“I aimed over the coward’s head,” protested the defendant.

“Can happen!” sanely objected the prosecution.

“Ain’t I told you what I’d do if you loaded them guns?” roared the judge.  “Gentle, limping, baldheaded—­” [Deleted by censor.] “How many more times I got to tell you?  Now you know what you’ll get.  You’ll get your needings—­that’s what you’ll get!  All day to-morrow!  You hear me?  You’ll wear ’em all day to-morrow!  Put ’em on first thing in the morning and wear ’em till sundown.  No hiding out, neither!  Wear ’em where folks can see what a bad boy you are.  And swearing, too!  I got to be ’shamed of you!  Yes, sir!  Everybody’ll know how ’shamed I am to have a tough kid like you on the place.  I won’t be able to hold my head up.  You wear ’em!”

“I—­I—­I aimed above—­” Jimmie Time broke down.  He was weeping bitterly.  His captor released him with a final shake, and he brought a forearm to his streaming eyes.

“You’ll wear ’em all day to-morrow!” again thundered the judge as the culprit sobbed a stumbling way into obscurity.

“You’self go to haitch!” the unrelenting complainant called after him.

The judge effected a rumbling withdrawal.  The night was again calm.  Then I slept on the problem of the Arrowhead’s two-gun bad man.  It seemed now pretty certain that the fatuous Boogles had grossly overpraised him.  I must question his being the real doughnuts of any sort—­even the mildest—­much less the real Peruvian.  But what was “’em” that in degrading punishment and to the public shame of the Arrowhead he must wear on the morrow?  What, indeed, could “’em” be?

I woke, still pondering the mystery.  Nor could I be enlightened during my breakfast, for this was solitary, my hostess being long abroad to far places of the Arrowhead, and the stolid mask of Lew Wee inviting no questions.

Breakfast over, I stationed myself in the bracing sunlight that warmed the east porch and aimlessly overhauled a book of flies.  To three that had proved most popular in the neighbouring stream I did small bits of mending, ever with a questing eye on adjacent outbuildings, where Little Sure Shot—­nee Time—­might be expected to show himself, wearing “’em.”

A blank hour elapsed.  I no longer affected occupation with the flies.  Jimmie Time was irritating me.  Had he not been specifically warned to “wear ’em” full shamefully in the public eye?  Was not the public eye present, avid?  Boogles I saw intermittently among beanpoles in the garden.  He appeared to putter, to have no care or system in his labour.  And at moments I noticed he was dropping all pretense of this to stand motionless, staring intently at the shut door of the stable.