red dollars. The rest I hold back for that
trip to St. Louis. This hundred goes to the Rinkerton Detective
Agency, St. Louis, Missouri, along with a real nice letter that I'll
help you write; and the minute they deliver that letter into the hands
of Miss Sallie Winship, formerly of Hidden Water, Arizona, and return
an answer, there's another hundred coming to 'em. Is it a go?"

"Pardner," said Creede, rising up solemnly from his place, "I want to
shake with you on that."

The next morning, with a package of letters in the crown of his black
hat, Jefferson Creede swam Bat Wings across the swift current of the
Salagua, hanging onto his tail from behind, and without even stopping
to pour the water out of his boots struck into the long trail for
Bender.

One week passed, and then another, and at last he came back, wet and
dripping from his tussle with the river, and cursing the very name of
detectives.

"W'y, shucks!" he grumbled. "I bummed around in town there for two
weeks, hatin' myself and makin' faces at a passel of ornery sheepmen,
and what do I git for my trouble? 'Dear Mister Creede, your letter of
umpty-ump received. We have detailed Detective Moriarty on this case
and will report later. Yours truly!' That's all--keep the change--we
make a livin' off of suckers--and they's one born every minute. To
hell with these detectives! Well, I never received nothin' more and
finally I jumped at a poor little bandy-legged sheep-herder, a cross
between a gorilla and a Digger Injun--scared him to death. But I
pulled my freight quick before we had any international complications.
Don't mention Mr. Allan Q. Rinkerton to me, boy, or I'll throw a fit.
Say," he said, changing the subject abruptly, "how many hundred
thousand sheep d'ye think I saw, comin' up from Bender? Well, sir,
they was sheep as far as the eye could see--millions of 'em--and
they've got that plain et down to the original sand and cactus,
already. W'y, boy, if we let them sheepmen in on us this Spring we'll
look like a watermelon patch after a nigger picnic; we'll be cleaned
like Pablo Moreno; they won't be pickin's for a billy goat! And Jim
'n' Jasp have been ribbin' their herders on scandalous. This little
bandy-legged son-of-a-goat that I jumped at down in Bender actually
had the nerve to say that I killed Juan Alvarez myself. Think of that,
will ye, and me twenty miles away at the time! But I reckon if you
took Jasp to pieces you'd find out he was mad ove