“Zeke! Zeke who?”
“I don’t know his other name. He is a buffalo hunter, and has just started for Kansas.”
“Where did he get him, do you know?”
“He bought him of somebody down in San Joaquin.”
“Yes; well, that story won’t go down, young man,” said the new-comer, who was an officer of the law. “That horse was stolen down in San Joaquin a few days ago.”
“Oho!” exclaimed Guy’s host, “that accounts for the milk in the cocoanut.”
“I thought all the time that there was something streaked about this business,” observed another.
“Ain’t he a desperate one, though,” remarked a third. “He steals a horse and is so determined to keep him that he stays in the mountains until he is almost starved to death.”
“Oh, now, you don’t know what you are talking about,” cried Guy, who was frightened almost out of his senses. “I didn’t steal that horse. I got him just as I told you I did.”
The constable listened while Guy repeated the story of his two days’ acquaintance with the buffalo hunter, and when it was concluded gave it as his opinion that the boy’s statements would hardly wash. He might be all right—he was free to confess that Guy didn’t look like a horse-thief—but he had been instructed to detain that animal if he found him, and to put whoever had him in his possession into the calaboose and keep him there until the owner of the horse could be sent for; so Guy had better come along and be locked up and say no more about it.