"Oh, I don't hold nothin' agin you, Pardner," he replied, in answer to Pecos's solicitude for the influence of his battered head, "the jury didn't cinch me for my looks—it's that dam' narrer-headed jack-lawyer that I got to thank f'r this. He wouldn't let me tell my story, jest the way it was. You know, an' I know, that when a man gits his time on the range the boss is obligated to give him a mount to town. How's a cowboy goin' to git his riggin' to town—walk and pack his saddle? Well, now, jest because I give old Sage some back talk and quit him when he was short-handed he told me to walk; an' me, like the dam' fool I was, I went out and roped a hoss instead. Then, jest to git even, he had me arrested for a hoss-thief. But would this pin-head of a lawyer hear to a straight talk like that? No—he has me plead 'Not guilty' and swear I never took the hoss—an' you know the rest. That district attorney is a mean devil—he won't let nobody stand against him—you might as well plead 'Guilty' and take the mercy of the court as to try to buck against him. But whatever you do, Pardner, don't hire no tin-horn lawyer—I give ten years of my life to find that out." Pete sighed and rubbed his rough hands together wearily—it would be long before they felt the rope and the branding iron and the hard usage of honest toil. A great pity came over Pecos at the thought of his unhappy lot, and he treated him kindly before the other prisoners; but all the time a greater fear was clutching at his heart. Pete had taken a horse, but he had burned a calf—and Arizona hates a rustler worse than it hates a horse-thief. For all his strength and spirit, he was caught—caught like a rat in a trap—and as the imminence of his fate came over him he lost his leonine bearing and became furtive, like the rest of them. Outwardly he was the same, and he ruled the jail with a rod of iron, but at heart he was a true prisoner—cunning, cringing, watchful, dangerous—all his faculties centred upon that one thought, to escape! CHAPTER XVIII THE LAW'S DELAY