il.

Tom then lit Alfred's pipe, and continued his excellent sculpture in the
bed of hard clay. He knew nothing more would happen until the posse
came. The game had passed out of his hands. It had become a race between
a short-legged man on foot and a band of hard riders on the backs of
very good horses. Viewing the matter dispassionately, Tom would not have
cared to bet on the chances.

As has been stated, Alfred was a small man and his legs were short--and
not only short, but unused to exertion of any kind, for Alfred's
daylight hours were spent on a horse. At the end of said legs were tight
boots with high French heels, which most Easterners would have
considered a silly affectation, but which all Westerners knew to be
purposeful in the extreme--they kept his feet from slipping forward
through the wide stirrups. In other respects, too, Alfred was
handicapped. His shoulders were narrow and sloping and his chest was
flat. Indoors and back East he would probably have been a consumptive;
out here, he was merely short-winded.

So it happened that Alfred lost the race.

The wonder was not that he lost, but that he succeeded in finishing at
Peterson's at all. He did it somehow, and even made a good effort to
ride back with the rescuing party, but fell like a log when he tried to
pick up his hat. So someone took off his boots, also, and put him to
bed.

As to the rescuing party, it disbanded less than an hour later.
Immediately afterward it reorganized into a hunting party--and its game
was men. The hunt was a long one, and the game was bagged even unto the
last, but that is neither here nor there.

Poor Tom was found stripped to the hide, and hacked to pieces. Mexicans
are impulsive, especially after a few of them have been killed. His
equipment had been stolen. The naked horse and the naked man, bathed in
the light of a gray dawn, that was all--except that here and there
fluttered bits of paper that had once been a pack of cards. The clay
slab was carved deeply--a man can do much of that sort of thing with two
hours to waste. Most of the decorative effects were arrows, or hearts,
or brands, but in one corner were the words, "passing the love of
woman," which was a little impressive after all, even though Tom had
not meant them, being, as I said, only an ordinary battered Arizona
cow-puncher incapable of the higher feelings.

How do I know he played the jack of diamonds on purpose? Why, I knew
Tom, and that's enoug