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“Don’t you touch them knots, Sam!” he roared. “I know how to secure a man, and don’t you try any of your games in my house, either, you young fiend. I’d never forgive myself if you escaped.”

I ate everything I could reach, which wasn’t much, and when I asked for the butter he glared at me and said: “Butter’s too good for horse-thieves; eat what’s before you.”

Every time I’d catch the eye of one of the girls and kind of grin and look enticing, she’d shiver and tell Jim that the marks of my depravity stood out on my face like warts on a toad.

Jim and the boys would all grin like idiots and invent a new crime for me. On the square, if I’d worked nights from the age of three I couldn’t have done half they blamed me for.

They put it to the old man so strong that when he turned in he chained me to Sam, the cross-eyed nigger that stood behind me at supper, and made us sleep on the floor.

I told Sam that I cut a man’s throat once because he snored, and that nigger never closed an eye all night. I was tryin’ to get even with somebody.

After breakfast, when it came time to leave, Donnelly untied my feet and led me out into the yard, where the girls were hangin’ around the Colonel and Jim, who was preparin’ to settle up.

As we rode up the evening before, I had noticed that we turned in from the road through a lane, and that the fence was too high to jump, so, when I threw my leg over Black Hawk, I hit Donnelly a swat in the neck, and, as he did a stage-fall, I swept through the gate and down the lane.

The old man cut the halter off one of his Mexican war-whoops, and broke through the house on the run, appearin’ at the front door with his shot-gun just as I checked up to make the turn onto the main road.

As I swung around, doubled over the horse’s neck, he let drive with his old blunderbuss, and I caught two buckshot in my right arm where you see them marks.

I had sense enough to hang on and ride for my life, because I knew the old fire-eater would reckon it a pleasure to put an end to such a wretch as me, if he got half a chance.

I heard him howl, “Come on boys! We’ll get him yet,” and, over my shoulder, I saw him jump one of his loose horses standin’ in the yard and come tearin’ down the lane, ahead of the befuddled sheriff and posse, his white hair streamin’ and the shot-gun wavin’ aloft, as though chargin’ an army of greasers at the head of his regiment.

From the way he drew away from the boys, I wouldn’t have placed any money that he was wrong either.

I’ve always wondered how the old man ever got through that war with only three recommendations to the government.

He certainly kept good horses too, for in five minutes we’d left the posse behind, and I saw him madly urgin’ his horse into range, reloadin’ as he came.

As I threw the quirt into the mare with my good arm, I allowed I’d had about all the horse-stealin’ I wanted for a while.

The old devil finally saw he was losin’ ground in spite of his best efforts, and let me have both barrels. I heard the shot patter on the hard road behind me, and hoped he’d quit and go home, but I’m blamed if he didn’t chase me five miles further before turnin’ back, in hopes I’d cast a shoe or something would happen to me.

I believe I was on the only horse in Texas that could have outrun the Colonel and his that mornin’.

About noon I stopped at a blacksmith’s shop, half dead with pain, and had my arm dressed and a big jolt of whiskey.

As the posse rode up to me, sittin’ in the sun by the lathered flanks of my horse and nursin’ my arm, Jim yells out: “Here he is! Surround him, boys! You’re our prisoner!”

“No! I’m blamed if I am,” I says. “You’ll have to get another desperado. After this, I’m the sheriff!”