"Easy enough," answered Neal. "Course, you know all mail that goes out of the jail is read by us before it's delivered--if it's delivered at all."

"I'll chance it," snapped out Rathburn.

As the sheriff left to get the writing materials, with the jailer following him, doubtless for a whispered confab as to what Rathburn might be wanting to write and its possible bearing on his capture, the prisoner hastily ran his left hand down into his right sock and with some difficulty withdrew a peculiar-shaped leather case about ten inches long and nearly the width of his foot. This he put within his shirt.

When the officials returned he had finished his repast and was waiting for them near the bars with a smile of grat.i.tude on his lips.

"This may be a confession I'm going to write," he said, grinning at Neal. "It's going to take me a long time, I reckon, but you said I had something like ten hours for sleep, so I guess I can spare two or three for this effort at literary composition. I figure, sheriff, that this'll be my masterpiece."

His look puzzled the sheriff as he took the pencil and paper through the bars and returned to his bunk. He drew up the stool and sat upon it. It was a little lower than the bench, so, putting his paper on the bench, he had a fairly good makeshift desk. He began to write steadily, and after a few minutes the sheriff and jailer retired to the office.

It did not take Rathburn a quarter of an hour to write what he wished on the first of the several pieces of paper. He tore off what he had written, doubled it again and again into a small square, took out his sack of tobacco which he had been allowed to retain, and put it therein with the loose tobacco.

Then he wrote for a few minutes on the second sheet of paper.

When the sheriff looked in later he evidently was slowly and laboriously achieving a composition.

Rathburn heard the sheriff go out of the front door a few minutes later. Instantly he was alert. He drew on his boots. He surmised that the sheriff had gone out for something to eat and, though he wasn't sure of this, it was true.

"Oh, jailer!" he called amiably.

The wrinkled face of the desert trailer appeared in the office doorway.

Rathburn looked about from his seat on the stool. "This job ain't none too easy, as it is," he complained. "As a writer I'm a first-rate cow hand. Lemme take your knife to sharpen this pencil with. When I asked the sheriff for a stub of a pencil he took me at my word."

"Sure I'll let you have my knife," said the jailer sarcastically. "How about my gun--want that, too?"

"Oh, come on, old-timer," pleaded Rathburn. "The lead in this pencil's worn clean down into the wood."

"Hand it over here an' I'll sharpen it," said the jailer, drawing his pocketknife.

Rathburn walked to the bars and held out the pencil. An amiable smile played on his lips. "You'll have to excuse me," he said contritely. "I forgot it wasn't jail etiquette to ask for a knife. But I ain't had much experience in jail. Now according to his nibs, the sheriff, I'm in to get pretty well acquainted with 'em, eh?"

He watched the jailer as he began sharpening the pencil.

"Speaking of knives, now," he continued in a confiding tone, "I got in a ruckus down near the border once an' some gents started after me.

One of 'em got pretty close--close enough to take some skin off my shoulder with a bullet. He just sort of compelled me to shoot back."

"I suppose you killed him," observed the jailer, pausing in his work of sharpening the pencil.

"I ain't saying," replied Rathburn. "Anyways I had a hole-up down there for a few days, an' as luck would have it, I had to put up with a Mexican. All that Mex would do was argue that a knife was better than a gun. He claimed it was sure and made no noise--those were his hardest talking points, an' I'll be danged if there isn't something in it.

"But what I was gettin' at is that I didn't have nothing to do, an'

that Mexican got me to practicing knife throwing. You know how slick those fellows are at throwing a blade. Well, in the couple of weeks that I hung aroun' there he coached me along till I could throw a knife as good as he could. He thought it was great sport, teaching me to throw a knife so good, that a way.

"Since I left down there I've sort of practiced that knife-throwing business now and then, just for fun. Anyways I thought it was just for fun. But now I see, jailer, that it was my luck protecting me.

Anything you learn is liable to prove handy some time. _Don't move an inch or I'll let you have it!_"

Rathburn's hand snapped out of his shirt and up above his right shoulder.

The man from the desert shuddered involuntarily as he saw the yellow light from the lamp play fitfully upon a keen, white blade.

CHAPTER XII

AGAINST HIS ETHICS

Rathburn's eyes held the other's as completely as would have been the case if he were invested with a power to charm in some occult way.

Moreover, every trace of his amiable, confiding smile was gone. His gaze was hard and cold and gleaming. His face was drawn into grim lines. When he spoke he talked smoothly, rapidly, and with an edge to his words which convinced his listener that he was in deadly earnest.

"I'm not used to jails, my friend, an' I don't aim to stay here.

You're not very far away an' these bars are wide enough for me to miss 'em; but I don't think I could miss you."

The jailer looked in horror at the gleaming knife which Rathburn held by its hilt with the blade pointing backward. The jailer was from the border; he knew the awful possibilities of a quick motion of the wrist in that position, a half turn of the knife as it streaked toward its target. He shuddered again.

"Now just edge this way about two steps so your holster will be against the bars," Rathburn instructed. "I can drop you where you stand, reach through the bars an' drag you close if need be; but I'm banking on you having some good sense."

The jailer, without moving the hands which held the pencil and his pocketknife, sidled up against the bars.

Rathburn leaned forward. Keeping his right hand high and tipped back, ready for the throw, he reached out with his left, just through the bars, and secured the jailer's gun.

"Now it's all off," he said quietly. "If the sheriff or anybody else comes before I get out of here I'm just naturally going to have to live up to the reputation for shooting that they've fastened on me.

Unlock the door."

The jailer wet his lips with his tongue. The pencil and pocketknife fell to the floor. Covered by his own gun, now in Rathburn's hand, he moved to the door, brought out his key, and opened it. Still keeping him covered, Rathburn backed to the bench, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his coat, and walked out of the cage, motioning to the jailer to precede him into the office.

There he slipped the gun in his holster and put on his coat. The jailer reckoned better than to try to leap upon him while he was thus engaged; the prisoner's speed with a six-gun was well known.

Rathburn drew a peculiar leather case from within his shirt, put the knife in it, and stowed it away in a pocket. Then he turned on the jailer.

"Maybe you think that was a mean trick--resorting to a knife," he said pleasantly; "but all is fair in love and war and when a man's in jail.

You better sort of stand in one place while I look around a bit."

He backed behind the desk in the big office, opened two or three drawers, and brought out a pair of handcuffs. He moved around in front of the jailer again.

"Hold out your hands," he commanded. "That's it." He snapped the handcuffs on with one hand while he kept the other on the b.u.t.t of his gun.

"You don't seem to have much to say," he commented.

"What's the use?" said the jailer. "I know when a man's got me dead to rights. But I'll be on your trail again, an' if I ever get within shootin' distance of you an' see you first, you'll never get another chance to pull a knife."

"Well said," Rathburn admitted. "Now we understand each other. But I don't intend for you to ever get within shooting distance of me."

Rathburn glanced casually about. "Now it seems to me," he resumed, "that most of these fellows who gum up their jail breaks make a mistake by hurrying. Suppose you just walk natural-like through that door and into the cage I just had the foresight to leave. That's it--right on in."

He turned the key which the jailer had left in the lock. "Now you're all right unless you start hollering," said Rathburn.