"That's Bud Tilden, the worst of the bunch," said the jail Warden—the warden with the sliced ear and the gorilla hands. "Reminds me of a cat'mount I tried to tame once, only he's twice as ugly."
As he spoke, he pointed to a prisoner in a slouch hat clinging half-way up the steel bars of his cage, his head thrust through as far as his cheeks would permit, his legs spread apart like the letter A.
"What's he here for?" I asked.
"Bobbin' the U-nited States mail."
"Where?"
"Up in the Kentucky mountains, back o' Bug Holler. Laid for the carrier one night, held him up with a gun, pulled him off his horse, slashed the bottom out o' the mail-bag with his knife, took what letters he wanted, and lit off in the woods, cool as a chunk o' ice. 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. I saw that the bulging muscles of his calves had driven the wrinkles of his butternut trousers close up under the knee-joint and that those of his thighs had rounded out the coarse cloth from the knee to the hip. The spread of his shoulders had performed a like service for his shirt, which was stretched out of shape over the chest and back. This was crossed by but one suspender, and was open at the throat—a tree-trunk of a throat, with all the cords supporting the head firmly planted in the shoulders. The arms were long and had the curved movement of the tentacles of a devil-fish. The hands were big and bony, the fingers knotted together with knuckles of iron. He wore no collar nor any coat; nor did he bring one with him, so the Warden said.