He looked again at me and shook his head mournfully. "You look kind of sick," he said, "but it’s all right. Don’t worry. You ’ll only be in as a witness." "Witness for what?" I asked. "Murder of Mr. Pinkerton, proprietor of the Half-Way House to Camp Kettle." Apache interrupted: "Do you happen to have such a thing as quinine about you, Sheriff?" "Sure," said the sheriff: "always carry it in the hills." "Give my friend a capsule," he said, "and defer all this talk." "Murder of Mr. Pinkerton!" I cried; but just then the sheriff stooped and lifted a slip of paper from the floor. "Literature!" he said. "Keepsake _pome_ or what?" Then I noticed his firm, kindly eyebrows lift. He turned to Apache Kid. "This," he said, "seems to have fallen out your press-cuttin’ book. I see in a paper the other day where they supply press-cuttin’s to piano wallopers and barn-stormers and what not. You should try one o’ them. I disremember the fee; but it was n’t nothing very deadly." Then I knew what the cutting was that had come into his possession. It was the cutting Larry Donoghue had shown me in his childish, ignorant pride, the account of the "hold-up" by "the two-some gang." I must have thrust it absently into my pocket, hardly knowing what I was doing, when Canlan’s shot interrupted the unusual conversation of that terrible camp. The sheriff hummed over it. "Kind o’ lurid, this," he said; and at that comment Apache Kid’s face became radiant in a flash. "Sir," he said, "I am charmed to know you. You are a man of taste. I always object to the way these things are recounted." The sheriff rolled his bright eye on Apache, misunderstanding his pleasure which, though it sounded something exaggerated, was assuredly genuine enough. "I guess the way it’s told don’t alter the fact that in the main it’s true. It would mean a term of years, you know." For the first time in my knowledge of him Apache Kid’s face showed that he had been hit. He gave a frown, and said: "Yes, that’s the ugly side of it; that’s the reality. It must be an adventurous sort of life, the life portrayed in that cutting. I fancy that it is the adventuring, and not the money-getting, that lures anyone into it, and a man who loves adventure would naturally resent a prison cell." The sheriff, with lowered head and blank eyes, gazed from under his brows on Apache Kid. "I guess it’s sheer laziness, sir," said he, "and the man who likes that ways of living, and follows it up, is liable to stretch hemp!" "That would be better, I should fancy, than the prison cell," said Apache Kid. "The fellows told about there would prefer that, I should think." The sheriff made no answer, but turned to the door and bade his men unharness the pintos and come in. "You there, Slim," said he to one of the two; "you take possession o’ them firearms laying there. But you can let the gentlemen have their belts."