“‘Bud,’ says Luke, ’I’m going after that bunch.  I’m going there and get the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back.  I’m sheriff of Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in its precincts while I’m able to draw a gun.  And I want you to go with me.  No Eastern Yankee can shoot up a respectable and well-known citizen of Bildad, ’specially with a thirty-two calibre, and escape the law.  Pedro Johnson,’ says Luke, ’is one of our most prominent citizens and business men.  I’ll appoint Sam Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary powers while I’m away, and you and me will take the six forty-five northbound to-morrow evening and follow up this trail.’

“‘I’m your company,’ says I.  ’I never see this New York, but I’d like to.  But, Luke,’ says I, ’don’t you have to have a dispensation or a habeas corpus or something from the state, when you reach out that far for rich men and malefactors?’

“‘Did I have a requisition,’ says Luke, ’when I went over into the Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for holding up the International?  Did me and you have a search warrant or a posse comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican cow thieves down in Hidalgo?  It’s my business to keep order in Mojada County.’

“‘And it’s my business as office deputy,’ says I, ’to see that business is carried on according to law.  Between us both we ought to keep things pretty well cleaned up.’

“So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his mileage book in a haversack, and him and me hits the breeze for New York.  It was a powerful long ride.  The seats in the cars was too short for six-footers like us to sleep comfortable on; and the conductor had to keep us from getting off at every town that had five-story houses in it.  But we got there finally; and we seemed to see right away that he was right about it.

“‘Luke,’ says I, ’as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it don’t look to me like this place is properly and legally in the jurisdiction of Mojada County, Texas.’

“‘From the standpoint of order,’ says he, ’it’s amenable to answer for its sins to the properly appointed authorities from Bildad to Jerusalem.’

“‘Amen,’ says I.  ’But let’s turn our trick sudden, and ride.  I don’t like the looks of this place.’

“‘Think of Pedro Johnson,’ says Luke, ’a friend of mine and yours shot down by one of these gilded abolitionists at his very door!’

“‘It was at the door of the freight depot,’ says I.  ’But the law will not be balked at a quibble like that.’

“We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway.  The next morning I goes down about two miles of stairsteps to the bottom and hunts for Luke.  It ain’t no use.  It looks like San Jacinto day in San Antone.  There’s a thousand folks milling around in a kind of a roofed-over plaza with marble pavements and trees growing right out of ’em, and I see no more chance of finding Luke than if we was hunting each other in the big pear flat down below Old Fort Ewell.  But soon Luke and me runs together in one of the turns of them marble alleys.