128 



RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



soon found the safest plan was to put the prisoners in the wagon and 

 myself walk behind with the inevitable Winchester. Accordingly 1 trudged 

 steadily the whole time behind the wagon through the ankle-deep mud. 



ON THE ROAD TO DICKINSON. 



It was a gloomy walk. Hour after hour went by always the same, while 

 I plodded along through the dreary landscape — hunger, cold, and fatigue 

 struggling with a sense of dogged, weary resolution. At night, when we 

 put up at the squalid hut of a frontier granger, the only habitation on our 

 road, it was even worse. I did not dare to go to sleep, but making my 

 three men get into the upper bunk, from which they could get out only 

 with difficulty, I sat up with my back against the cabin-door and kept 

 watch over them all night long. So, after thirty-six hours' sleeplessness, 

 I was most heartily glad when we at last jolted into the long, straggling 

 main street of Dickinson, and I was able to give my unwilling companions 

 into the hands of the sheriff. 



Under the laws of Dakota I received my fees as a deputy sheriff for 

 making the three arrests, and also mileage for the three hundred odd miles 

 gone over — a total of some fifty dollars.* 



* One of the men wrote me from prison, giving me his reasons for taking the boat. Part of 

 his letter is worth giving, not only because it contains his own story, but also for the sake of the deli- 



