Me Smith

sleepin’?”
    In sight of the prone figures, they halted.
    Smith, with his hat on, his head pillowed on his saddle, was rolled in an old army blanket; while Tubbs, from a sitting position against a tree, had fallen over on the ground with his knees drawn to his chin. His mouth, from which frightful sounds of strangulation were issuing, was wide open, and he showed a little of the whites of his eyes as he slumbered.
    “Ain’t he a dream?” breathed Babe in Ralston’s ear. “How I’d like a picture of that face to keep in the back of my watch!”
    Smith’s rifle was under the edge of his blanket, and his six-shooter in its holster lay by his head; but Tubbs, with the carelessness of a green hand and the over-confidence which had succeeded his nervousness, had leaned his rifle against a tree and laid his six-shooter and cartridge-belt in a crotch.
    Ralston nodded to Babe, and simultaneously they raised their rifles and viewed the prostrate forms along the barrels.
    “Put up your hands, men!”
    The quick command, sharp, stern, penetrated the senses of the men inert in heavy sleep. Instantly Smith’s hand was upon his gun. He had reached for it instinctively even before he sat up.
    “Drop it!” There was no mistaking the intention expressed in Ralston’s voice, and the gun fell from Smith’s hand.
    The red of Smith’s skin changed to a curious yellow, not unlike the yellow of the slicker rolled on the back of his saddle. Panic-stricken for the moment, he grinned, almost foolishly; then his hands shot above his head.
    A line of sunlight dropped into the creek-bottom, and a ray was caught by the deputy’s badge which shone on Ralston’s breast. The glitter of it seemed to fascinate Smith.
    “You”—he drawled a vile name. “I orter have known!”
    Still dazed with sleep, and not yet comprehending anything beyond the fact that he had been advised to put up his hands, and that a stranger had drawn an uncommonly fine bead on the head which he was in honor bound to preserve from mutilation, Tubbs blinked at Babe and inquired peevishly:
    “What’s the matter with you?” He had forgotten that he was a thief.
    “Shove up your hands!” yelled Babe.
    With an expression of annoyance, Tubbs did as he was bid, but dropped them again upon seeing Ralston.
    “Oh, hello!” he called cheerfully.
    “Put them hands back!” Babe waved his rifle-barrel significantly.
    “What’s the matter with you, feller?” inquired Tubbs crossly. Though he now recollected the circumstances under which they were found, Ralston’s presence robbed the situation of any seriousness for him. It did not occur to Tubbs that any one who knew him could possibly do him harm.
    “Keep your hands up, Tubbs,” said Ralston curtly, “and, Babe, take the guns.”
    “What for a josh is this anyhow?”—in an aggrieved tone. “Ain’t we all friends?”
    “Shut up, you idjot!” snapped Smith irritably. His glance was full of malevolence as Babe took his guns. The yellow of his skin was now the only sign by which he betrayed his feelings. To all other appearances, he was himself again—insolent, defiant.
    When it thoroughly dawned upon Tubbs that they were cornered and under arrest, he promptly went to pieces. He thrust his hands so high above his head that they lifted him to tiptoe, and they shook as with palsy.
    “Stack the guns and get our horses, Babe,” said Ralston.
    “Mine’s hard for a stranger to ketch,” said Smith surlily. “I’ll get him, for I don’t aim to walk.”
    “All right; but don’t make any break, Smith,” Ralston warned.
    “I’m not a fool,” Smith answered gruffly.
    Ralston’s face relaxed as Smith sauntered toward his horse. He was glad that they had been taken without bloodshed, and, now the prisoners’ guns had been removed, that possibility was passed.
    Smith’s horse was a newly broken bronco, and he was a wild beggar, as Smith had said; but he talked to him reassuringly as the horse jumped to the end of his picket-rope and stood snorting and trembling in fright, and finally laid his hand upon his neck and back. The fingers of one hand were entwined in the horse’s mane, and suddenly, with a cat-like spring made possible only by his desperation, Smith landed on the bronco’s back. With a yell of defiance which Ralston and Babe remembered for many a day, he kicked the animal in the ribs, and, as it reared in fright, it pulled loose from the picket-stake. Smith reached for the trailing