“On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the size of a kitchen door latch on it and says:

“ ‘Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.’

“ ‘Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,’ says I, ‘it looks to me like a split. Couldn’t the lawyer man have made it a strike for you?’

“ ‘Bud,’ says he, in a pained style, ‘that child is the one thing I have to live for. She may go; but the boy is mine!—think of it—I have custody of the child.’

“ ‘All right,’ says I. ‘If it’s the law, let’s abide by it. But I think,’ says I, ‘that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary clemency, or whatever is the legal term, in our case.’

“You see, I wasn’t inveigled much into the desirableness of having infants around a ranch except the kind that feed themselves and sell for so much on the hoof when they grow up. But Luke was struck with that sort of parental foolishness that I never could understand. All the way riding from the station back to the ranch, he kept pulling that decree out of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it, and reading off to me the sum and substance of it. ‘Cus-to-dy of the child, Bud,’ says he. ‘Don’t forget it—cus-to-dy of the child.’

“But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court obviated, nolle prossed, and remanded for trial. Mrs. Summers and the kid was gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had started for San Antone she had a team hitched and lit out for the nearest station with her trunks and the youngster.

“Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its emoluments.

“ ‘It ain’t possible, Bud,’ says he, ‘for this to be. It’s contrary to law and order. It’s wrote as plain as day here—“Cus-to-dy of the child.” ’

“ ‘There is what you might call a human leaning,’ says I, ‘toward smashing ’em both—not to mention the child.’

“ ‘Judge Simmons,’ goes on Luke, ‘is a incorporated officer of the law. She can’t take the boy away. He belongs to me by statutes passed and approved by the state of Texas.’

“ ‘And he’s removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,’ says I, ‘by the unearthly statutes of female partiality, Let us praise the Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies—’ I begins; but I see Luke don’t listen to me. Tired as he was, he calls for a fresh horse and starts back again for the station.

“He comes back two weeks afterward, not saying much.

“ ‘We can’t get the trail,’ says he; ‘but we’ve done all the telegraphing that the wires’ll stand, and we’ve got these city rangers they call detectives on the lookout. In the meantime, Bud,’ says he, ‘we’ll round up them cows on Brush Creek, and wait for the law to take its course.’

“And after that we never alluded to allusions, as you might say.

“Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke was made sheriff of Mojada County. He made me his office deputy. Now, don’t get in your mind no wrong apparitions of an office deputy doing sums in a book or mashing letters in a cider press. In them days his job was to watch the back windows so nobody didn’t plug the sheriff in the rear while he was adding up mileage at his desk in front. And in them days I had qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in Mojada County, and school-books, and all the whisky you wanted, and the Government built its own battleships instead of collecting nickels from the school children to do it with. And, as I say, there was law and order instead of enactments and restrictions such as disfigure our umpire state to-day. We had our office at Bildad,