"So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other
herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden's horse,
and the sheriffs all ride up close around him with their guns in hand,
ready to take their prisoner to town.

"Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies' hands and gives
him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just as if
he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours afterward
one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho Chiquito,
might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars--wages and
blood-money--in his pocket, riding south on another horse belonging to
said ranch."

The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming
freight-train sounded far away among the low hills.

The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head slowly
and disparagingly.

"What is it, Snipy?" asked the other. "Got the blues again?"

"No, I ain't" said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But I don't like your
talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen year; and I
never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the law--not no one.
And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at whose table you had
played games of cards--if casino can be so called. And yet you inform
him to the law and take money for it. It never was like you, I say."

"This H. Ogden," resumed the red-faced man, "through a lawyer, proved
himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard