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 you did! Whenever you git ready to leave this country I might give you a hundred or so for your brand, but you better hurry up. There was a deputy sheriff up here the other day, lookin' for you!" "Yes, I heard about it," sneered Pecos. "I reckon he was lookin' for evidence about this here Wine-glass iron." A smothered curse escaped the lips of Isaac Crittenden, but, being old at the game, he understood. There was nothing for it but to pay up—and wait. "Well, what guarantee do I git that you don't give the whole snap away anyhow?" he demanded, fiercely. "What's the use of me payin' you anything—I might as well keep it to hire a lawyer." "As long as you pay me what you owe me," said Pecos, slowly, "and treat me square," he added, "I keep my mouth shut. But the minute you git foxy or try some ranikaboo play like sayin' the deputy was after me—look out! Now they was a matter of a hundred and twenty dollars between us—do I git it or don't I?"