“An’ it was all my own fault!” he mumbled, brokenly. “All my own foolishness! What’n blue blazes can I do? What--what _IS_ there to do? Oh, Trevy, you trusted me! You was glad to come along with me. An’ see what I’ve made happen to you!” CHAPTER VI: DESERTED A day earlier, Joel Fenno had been happily, if always grouchily, the master of his own actions. To-day, Joel Fenno sat huddled miserably in a police station cell, at La Cerra, a hundred miles from home. The man did not know how long he crouched there in growing mental torment, on the hard cell bench. It seemed to him a handful of centuries in duration. Actually, it was something under an hour. Then a policeman came to lead him to the captain’s room at the front of the station. Besides the captain, two other men were in the room. One of them was jolly and elderly. The captain treated him with grudging respect and addressed him as “Judge.” The other was a lazy-looking chap, much younger, with a shock of red hair and a snub nose. The awesome police captain, apparently, was on comradely terms with him. As Joel shuffled miserably into the private room, it was this red-headed youth who greeted him. “Well, old-timer,” he said, breezily, “it sure was one grand and wakeful little scrap while it lasted. I was in the gallery, looking at the chows benched up there. And I got a fine view of it. But I couldn’t work my way through the crowd, till after you’d been gathered in. I thought they’d just turned you out of the place; till one of the bulls told me, a few minutes ago, that he’d cooped you. Then I hustled for Judge Brough and came here on the run.” He talked fast and with easy good-fellowship, undeterred by Fenno’s sour glare. Scarcely had he paused for breath when Joel, ignoring him, turned to the uniformed captain in tremblingly eager appeal. “Mister,” he pleaded, “my dog got left alone there at that show. He’s li’ble to starve or get lost or stole or hurt, without me to watch out for him. I--I’m kind of--kind of fond of him,” he mumbled shamefacedly; adding in a more normal tone: “I got forty-one dollars in my pocket, here. It’s yourn, if you’ll see he’s looked out for an’ shipped back to the ranch, while I’m servin’ my term. If that ain’t enough, I’ll write a check for--” “You’ll come around to court with me,” interposed Judge Brough, “and write out a check for five dollars, for your fine. Then you can go and look after your own dog. I’m holding special court for your benefit, my man. Because this nosey reporter friend of mine is pestering me to. Come along. My car’s outside.” “I--I don’t--I don’t just rightly understand!” sputtered Fenno, incredulous, as ever, that any such golden good luck could sift into his morbid life-lot. “I--”