means; but he mistook the nature of the interest which his display of
stolen wealth had aroused. He thought that the men now looked upon
him as a fellow criminal to be accepted into the fraternity through
achievement; whereas they suffered him to remain solely in the hope of
transferring his loot to their own pockets.

It is true that he puzzled them. Even The Sky Pilot, the most astute
and intelligent of them all, was at a loss to fathom The Oskaloosa Kid.
Innocence and unsophistication flaunted their banners in almost every
act and speech of The Oskaloosa Kid. The youth reminded him in some ways
of members of a Sunday school which had flourished in the dim vistas of
his past when, as an ordained minister of the Gospel, he had earned the
sobriquet which now identified him. But the concrete evidence of the
valuable loot comported not with The Sky Pilot's idea of a Sunday school
boy's lark. The young fellow was, unquestionably, a thief; but that he
had ever before consorted with thieves his speech and manners belied.

"He's got me," murmured The Sky Pilot; "but he's got the stuff on him,
too; and all I want is to get it off of him without a painful operation.
Tomorrow'll do," and he shifted his position and fell asleep.

Dopey Charlie and The General did not, however, follow the example of
their chief. They remained very wide awake, a little apart from the
others, where their low whispers could not be overheard.

"You better do it," urged The General, in a soft, insinuating voice.
"You're pretty slick with the toad stabber, an' any way one more or less
won't count."

"We can go to Sout' America on dat stuff an' live like gents," muttered
Dopey Charlie. "I'm goin' to cut out de Hop an' buy a farm an' a
ottymobeel and--"

"Come out of it," admonished The General. "If we're lucky we'll get as
far as Cincinnati, get a stew on and get pinched. Den one of us'll hang
an' de other get stir fer life."

The General was a weasel faced person of almost any age between
thirty-five and sixty. Sometimes he could have passed for a hundred
and ten. He had won his military title as a boy in the famous march of
Coxey's army on Washington, or, rather, the title had been conferred
upon him in later years as a merited reward of service. The General,
profiting by the precepts of his erstwhile companions in arms, had never
soiled his military escutcheon by labor, nor had he ever risen to the
higher planes of criminality. Rather as a medi