TWO POWERFUL ARGUMENTS.
"Got him?"
"You bet!"
The questioner looked pleased, yet not as if his pleasure engendered any mental excitement. The man who answered spoke in an ordinary, careless tone, and with unmoved countenance, as if he were merely signifying the employment of an additional workman, or the purchase of a desirable rooster.
Yet the subject of the brief conversation repeated above was no other than Bill Bowney, the most industrious and successful of the horse-thieves and "road-agents" that honored the southern portion of California with their presence.
Nor did Bowney restrict himself to the duty of redistributing the property of other people. Perhaps he belonged to that class of political economists which considers superfluous population an evil; perhaps he was a religious enthusiast, and ardently longed that all mankind should speedily see the pearly gates of the New Jerusalem.
Be his motives what they might, it is certain that when an unarmed man met Bowney, entered into a discussion with him, and lived verbally to report the same, he was looked upon with considerably more interest than a newly-made Congressman or a ten-thousand-acre farmer was able to inspire.
The two men whose conversation we have recorded studied the ears of their own horses for several minutes, after which the first speaker asked:
"How did you do it?"