"Nope."
"That a tarpaulin you got in the back of the bed? Jest saw it by the
lightnin'."
"Got the bacon kivered to keep it from gittin' wet 'n case it rains,"
hastily interposed Scott. He was discussing within himself the
advisability of knocking the deputy from the seat and whipping the team
into a gallop, leaving him behind.
"You don't mind my crawlin' under the tarpaulin if it rains, do you,
Scott?"
"There ain't no--no room under it, Harry, an' I won't allow that bacon
to git wet under no consideration."
A generous though nerve-racking crash of thunder changed the current of
conversation. It drifted from the weather immediately, however, to a
one-sided discussion of the escaped horse thief.
"I guess he's a purty slick one," they heard the deputy say. "Austin
said he had him dead to rights in his barn! That big bulldog of his had
him treed on a beam, but when we got there, just after dark, the darned
cuss was gone, an' the dog was trapped up in a box-stall. By thunder, it
showed how desperate the feller is. He evidently come down from that
beam an' jest naturally picked that turrible bulldog up by the neck an'
throwed him over into the stall.
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