"Where's that blankety-blank Old Crit?" he demanded, racking into the store with his hand on his hip.
"Gone down to Geronimo to git the mail," replied Babe, promptly.
"Well, you tell him I want my pay!" thundered Pecos, pacing up and down.
"He'll be back to-night, better stay and tell him yourself," suggested Babe, mildly.
"I'll do that," responded Pecos, nodding ominously. "And more'n that—I'll collect it. What's doin'?"
"Oh, nothin'," replied Babe. "There was a deputy assessor up here the other day and he left this blank for you to fill out. It gives the number of your cattle."
"Well, you tell that deputy to go to hell, will you?"
"Nope," said Babe, "he might take me with him. It happens he's a deputy sheriff, too!"
"Deputy,—huh!" grumbled Pecos, morosely. "They all look the same to me. Did Crit fill out his blank?"
"Sure did. Reported a hundred head of Wine-glasses. Now what d'ye think of that?"
Pecos paused and meditated on the matter for an instant. It was doubtful if Crittenden could gather more than a hundred head of Wine-glasses, all told. Some of them had drifted back to their old range and the rest were scattered in a rough country. "Looks like that deputy threw a scare into him," he observed, dubiously. "What did he say about my cattle?"
"Well, he said you'd registered a new brand and now it was up to you to show that you had some cattle. If you've got 'em you ought to pay taxes on 'em and if you haven't got any you got no business with an iron that will burn over Upton's U."
"Oh, that's the racket, is it? Well, you tell that deputy that I've got cattle in that brand and I've got a bill of sale for 'em, all regular, but I've yet to see the deputy sheriff that can collect taxes off of me. D'ye think I'm goin' to chip in to help pay the salary of a man that makes a business of rollin' drunks and throwin' honest workingmen into the hoosegatho when he's in town? Ump-um—guess again!"
He motioned for a drink and Babe regarded him curiously as he set out the bottle.
"You been readin' the Voice, I reckon," he said, absent-mindedly pouring out a drink for himself. "Well, say, did you read that article on the fee system? It's all true, Pardner, every word of it, and more! I'm a man of good family and education—I was brought up right and my folks are respectable people—and yet every time I go to Geronimo they throw me into jail. Two-twenty-five, that's what they do it for—and there I have to lay, half the time with some yegg or lousy gang of hobos, until they git ready to turn me loose. And they call that justice! Pecos, I'm going back to Geronimo—I'm going to stand on the corner, just the way I used to when I was drunk, and tell the people it's all wrong! You're a good man, Pecos—Cumrad—will you go with me?"
Pecos stood and looked at him, wondering. "Comrade" sounded good to him; it was the word they used in the Voice of Reason—"Comrade Jones has just sent us in four more subscriptions. That's what throws a crook into the tail of monopoly. Bully for you, Comrade!" But with all his fervor he did not fail to notice the droop to Angy's eyes, the flush on his cheeks, and the slack tremulousness of his lips—in spite of his solemn resolutions Angy had undoubtedly given way to the Demon Drink.
"Nope," he said, "I like you, Angy, but they'd throw us both in. You'd better stay up here and watch me put it on Crit. 'Don't rope a bigger bull than you can throw,' is my motto, and Old Crit is jest my size. I'm goin' to comb his hair with a six-shooter or I'll have my money—and then if that dog-robber of a deputy sheriff shows up I'll—well, he'd better not crowd me, that's all. Here's to the revolution—will you drink it, old Red-eye?"
Angy drank it, and another to keep it company.
"Pecos," he said, his voice tremulous with emotion, "when I think how my life has been ruined by these hirelings of the law, when I think of the precious days I have wasted in the confinement of the Geronimo jail, I could rise up and destroy them, these fiends in human form and their accursed jails; I could wreck every prison in the land and proclaim liberty from the street-corners—whoop!" He waved one hand above his head, laughed, and leapt to a seat upon the bar. "But don't you imagine f'r a moment, my friend," he continued, with the impressive gravity of an orator, "that they have escaped unscathed. It was not until I had read that wonderful champion of the common people, the Voice of Reason, that I realized the enormity of this conspiracy which has reduced me to my present condition, but from my first incarceration in the Geronimo jail I have been a Thorne in their side, as the Geronimo Blade well said. I remember as if it were yesterday the time when they erected their first prison, over twenty years ago, on account of losing some hoss-thieves. It was a new structure, strongly built of adobe bricks, and in a spirit of jest the town marshal arrested me and locked me up to see if it was tight. That night when all was still I wrenched one of the iron bars loose and dug my way to freedom! But what is freedom to revenge? After I had escaped I packed wood in through the same hole, piled it up against the door, and set the dam' hell-hole afire!"
He paused and gazed upon Pecos with drunken triumph. "That's the kind of an hombre I am," he said. "But what is one determined man against a thousand? When the citizens of Geronimo beheld their new calaboose ruined and in flames they went over the country with a fine-tooth comb and never let up until they had brought me back and shackled me to the old Cottonwood log down by the canal—the one they had always used before they lost the hoss-thieves. That was the only jail they had left, now that the calaboose was burned. In vain I pleaded with them for just one drink—they were inexorable, the cowardly curs, and there they left me, chained like a beast, while they went up town and swilled whiskey until far into the night. As the first faint light of morning shot across the desert I awoke with a terrible thirst. My suffering was awful. I filled my mouth with the vile ditch-water and spat it out again, unsatisfied—I shook my chains and howled for mercy. But what mercy could one expect from such a pack of curs? I tested every link in my chain, and the bolt that passed through the log—then, with the strength of desperation I laid hold upon that enormous tree-trunk and rolled it into the water! Yes, sir, I rolled the old jail-log into the canal and jumped straddle of it like a conqueror, and whatever happened after that I knew I had the laugh on old Hickey, the Town Marshal, unless some one saw me sailing by. But luck was with me, boy; I floated that big log clean through town and down to Old Manuel's road-house—a Mexican deadfall out on the edge of the desert—and swapped it for two drinks of mescal that would simply make you scream! By Joe, that liquor tasted good—have one with me now!"
They drank once more, still pledging the revolution, and then Angy went ahead on his talking jag. "Maybe you've heard of this Baron Mun-chawson, the German character that was such a dam' liar and jail-breaker the king made a prison to order and walled him in? Well, sir, Mun-chawson worked seven years with a single nail on that prison and dug out in spite of hell. But human nature's the same, wherever you go—always stern and pitiless. When those Geronimo citizens found out that old Angy had stole their cottonwood log and traded it to a wood-chopper for the drinks, they went ahead and built a double-decked, steel-celled county jail and sentenced me to it for life! Conspicuous drunkenness was the charge—and grand larceny of a jail—but answer me, my friend, is this a free country or is the spirit that animated our forefathers dead? Is the spirit of Patrick Henry when he cried, 'Give me liberty or give me death,' buried in the oblivion of the past? Tell me that, now!"
"Don't know," responded Pecos, lightly, "too deep a question for me—but say, gimme one more drink and then I'm goin' down the road to collect my pay from Crit. I'm a man of action—that's where I shine—I refer all such matters to Judge Colt." He slapped his gun affectionately and clanked resolutely out of the door. Half a mile down the river he sighted his quarry and rode in on him warily. Old Crit was alone, driving a discouraged team of Mexican horses, and as the bouquet of Pecos's breath drifted in to him over the front wheel the Boss of Verde Crossing regretted for once the fiery quality of his whiskey.
"I come down to collect my pay," observed Pecos, plucking nervously at his gun.
"Well, you don't collect a cent off of me," replied Crit, defiantly, "a man that will steal the way