N.V.  Creede in answering him in campaigns always said that if he gave the boys work, they gave the governor labor in return, and at a dollar a day it seemed to him that the governor was the one who was under obligations to them.  It is a curious thing that people who receive money are supposed to be under obligations to those who pay it, no matter what the deal may be.  We say “thank you” to the man who pays us for a day’s wages; but why, if the work is worth the money?

Well, as I looked about among the governor’s working people, as I have said, I saw a head taller than the rest, the big form of Pitt Bushyager.  He was looking at me with that daredevil smile of his, the handsomest man there, with his curling brown mustache and goatee; and nodded at me as the judge got into the carriage in the back seat with Mrs. Stone, and Virginia came up in her pretty pink silk, with the Paisley shawl around her shoulders, to be helped up into the front seat with me.  The satchel of money was placed under the seat where the judge could feel it with his feet.

We drove off in that silence which comes with the drowsiness that follows excitement, especially along toward morning.  The night was dark and still.  Virginia’s presence reminded me of those days of happiness wher we drove into Iowa alone together; but I was not happy I had lived with this girl in my dreams ever since, and now I faced the wrench of giving her up; for I repeated in my own mind over and over again that she would never think of me with such big bugs as Bob Wade shining around her.

The Judge and Mrs. Stone were talking together now, and I heard references to the money.  Then I began to turn over in my slow mind the fact, known to me alone, that there was a man at the Wade farm who was one of a band of thieves, and who knew about our having the money.  If he really was connected with the Bunker boys, what was more likely than that he had ways of passing the word along to some of them who might be waiting to rob us on our way home?  But the crime that I was sure had been committed back along the road the spring before had been horse-stealing.  I wondered whether or not the business of outlawry was not specialized, so that some stole horses, others robbed banks, others were highwaymen, and the like.

All this time Virginia seemed to be snuggling up a little closer.  Maybe Pitt Bushyager and his brothers were just plain horse-thieves, and nothing else.  Perhaps they were just hired to help drive in the horses; but why, then, did Pitt have two animals in Monterey Centre when I saw him there the morning I arrived?

6

Jim Boyd’s light buggy had got far ahead of us, out of hearing, and the lumber wagons, with the bulk of the crowd, were far in the rear.  We were alone.  As we came to a road which wound off to the south toward where there was a settlement of Hoosiers who had made a trail to the Wade place, I turned off and followed it, knowing that when I got to the Hoosier settlement, I should find a road into the Centre.  It was a mistake made a-purpose, done on that instinct which protects the man who feels that he may be trailed.  I was on an unexpected path to any one waiting for us.  Finally Virginia spoke to me.