“The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I goes up to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away his gun. But the first thing I knew that _caballard_ of capitalists makes a break for the train. One of ’em hesitates in front of me for a second, and kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against my chin, and I sort of laid down on the platform and took a nap. I never was afraid of guns; but I don’t want any person except a barber to take liberties like that with my face again. When I woke up, the whole outfit—train, boy, and all—was gone. I asked about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he would recover provided his wounds didn’t turn out to be fatal. “When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he was mad all over. “‘Why’n’t you telegraph to San Antone,’ he asks, ‘and have the bunch arrested there?’ “‘Oh, well,’ says I, ‘I always did admire telegraphy; but astronomy was what I had took up just then.’ That capitalist sure knew how to gesticulate with his hands. “Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the depot a card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of some _hombre_ called Scudder in New York City. “‘Bud,’ says Luke, ‘I’m going after that bunch. I’m going there and get the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back. I’m sheriff of Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in its precincts while I’m able to draw a gun. And I want you to go with me. No Eastern Yankee can shoot up a respectable and well-known citizen of Bildad, ’specially with a thirty-two calibre, and escape the law. Pedro Johnson,’ says Luke, ‘is one of our most prominent citizens and business men. I’ll appoint Sam Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary powers while I’m away, and you and me will take the six forty-five northbound to-morrow evening and follow up this trail.’ “‘I’m your company,’ says I. ‘I never see this New York, but I’d like to. But, Luke,’ says I, ‘don’t you have to have a dispensation or a habeas corpus or something from the state, when you reach out that far for rich men and malefactors?’ “‘Did I have a requisition,’ says Luke, ‘when I went over into the Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for holding up the International? Did me and you have a search warrant or a posse comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican cow thieves down in Hidalgo? It’s my business to keep order in Mojada County.’ “‘And it’s my business as office deputy,’ says I, ‘to see that business is carried on according to law. Between us both we ought to keep things pretty well cleaned up.’