f a notion to run you
in, Alf Reesling, fer interferin' with an officer."

"How'm I interferin'?"

"You're preventin' me from arrestin' a violater of the law, dern you.
Can't you see I'm on my way over to Justice Robb's to swear out a
warrant against Abraham Lincoln Bonaparte for bein' intoxicated? What do
you mean by stoppin' me an'--"

"I'll go along, Andy," broke in Alf, suddenly affable. "I'll swear to it
if you--"

"'Tain't necessary," announced Anderson loftily. "I c'n attend to my own
business, if you can't. Nobody c'n sing the Star Spangled Banner in
Dutch without havin' a charge of intoxication filed ag'in him, lemme
tell you that. Git out o' my way, Alf."

Mr. Crow's pride had been touched. The shaft of criticism had gone home.
He would arrest Mr. Abraham Lincoln Bonaparte, no matter what came of
it. He did not like Mr. Bonaparte anyway. It was Mr. Bonaparte who had
ordered him off Crow's Mountain--his own mountain, mind you--and told
him not to come puttering around there any more.

On second thoughts, he accepted the nominal town sot's offer to make
affidavit against a real offender, but declined his company and
assistance in effecting the arrest. Down in the old Marshal's heart
lurked the fear that his new partners would put up such strenuous
objections to the arrest that he would have to give way to them. It was
this misgiving that caused him to make the trip to Crow's Mountain
instead of confronting his man that evening at the hotel or in the
street, in the presence of an audience.

Arriving at the cross-roads half a mile from the foot of Crow's
Mountain, he encountered two men tinkering with the engine of a big
automobile. They stopped him and inquired if there was a garage nearby.
While he was directing them to Pete Olsen's in town, he espied two more
men reposing in the shade of a tree farther up the lane.

As he drove on, leaving them behind, he found himself possessed of the
notion that the two men were strangely nervous and impatient. He
decided, after he had gone a half mile farther that they had, as a
matter-of-fact, acted in a very suspicious manner,--just as automobile
thieves might be expected to act in the presence of an officer of the
law. He made up his mind that if they were still there when he returned
with his prisoner, he would yank 'em up for investigation.

He went through the motions of hitching old Hip and Jim to a sapling
near the top of the "Mountain." They went to sleep