As the first hot days of summer came on, the district court of Geronimo County closed; the judge, having decided each case according to the law and the evidence, hurried upon his way, well satisfied; the deputies took a last disconsolate batch of prisoners to Yuma, and Pecos Dalhart sat down to ponder on his case. The tanks were nearly empty now, except for the drunks and vags that the constables brought in and the grist for the next grand jury. It was a dreary grist, each man swearing his innocence with unnatural warmth until the general cynicism of the place shamed him to silence. Pecos loathed them, the whining, browbeaten slaves. After he had sounded the depths of human depravity until there was no more wickedness to learn he drew more and more aloof from his companions, thinking his own thoughts in silence. When Boone Morgan came in, or the _Blade_ reporter, he conversed with them, quietly and respectfully—Boone Morgan could speak a word to the judge, and Baker held the ear of the great public. They were very kind to Pecos now, and often, after some ingenious write-up of his exploits, crowds of visitors would come to stare at the grim rustler who ruled the Kangaroo Court. There were no signs of the social theorist about him now, and the revolution was a broken dream—he could not afford such dreams. Let the rich and the free hold fast to their convictions and their faith—he was trying to get out of jail. The heat of midsummer came on apace, and the sun, beating against the outer walls, turned the close prison into an oven by day and a black hole of misery at night. The palpitating air seemed to press upon them, killing the thought of sleep, and the prisoners moaned and tossed in their bunks, or fell into fitful slumbers, broken by the high insistent whine of mosquitoes or the curses of the vags. Of curses there were a plenty before the cool weather came, and protests and complaints, but none from Pecos Dalhart. In the long watches of the night he possessed his soul of a mighty patience, to endure all things, if he could only go free. Even with a jail missionary, who distributed tracts and spoke bodingly of a great punishment to come, he was patient; and the missionary, poor simple man that he was, proffered him in return the consolation of religion. Being of a stiffnecked and perverse generation Pecos declined to confess his sins—the missionary might be subpœnaed by the prosecution—but he listened with long-suffering calm to the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the parable of the seeds that were sown on stony ground. In themselves the stories were good—nor were they strange to Pecos, for his mother had been a good Methodist—but the preacher spoiled them by a too pointed application of the moral to his own unfortunate case. Still, he let it go—anything was better than listening to the yeggs—and waited for the sermon to end. There was a favor that he wanted to ask. Many years