"Well," Charley slowly began, "I was taking a short cut this morning,
and when I got to a place about a dozen miles southeast of the mouth
of Bill's canyon, I saw five bodies on the desert. They were your
cow-punchers, and they was so full of arrows that they looked like big
brooms. Apaches, I reckon," he added sententiously.

Sneed tore his hair and swore when he was not choking.

"And after I told them to let up on that blasted outlaw's trail!" he
yelled. "Where will it end, between war-whoops and murders? What sort of
a God-forsaken layout is this, anyhow? A man can't stick his nose out of
his own house after dark without having it skinned by a slug! He's a
h--l of a hefty orphant, he is! Poor thing, ain't got no paw or maw to
look after his dear little hide! He needs a regiment of cavalry for a
papa, that's what he needs, and a good strong lariat for a mamma! Orphant!
He's a h--l of a sumptious orphant!"

"Have you trailed him?" asked the sheriff, having to smile in spite of
himself at the execution on all sides of him, and at the foreman's words.

"Trailed him!" yelled Sneed, raising on his toes in his vehemence.
"Trailed him! Good God, yes! But what good is it, what can we do when
our cayuses are so dod-gasted tired that they can't catch a tumble bug?
Trailed him! Yes, we trailed him, all right! We trailed him until we fell
asleep in the saddles on our sleeping cayuses! And while we were gone,
d----d if he didn't blow in and smash up our furniture! We trailed him,
all right; just like a lot of cross-eyed, locoed drunken ants! We had to
wake each other up, and he could-a killed the whole crowd of us with a
club! And my punchers who were so cock-sure they'd get him! How in
h--l did they go and mess up with Apaches? They wasn't no fool kids!"

"The last time we saw them they were leaving the stage to go south after
him," Charley said. "They hadn't got more than ten miles south when they
must have met the Apaches. I have a suspicion that The Orphan had a hand
in that meeting, but how he did it I don't know. But I know that the spot
was lovely for a head-on collision. Punchers riding south would turn the
corner of the chaparral and run into the war party before they knowed
it. And I didn't see The Orphant's body laying around all full of arrows,
neither."

Sneed's rage was pathetic. He almost frothed, and tears stood in his
blood-shot eyes. His neck and his face were red as fire and the veins
of his neck and fo