Me Smith

owned it a long time. It was light and almost water-proof; he liked it, and he eyed Babe’s action with disfavor.
    “I reckon this gent will have to spend the day in a tree,” said Babe prosaically.
    “Couldn’t you use no other blanket nor that?” demanded Smith.
    It was the first time he had spoken.
    “Don’t take on so,” Babe replied comfortingly. “They furnish blankets where you’re goin’.”
    He went on with his work of throwing a hitch around Tubbs with his picket-rope.
    Ralston divided the scanty rations which Smith and Tubbs, and he and Babe, had brought with them. He made coffee, and handed a cup to Smith first. The latter arose and changed his seat.
    “I never could eat with a corp’ settin’ around,” he said disagreeably.
    Smith’s fastidiousness made Babe’s jaw drop, and a piece of biscuit which had made his cheek bulge inadvertently rolled out, but was skillfully intercepted before it reached the ground.
    “I hope you’ll excuse us, Mr. Smith,” said Babe, bowing as well as he could sitting cross-legged on the ground. “I hope you’ll overlook our forgittin’ the napkins and toothpicks.”
    When they had finished, they slung Tubbs’s body into a tree, beyond the reach of coyotes. The cattle they left to drift back to their range. Tubbs’s horse was saddled for Smith, and, with Ralston holding the lead rope and Babe in the rear, the procession started back to the ranch.
    Smith had much time to think on the homeward ride. He based his hopes upon the Indian woman. He knew that he could conciliate her with a look. She was resourceful, she had unlimited influence with the Indians, and she had proven that she was careless of her own life where he was concerned. She was a powerful ally. The situation was not so bad as it had seemed. He had been in tighter places, he told himself, and his spirits rose as he rode. Without the plodding cattle, they retraced their steps in half the time it had taken them to come, and it was not much after midday when they were sighted from the MacDonald ranch.
    The Indians that Smith had missed were at the ford to meet them: Bear Chief, Yellow Bird, Running Rabbit, and others, who were strangers to him. They followed as Ralston and Babe rode with their prisoner up the path to put him under guard in the bunk-house.
    Susie, McArthur, and Dora were at the door of the ranch-house, and Susie stepped out and stopped them when they would have passed.
    “You can’t take him there; that place is for our friends . There’s the harness-house below. The dogs sleep there. There’ll be room for one more.”
    The insult stung Smith to the quick.
    “What you got to say about it? Where’s your mother?”
    With narrowed eyes she looked for a moment into his ugly visage, then she laid her hand upon the rope and led his horse close to the open window of the bedroom.
    “There,” and she pointed to the still figure on its improvised bier. “There’s my mother!”
    Smith looked in silence, and once more showed by his yellowing skin the fear within him. The avenue of escape upon which he had counted almost with certainty, was closed to him. At that moment the harsh, high walls of the penitentiary loomed close; the doors looked wide open to receive him; but, after an instant’s hesitation, he only shrugged his shoulders and said:
    “Hell! I sleeps good anywhere.”
    In deference to Susie’s wishes, Ralston and Babe had swung their horses to go back down the path when Smith turned in his saddle and looked at Dora. She was regarding him sorrowfully, her eyes misty with disappointment in him; and Smith misunderstood. A rush of feeling swept over him, and he burst out impulsively:
    “Don’t go back on me! I done it for you, girl! I done it to make our stake !”
    Dora stood speechless, bewildered, confused under the astonished eyes upon her. She was appalled by the light in which he had placed her; and while the others followed to the harness-house below, she sank limply upon the door-sill, her face in her hands.
    Smith sat on a wagon-tongue, swinging his legs, while they cleaned out the harness-house a bit for his occupancy.
    “Throw down some straw and rustle up a blanket or two,” said Babe; and McArthur pulled his saddle-blankets apart to contribute the cleanest toward Smith’s bed.
    Something in the alacrity the “bug-hunter” displayed angered Smith. He always had despised the little man in a general way. He uncinched his saddle on the wrong side; he