rface, where this old highbinder gathers 'em in. He's
a regular efficiency expert in sport. Take fall and spring, when the wild
geese come through, he'll soak grain in alcohol and put it out for 'em
over on the big marsh. First thing you know he'll have a drunken old
goose by the legs, all maudlin and helpless. Puts him in a coop till
he sobers up, then butchers him.

"Such is Safety First: never been known to take a chance yet. Why, say,
a year ago when he sold off his wool there was a piece in the county
paper about him getting eighteen thousand dollars for it; so naturally
there was a man that said he was a well-known capitalist come up from
San Francisco to sell him some stock in a rubber company. Safety admits
he has the money and he goes down to the big city for a week at the
capitalist's expense, seeing the town's night life and the blue-print
maps and the engraved stock and samples of the rubber and the
capitalist's picture under a magnificent rubber tree in South America,
and he's lodged in a silk boudoir at the best hotel and wined and
dined very deleteriously and everything is agreed to. And the night
before he's going to put his eighteen thousand into this lovely rubber
stock that will net him two hundred per cent, at the very lowest, on the
capitalist's word of honour, what does he do but sneak out and take the
train for home on his return ticket that he'd made the capitalist buy
him.

"Ever talk to one of these rich capitalists that has rubber stock for
sale in South America or a self-starting banana orchard? You know how
good they are.

"You're certainly entitled to anything of your own that you've kept
after they get through with you. And would you think that this poor,
simple-minded old rancher would be any match for their wiles? But if
you knew he had been a match and had nicked 'em for at least three
hundred dollars, would you still think something malignant might be
put over on him by a mere scrub buckeroo named Sandy Sawtelle, that
never made a cent in his life except by the most degrading manual
labour? No, you wouldn't. No fair-minded judge of criminals would.

"But I admit I had a weak moment. Yes, sir; for a brief spell I was all
too human. Or I guess what it was. I was all blinded up with immoral
designs, this here snake-blooded Timmins having put things over on me
in stock deals from time to time till I'd got to lying awake nights
thinking how I could make a believer of him. I wanted him t