"'Well,' I says, 'just stay by him till I turn out and hunt up a drug
store, and I reckon I'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds tired
of the company they're keeping.'

"He said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at me I slid
myself into Bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They
was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than
being too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and
in about a minute I was out the back way and stretching up the river road
at a five-mile gait.

"And not feeling so very bad, neither--walking on di'monds don't have no
such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there's
more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and
I says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man
back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and I
says to myself he's getting real uneasy--he's walking the floor now.
Another five, and I says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind
me, and he's AWFUL uneasy--beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I
says to myself, forty minutes gone--he KNOWS there's something up! Fifty
minutes--the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found the
di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never
let on--yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. He'll hunt for new
tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up.

"Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I
jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and
waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't
feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I
surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.