"I have heard about you and your work up in Hardeman," said Captain Knight, "and I want you for a deputy. But first tell me what are your politics?"
McDonald did not hesitate. Knight was a Republican.
"Captain Knight," he said, "I am the damndest, hell-roaringest, allfiredest Democrat you ever saw. If politics has anything to do with this appointment I'd just as well go back."
"Well," said Knight, "you're pretty emphatic, but I guess you'll do. Your kind of politics seem to suit your job pretty well."
It was only a little while after this that Bill McDonald was also made Deputy U.S. Marshal of the southern district of Kansas, which enabled him to work in the remaining portion of the Territory, and now, with his four offices—two Deputy U.S. Marshalships, Deputy Sheriff of Hardeman County, and that of Special Ranger—he was qualified to undertake at any time any sort of a man-hunt in any territory likely to invite his services. He went after the Brooken gang forthwith, but this time they did not wait for him. His fame was already in their ears.
He followed them like a hound on the trail. He never recovered his two horses and his Newfoundland dog, but he broke up the gang, utterly. He brought in Bood Brooken at last and got him sentenced for five years. Bill Brooken himself escaped to Mexico, was captured there, brought back and sentenced for one hundred and twenty-seven years. He has a good deal of that time still to serve.
The life work of the boy who long ago had begun it by hunting slaves in the swamps of Mississippi was well started, now; his name as a thief-catcher was beginning to be known, and honored, and feared. Yet his more active days—his more valuable days to the community at large—still lay all ahead, and of these we shall undertake to tell.