cher, but Shields kept right on
talking.

"There was a dandy Cheyenne saddle," he said, counting on his fingers, "a
good gun, a pair of hobbles and a big coil of rawhide rope on the cayuse.
Was they yours?"

"Was they mine! Was they mine!" his companion screamed. "My new saddle
gone, my gun gone and my fine rope gone! Oh, h--l! How'll I hunt him now?
How'll I get home? How'll I get back to th' ranch?" Words failed him, and
he could only wave his arms and yell.

"Well, it wouldn't hardly be worth while chasing him on foot without a
gun, that's shore," the sheriff said, grave once more. "But you can get
home all right; that's easy."

"How can I?" asked the puncher, eyeing the sheriff's horse and waiting
for the invitation to ride double on it.

"Why, walk," was the reply. "It's only about twenty miles as the crow
flies--say twenty-five on the trail."

"Walk! Walk!" cried his companion, savagely kicking at a lizard which
looked out from a crevice in the rock wall. "I never walked five miles
all at once in my life!"

"Well, it'll be a new experience, and you can't begin any younger,"
replied Shields as he swung into his saddle. "It'll do you good,
too--increase your appetite."

"I'm so hungry now I'm half starved," replied the other. "But I'll pay up
for all this, you see if I don't! I'll get square with that d----d outlaw!"

"You don't know enough to be glad you were found," retorted the sheriff.
"And if he hadn't told Bill where to look for you, you wouldn't have been,
neither. You got off easy, Bucknell, and don't you forget it, neither.
Men have been killed for less than what you tried to do."

The puncher wilted, for twenty-five miles in high-heeled boots, over rocks
and sand, and with an empty stomach, was terrible to contemplate, and he
turned to the sheriff beseechingly.

"Give me a lift, Sheriff," he implored. "Take me up behind you--I can't
walk all the way!"

Shields looked at the sun, which was nearing the western horizon, and
thought for a minute. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I hadn't ought to help you a step, not a single, solitary step, and
you know it. You tried your best to run against me. You tried to hold me
up there by the corral, and then after I had warned you not to go out
for The Orphan you went right ahead. Now you're asking me to help you out
of your trouble, to make good for your fool stupidity. But I'll take you
as far as the end of the canyon--no, I'll take you on to t