To-night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

"By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a
total eclipse of sheep.

"'Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,' says he,
'about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot
through the shoulder and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it's said
that only one man did the job.'

"'Seems to me I do,' says I. 'But such things happen so often they don't
linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake, overhaul, seize,
or lay hands upon the despoiler?'

"'He escaped,' says Ogden. 'And I was just reading in a paper to-day
that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country.
It seems the bills the robber got were all the first issue of currency
to the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they've followed
the trail where they've been spent, and it leads this way.'

"Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.

"'I imagine,' says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal
booze, 'that it wouldn't be at all a disingenuous idea for a train
robber to run down into this part of the country to hide for a spell. A
sheep-ranch, now,' says I, 'would be the finest kind of a place. Who'd
ever expect to find such a desperate character among these song-birds
and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the way,' says I, kind of
looking H. Ogden over, 'was there any description mentioned of this
single-handed terror? Was his lineaments or height and thickness or