Ajax stands there and looks foolish. He can’t smell nothing. There is such a thing as getting too much. The goat swallers hard and leans against Ajax. I feel sorry for the goat.

“Well,” says Magpie. “you might as well take your goat, Mighty.”

“Not me!” yells Mighty. “I’m off that goat forever.”

“Well, it’s sort of a deadlock,” says I. “Ajax is arrested in name only and the owner of the stolen property refuses to take it back.”

Just then Judge Steele rides in from the mine. We explains things to him, and he looks wise.

“Clean case against him, judge,” states Scenery. “He’s got the goods on him.”

“Think I can’t smell?” snorts the judge. “This is an open-air case.”

He pounds on his saddle-horn.

“Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye! This honorable court is doing business. The prisoner will stay where he is. Are you guilty or not guilty?”

“I have no idea,” says Ajax weary-like.

“Prisoner, does that goat belong to Mighty Jones?”

“I have no idea.”

“Call it and see if it comes to you, Mighty,” suggests Magpie.

“Like ——!”

“Let the goat loose and see who it goes to,” suggests the judge.

“Whoa!” yelps Mighty. “Don’t do that! I don’t know how he ever got the rope on it, but I do know it’s the champion butter of the world. You stick with it, feller, and get time off for good behavior.”

“This is the same one I had yesterday,” states Ajax. “It—er—struck the sheriff, I believe.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” whoops Magpie. “It upset our sheriff something awful.”

We considers things for a while, and then the judge says:

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