"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