He resumed his interrupted hymn.
CHAPTER III
Therefore, Christian men be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.
—Good King Wenceslas. (Old Carol)
Three weeks elapsed and Benton again showed up in the Post with the first fruits of his new scene of operations—two prisoners committed for trial on a charge of cattle stealing.
His had been a weary watch for many nights, but he had caught his men at last, slaughtering stolen beef cattle in an old deserted corral at three o’clock in the morning. He looked worn out and had a black eye, received in the rough-and-tumble arrest that had followed.
The Captain was secretly pleased, but to Ellis he evinced little sign of his satisfaction. “Praise men up—spoil ’em! Let ’em think it’s their ordinary course of duty,” was his customary maxim.
“Good man, that Benton,” he muttered to himself during one of his office pacings. “He’ll straighten that Cherry Creek district out before long.”
He gave the Sergeant three days’ rest, though, and spoke about transferring him a man if required, which offer Ellis declined, however. With his taciturn and secretive nature he preferred to follow alone, and in various disguises, the tortuous windings of stock cases, calmly relying on his own great strength, cunning, and ability with gun and fist, to effect any arrest.
The four-fifteen West-bound carried him as a passenger back to Sabbano, his nearest railway depot, the detachment being on the prairies forty miles away from the line. It was raining, and Ellis felt miserable as he gazed through the window and contemplated the wet, cheerless ride he would have in the morning.
He vaguely thought of “Johnny” waiting for him in Sergeant Churchill’s stable at Sabbano. Was he being properly looked after? Churchill was a “booze artist,” d—n him, and like as not he’d neglect him, like he did his own horse.