue, at last.
    “Well, sir!” He adjusted the seat.
    “Well, sir!” He picked up the reins and clucked to the horses.
    “Well, sir! I know ’em. Them’s the fellers that held up the Great Northern!”
    The Indian woman said not a word. Her heart was filled with