n with: "I thought you said the one you was
held up by was more'n fourteen foot high, and you killed him? This man
ain't big enough to hold up a baby-carriage with you in it--and he's
sure enough alive. What are you giving us--you blame fool?"

There's no telling what kind of an answer Denver would a-got from
Hart's nephew--for he hadn't a chance to give him no answer at all.
Just then Hill did the talking, and what Hill said was: "Boys, he's
dead right about it. This here's the bad man that held the coach
up--and as I was there, and seen it done, and drove the coach on with
five mules to Santa Fe afterwards, I guess I know!" And Hill, and the
little Mexican with him, just roared.

When Hill could talk for laughing, he went on: "I'll own up right now,
boys, I was extry over-precautious when I fixed up with empty shells
that gun-shop Hart's nephew took along on the coach when he started
out with it. For all the harm he done with them guns, I might just as
well a-left 'em loaded the usual way. He was that scared when this
here gigantic ruffian stopped him--I just happened to be a-setting in
among the cedar-bushes at the time, smoking a seegar and looking on
sort of casual--he couldn't do nothing more'n yell out he wasn't going
to shoot, and not to murder him; and then down he jumped from the
box--me a-smoking away looking at him, and this here ruffian
a-shooting his Winchester across the top of the coach to where he said
he thought he seen a jack-rabbit--and cut out the near wheeler; and
then he scrambled up anyhow on that mule's back, and away he went
down the barranca as hard as hell!" (Hill oughtn't to have said that
word. But he was careless in his talk, Hill was, and he did).

"But Hart's nephew being scared that way," Hill went on, a'most
choking, "don't count one way or the other when you get down to the
facts. It was this here dangerous devil that done that wicked deed,
and he done it all alone by his dangerous self. At the risk of my
life, gentlemen, I've got a-hold of him to bring him to justice, and
here he is. And I guess the sooner we yank him up to the usual
telegraph-pole, and so get shut of him, the sooner it'll be safe for
folks to travel these roads. He's the most dangerous I ever see," said
Hill, and by that time Hill was so near busted with his laughing he
was purple; "and what makes him such a particular holy terror is he
goes disguised!" And then--choking so he could hardly speak
plain--Hill whipp