at his carousals in Drumwell, the crooks of that town had hidden the scoundrel under their beds and saved his skin.
They were a low breed, the sheriff said; nothing like the old-timers of Abilene, Wichita and McPherson. There was a certain kind of honor among the thieves and gamblers of those once-happy places. Not so in Drumwell. They were a bunch of tin-horn sports and handkerchief gamblers, and the meanest sneak among them was the city marshal, who was Wade Harrison's chief scout.
The little sheriff certainly enlarged mightily in Tom Simpson's regard that sunny afternoon. Not once through that long recital of battles, plots and breathless escapes did he ever identify himself outright as the "feller," or connect himself with any of the moving events by one egotistical upper-case I. The evasion was made with the delicacy of true modesty, not uncommonly the harmonious companion of temperate valor.
The two men left the ranch-house strangers; at dusk they returned to it friends. Each had been given the opportunity to look under the case of the other, at the inner works; each finding there the full-jewelled movement of a man. But they had not discovered the trail of Wade Harrison's band, nor the hiding-place of the notorious scoundrel's body, living or dead. Two homesteaders about three miles from the Ellison ranch had seen them pass, carrying a limp and apparently lifeless man across the saddle. From that point all trace of them was lost.
After the sheriff had driven away on his long journey to the county seat, there was another conference around the big dining-table in the kitchen. Mrs. Ellison was in a
