Oh! I tell ye, he's no
sardine; you kin see that without my tellin' ye. They'll railroad
him, sure."
"When was he arrested?"
"Last month--come down in the November batch. The dep'ties had a circus
'fore they got the irons on him. Caught him in a clearin' 'bout two
miles back o' the Holler. He was up in a corn-crib with a Winchester
when they opened on him. Nobody was hurted, but they would a-been if
they'd showed the top o' their heads, for he's strong as a bull and kin
scalp a squirrel at fifty yards. They never would a-got him if they
hadn't waited till dark and smoked him out, so one on 'em told me."
He spoke as if the prisoner had been a rattlesnake or a
sheep-stealing wolf.
The mail-thief evidently overheard, for he dropped, with a cat-like
movement, to the steel floor and stood looking at us through the bars
from under his knit eyebrows, his eyes watching our every movement.
There was no question about his strength. As he stood in the glare of
the overhead light I could trace the muscles through his rough
homespun--for he was a mountaineer, pure and simple, and not a city-bred
thief in ready-made clothes.
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