'd have killed her if she
didn't--which I would. I've been square with her--she'll tell you
that. I told her, when I took her, just what I was going to do with
her. So that's all straight. She's been scared, I guess, but she
ain't gone hungry, and she ain't suffered, except in her mind. I don't
fight women, and I'll say right now, to her and to you, that I've got
all the respect in the world for this little girl, and if I'd married
her I'd have been as good to her as I know how, and as she'd let me be.

"Now I want to tell you folks a few more things about Bill Warfield.
If you want to stop the damnest steal in the country, tie a can onto
that irrigation scheme of his. He's out to hold up the State for all
he can get, and bleed the poor devils of farmers white, that buys land
under that canal. It may look good, but it ain't good--not by a damn
sight.

"Yuh know what he's figuring on doing? Get water in the canal, sell
land under a contract that lets him out if the ditch breaks, or
something so he _can't_ supply water at any time. And when them poor
suckers gets their crops all in, and at the point where they've got to
have water or lose out, something'll happen to the supply. Folks, I
_know_! I'm a reliable man, and I've rode with a rope around my neck
for over five years, and Warfield offered me the same old five hundred
every time I monkeyed with the water supply as ordered. He'd have done
it slick; don't worry none about that. The biggest band of thieves he
could get together is that company. So if you folks have got any
sense, you'll bust it up right now.

"Bill Warfield, what I've got to say to you won't take long. You
thought you'd make a grand-stand play with the law, and at the same
time put me outa the way. You figured I'd resist arrest, and you'd
have a chance to shoot me down. I know your rotten mind better than
you do. You wanted to bump me off, but you wanted to do it in a way
that'd put you in right with the public. Killing me for kidnapping
this girl would sound damn romantic in the newspapers, and it wouldn't
have a thing to do with Thurman or Frank Johnson, or any of the rest
that I've sent over the trail for you.

"Right now you're figuring how you'll get around this bawling-out I'm
giving you. There's nobody to take down what I say, and I'm just a
mean, ornery outlaw and killer, talking for spite. With your pull you
expect to get this smoothed over and hushed up, and have me a