SI AND SHORTY STAND OFF A MOB AT THE JAIL.

HAVING seen their prisoners safely behind the bars, Si and Shorty breathed more freely than they had since starting out in the morning, and Si remarked, as he folded up the receipt for them and placed it in his pocket-book:

"That drove's safely marketed, without the loss of a runaway or a played-out. Purty good job o' drovin', that. Pap couldn't do better'n that with his hogs. I'm hungrier'n a wolf. So must you be, Shorty. Le's hunt up Maria, and she'll take us where we kin git a square meal. Then we kin talk. I've got a hundred questions I want to ask you, but ain't goin' to do it on an empty gizzard. Come on."

Shorty had dropped on to a bench, and fixed his eyes on the stone wall opposite, as if desperately striving to read there some hint of extrication from his perplexities. The thought of encountering Maria's bright eyes, and seeing there even more than her sharp tongue would express, numbed his heart.

"Yit, how kin I git away from Si, now?" he murmured to himself. "And yit I'm so dead hungry to see her again that I'd be willin' to be a'most skinned alive to do it. Was ever anybody else so big a fool about a girl? I've plagued other fellers, and now I've got it worse'n anybody else. It's a judgment on me. But, then, nobody else ever seen such a girl as that. There's some sense in bein' a fool about her."

"Come on, Shorty," called Si from the door. "What are you dreamin' on? Are you too tired to move? Come on. We'll have a good wash, that'll take away some of the tiredness, then a big dinner, and a good bed tonight. Tomorrer mornin' we'll be as good as new."

"I think I'd better git right on the next train and go back to Jeffersonvillie," murmured Shorty, faintly struggling with himself. "They may need me there."

"Nonsense!" answered Si. "We've done enough for one day. I've bin up for two nights now, and am goin' to have a rest. Let some o' the other fellers have a show for their money. We haint got to fight this whole war all by ourselves."

"No, Si," said Shorty, summoning all his resolution; "I'm goin' back on the next train. I must git back to the company. They'll—"

"You'll do nothin' o' the kind," said Si impatiently. "What's eatin' you? What'd you skip out from our house for? What'd you mean—"

He was broken in upon by Maria's voice as she came in at the head of a bevy of other girls:

"Si Klegg, ain't you ever comin' out? What's akeepin' you? We're tired waitin' for you, and w're comin' right in. What're you doin' to them ragamuffins that you've bin gatherin' up? Tryin' to patch 'em up into decent-lookin' men? Think it'll be like mendin' a brush-fence—makin' bad worse. Where on earth did you gather up sich a gang o' scare-crows? I wouldn't waste my days and nights pickin' up sich runts as them. When I go manhuntin' I'll gether something that's worth while."

Every bright sally of Maria was punctuated with shrieks of laughter from the girls accompanying her. Led by her, they swarmed into the dull, bare room, filling it with the brightness of their youthful presence, their laughter, and their chirruping comments on everything they saw. The jail was a place of deep mystery to them, and it was a daring lark for them to venture in even to the outside rooms.

"The girls dared me to bring 'em in," Maria explained to Si, "and I never won't take no dare from anyone. Si, ain't you goin' to kiss your sister? You don't act a bit glad to see me. Now, if it was Annabel—"

"Why, Maria," said Si, kissing her to stop her mouth, "I wasn't expectin' to see you. What in the world are you doin' over here?"

"Why, your Cousin Marthy, here, is goin' to be married Thursday to her beau, who's got 10 days' leave to come home for that purpose. The thing's bin hurried up, because he got afeared. He heard that Marthy was flyin' around to singin' school and sociables with some other fellers that's home on furlough. So he just brung things to a head, and I rushed over here to help Marthy git ready, and stand by her in the tryin' hour. Why, here's Mr. Corporil Elliott, that I hain't spoken to yit. Well, Mr. Skip-and-away, how d' you do? Girls, come up here and see a man who thought mother's cookin' was not good enough for him. He got homesick for army rations, and run off without so much as sayin' good-by, to git somethin' to eat that he'd really enjoy."

Her merry laugh filled the room, and rang even into the dark cells inside. Shorty shambled to his feet, pulled off his hat, and stood with downcast eyes and burning face. He had never encountered anything so beautiful and so terrifying.

Maria was certainly fair to look upon. A buxom, rosy-cheeked lass, something above the average hight of girls, and showing the Klegg blood in her broad chest and heavy, full curves. She was dressed in the hollyhock fashion of country girls of those days, with an exuberance of bright colors, but which Shorty thought the hight of refined fashion. He actually trembled at what the next words would be from those full, red lips, that never seemed to open except in raillery and mocking.

"Well, ain't you goin' to shake hands with me? What are you mad about?"

"Mad? Me mad? What in the world've I to be mad about?" thought Shorty, as he changed his hat to his left hand, and put forth shamedly a huge paw, garnished with red hair and the dust of the march. It seemed so unfit to be touched by her white, plump hand. She gave him a hearty grasp, which reassured him a little, for there was nothing in it, at least, of the derision which seemed to ring in every note of her voice and laughter.

"Girls," she called, "come up and be introduced. This is Mr. Corpril Elliott, Si's best friend and partner. I call him Mr. Fly-by-night, because he got his dander up about something or nothin', and skipped out one night without so much's sayin'—"

"O, Maria, come off. Cheese it. Dry up," said Si impatiently. "Take us somewhere where we kin git somethin' to eat. Your tongue's hung in the middle, and when you start to talkin' you forgit everything else. I'm hungrier'n a bear, and so's Shorty."

An impulse of anger flamed up in Shorty's heart. How dared Si speak that way to such a peerless creature? How could he talk to her as if she were some ordinary girl?

"O, of course, you're hungry," Maria answered. "Never knowed you when you wasn't. You're worse'n a Shanghai chicken—eat all day and be hungry at night. But I expect you are really hungry this time. Come on. We'll go right up to Cousin Marthy's. I sent word that you was in town, and they're gittin' ready for you. I seen a dray-load o' provisions start up that way. Come on, girls. Cousin Marthy, bein's you're engaged and Si's engaged, you kin walk with him. The rest o' you fall in behind, and I'll bring up the rear, as Si'd say, with Mr. Fly-by-night, and hold on to him so that he sha'n't skip again."

"Me run away," thought Shorty, as they walked along. "Hosses couldn't drag me away. I only hope that house is 10 miles off."

Unfortunately for his cause he could not say nor hint any such a thing, but walked along in dogged silence. The sky was overcast and cheerless, and a chill wind blew, but Shorty never knew such a radiant hour.

"Well, why don't you say something? What's become o' your tongue?" began Maria banteringly.

"Have you bit it off, or did some girl, that you bolted off in such a hurry to see, drain you so dry o' talk that you haint got a word left? Who is she? What does she look like? What made you in sich a dreadful hurry to see her? You didn't go clear up to Bad Ax, did you, and kill that old widower?"

"Maria," called out Si, "if you don't stop plaguin' Shorty I'll come back there and wring your neck. You kin make the worst nuisance o' yourself o' any girl that ever lived. Here, you go up there and walk with Cousin Marthy. I'll walk with Shorty. I've got something I want to say to him."

With that he crowded in between Maria and Shorty and gave his sister a shove to send her forward. Shorty flared up at the interference. Acute as his suffering was under Maria's tongue, he would rather endure it than not have her with him. Anyhow, it was a matter between him and her, with which Si had no business.

"You oughtn't to jaw your sister that way, Si," he remonstrated energetically. "I think it's shameful. I wouldn't talk that way to any woman, especially sich a one as your sister."

"Whose sister is she, anyway?" snapped Si, who was as irritable as a hungry and tired man gets. "You 'tend to your sisters and I'll 'tend to mine. I'm helpin' you. You don't know Maria. She's one o' the best girls in the world, but she's got a doublegeared, self-actin' tongue that's sharper'n a briar. She winds it up Sundays and lets it run all week. I've got to comb her down every little while. She's a filly you can't manage with a snaffle. Let her git the start and you'd better be dead. The boys in our neighborhood's afeared to say their soul's their own when she gits a-goin'. You 'tend to the other girls and leave me to 'tend to her. She's my sister—nobody else's."

Have Come, Sir, in the Name of The People Of Indiana To Demand the Release of Those Men. 199

Shorty fell back a little and walked sullenly along. The people at the house were expecting them, and had a bountiful supper prepared. A good, sousing wash in the family lavatory in the entry, plentifully supplied with clear water, soap, tin basins and clean roller towels, helped much to restore the boys' self-respect and good humor. When they were seated at the table Maria, as the particular friend of the family, assisted as hostess, and paid especial attention to supplying Shorty's extensive wants, and by her assiduous thoughtfulness strengthened her chains upon him and soothed the hurts her tongue had made. Yet he could not see her whisper to one of the other girls, and hear the responsive giggle, but he thought with flushed face that it concerned the Bad Ax incident. But Maria was not doing any such covert work. She was, above everything, bold and outspoken.

"You girls that want a soldier-beau," she took opportunity to remark at a little pause in the feast, "kin jest set your caps for Mr. Corpril Elliott there. He's in the market. He ha............