For three-quarters of an hour it seemed to me that the distance between us and our quarry remained constant; but Dumble said we were falling behind.  The thief was lighter than any of us, and his horse was evidently a stayer.  The hills rose out of the haze, bleak and bare, seamed with gulches, a safe sanctuary for all wild things.

“If the cuss was within range, I’d try a shot,” said the old man.

“I’d like to make out who he is,” said Ajax.

Suddenly the horse of the thief fell.  We discovered later that the beast had plunged into a piece of ground honeycombed with squirrel-holes.  The man staggered to his feet; the horse struggled where he fell, but did not rise.  His shoulder was broken.

“We have him!” yelled Dumble.

“Yes; we have him,” repeated my brother.  “Suppose we take a look at him?”

The thief had abandoned all idea of escape.  He stood beside his horse, waiting for us; but at the distance we could not determine whether he intended to surrender quietly or to fight.  Ajax adjusted his glasses, and glanced through them.  Then, with an exclamation, he handed them to me.

“Kin ye make him out, boys?” asked our neighbour.

“Yes,” said I, giving back the glasses to Ajax.  He handed them in silence to old man Dumble.  Then, instinctively, both our right hands went to our belts.  We were not quite sure what a father might do.

He did what should have been expected—­and avoided.  He dropped the binoculars.  Then he turned to us, trembling, livid—­a scarecrow of the man we knew;

“It’s my boy,” he said hoarsely.  “And I thought he was the best boy in the county.  Oh God!”

A minute may have passed, not more.  One guesses that in that brief time the unhappy father saw clearly the inevitable consequences of his own roguery and sharp practice.  He had sowed, broadcast, innumerable, nameless little frauds; he reaped a big crime.  I looked across those dreary alkaline plains and out of the lovely blue haze beyond I seemed to see the Dumbles’ spring wagon rolling to church.  Mrs. Dumble’s pale, impassive face was turned to the bleak plains.  At last I read her aright, that quiet woman of silence.  She knew the father of her children from the outer rind to the inmost core.  I thought of the pretty daughters, who did not know.  And out yonder stood the son.

Ajax beckoned me aside.  We whispered together for a moment or two.  Then my brother spoke—­

“We’re going to lead home our colts,” he said curtly; “and you can lead home yours.  We shall take better care of ours after this experience.  They won’t be allowed to run wild in the back pasture.”

“Boys—­Quincey an’ me——­”

“Shush-h-h!” said Ajax.  “That fellow out there is a long way off.  I could not swear in a court of law that he is the person we take him to be.  Whom he looks like we know, who he is we don’t know, and we don’t wish to know.  So long.”