"More irreverence! Of course I'd look well. And it's worth something to eat the way I do here. I'm getting better every day. Why, they tell me no one has died out here in a hundred years. A man can eat anything from cactus to sole leather, and keep hearty. I saw a lot of fellows over there just now, sitting flat on the ground in the sun out in the middle of the street, eating dried beef and canned tomatoes, and they looked so happy that I sat down and took a bite with them. They are just travelling through,--sheriff's party from somewhere, going somewhere after somebody." "What's that, Mr. Ellsworth?" the woman from Kansas came out and inquired; for she knew better than he what that meant. "Sheriff? Was he a tall, slim man, longish mustache, sorter thin?" Ellsworth nodded; the woman wiped her hands on her blue-checked apron. Constance glanced at her serious face, and wondered. "Then it's Ben Stillson," the woman from Kansas said, "the sheriff of Blanco. He's after somebody. Did he summons any of our men along?" "I don't know, madam," answered Ellsworth. The woman said no more; she only watched and listened. It was this posse, headed by the sheriff of Blanco, that Dan Anderson and the Littlest Girl saw when they reached a point midway between Uncle Jim Brothers's hotel and the post-office. The little group of riders, dusty and travel-stained, had come at a steady trot down the street. Stillson, tall, grim-featured, and bronzed, looked neither to the right nor to the left. He stopped, and ordered his men to dismount and eat. They swung out of their saddles without a word, loosening the cinches to breathe their horses. The men of Heart's Desire began to gather around them. "What's up, Ben?" asked McKinney, the one most apt to be concerned; for cow men had borne the brunt of outlawry in that land for more than a generation. "Has Chacon come across from Arizona, or has the Kid broke out again?" The sheriff looked at him gravely. "The Kid's out," said he. "We had him and two others at Seven Rivers, but he broke out four days ago. He killed the jailer and a couple of Mexicans farther up the river. There's four in his bunch now, and we've trailed them this far. They're likely headed for Sumner. We dropped in here, across the Patos, to get a couple of men or so. How are you fixed here?" "Wait till I get a Winchester," said McKinney, briefly, and started down the street. "Whiteman," Doc Tomlinson volunteered, "you 'tend to my drug store while I'm away, and if anybody wants any drugs, you go get 'em." "You all hold on a minute," said Curly, hurrying forward, "while I run over home and git saddled up." He did not see the Littlest Girl approaching, but the sheriff did. "Never mind, Curly," said the sheriff, quietly, pointing to her. "I want one more man, a single man."