Jack the Young Cowboy: An Eastern Boy's Experiance on a Western Round-up

by George Bird Grinnell

Going back to the kitchen door, he saw Bessie leaning against the fence watching the young man who was seated on the ground, and who apparently had not changed his position since he was tied up.

"Come over here, Bessie," Jack requested, and she walked with him to a place fifteen or twenty yards from the young man, and there in a low voice they talked over the situation. Jack told her that her mother had explained what had happened, and of Mrs. Powell's fear lest some of the people now off on the round-up should come back and find the prisoner at the house, and should hang him without ceremony.

"That is what I am afraid of, Jack. I want to have this thing ended now, as quickly as possible. It seems terrible that I should have had to kill that man; but I didn't know what else I could do to protect mother, and nobody knows where he would have stopped if something had not been done."

"Well," suggested Jack, "what's the matter with giving this young man his horse, or horses, and turning him loose now without any weapons?"

"I wish with all my heart you would do that. It seems to me that is the easiest way, and the best way, and it will certainly keep out of trouble any of the boys that may turn up here in the next few days."

"All right," said Jack, "we'll do that. But first I've got to use him for a little while, and you must come along too, I am afraid, to stand guard over him."

"I'll do anything I can that you say is right," agreed Bessie.

Jack went over to the prisoner, and untying the ropes turned him loose.

"Now, young fellow," Jack said, "rub your arms and wrists and get the stiffness out of them, and then come down to the barn and help me hitch up a wagon."

They went to the barn and found there a couple of work horses, and harnessing them, hitched them to the wagon, into which they threw a pick and a couple of shovels. Driving up to the house, they stopped by the body of the man who had been shot, and lifted it into the wagon, covering it with a piece of an old tent. They then drove off up a ravine a mile or more from the house, where they stopped the wagon; and here in the side of a bank the two men dug a hole, and buried the would-be robber. Jack searched his pockets for some means of identification, but found in them nothing except a pipe, some tobacco, matches and a pocket-knife. His belt and cartridges were taken off to be carried back to the house.