"He won't git a chanst to look in my face for some time to come if we kin lift this cache."
Together they filled the grain sack they had brought and carefully replaced the plank, then, staggering under the weight of the load, made their way to a gulch, buried the sack, and marked the hiding-place with a stone. With a righteous sense of having acted as instruments of Providence in punishing selfishness, they returned to town to follow such whims as seized them under the stimulus of a bottle of Mr. Tucker's excellent Bourbon.
The constable had been asleep for hours when a yell--a series of yells--made him sit up. He listened a moment, then with a sigh of resignation got up, dressed, and took the key of the calaboose from its nail by the kitchen sink.
"I'll lock 'em up and be right back," he said to his sleepy wife, who seemed to know whom he meant too well to ask.
Under the arc light in front of the Prouty House he found them doing the Indian "stomp" dance to the delight of the guests who were leaning from their windows to applaud.
"Ain't you two ashamed of yerselves?" the constable demanded, scandalized--referring to the fact that Pinkey and Wallie had divested themselves of their trousers and boots and were dancing in their stocking feet.
"Ashamed?" Wallie asked, impudently. "Where have I heard that word?"
"Who sold liquor to you two?"
"I ate a raisin and it fermented," Wallie replied, pertly.
"Where's your clothes?" To Pinkey.
"How'sh I know?"
"You two ought to be ordered to keep out of town. You're pests. Come along!"
"Jus' waitin' fer you t'put us t'bed," said Pinkey, cheerfully.
The two lurched beside the constable to the calaboose, where they dropped down on the hard pads and temporarily passed out.
The sun was shining in Wallie's face when he awoke and realized where he was. He and Pinkey had been there too many times before not to know. As he lay reading the pencilled messages and criticisms of the accommodation left on the walls by other occupants he subconsciously marvelled at himself that he should have no particular feeling of shame at finding himself in a cell.
He was aware that it was accepted as a fact that he had gone to the bad. He had been penurious as a miser until he had saved enough from his wages as a common cowhand to buy his homestead outright from the State. After that he had never saved a cent, on the contrary, he was usually overdrawn. He gambled, and lost no opportunity to get drunk, since he calculated that he got more entertainment for his money out of that than anything else, even at the "bootlegging" price of $20 per quart which prevailed.