CHAPTER IV

“What’re you going to do with me?” Otis inquired, the trace of a smile playing about his lips.

The Sheriff, puzzled, turned to his deputy.

“You better stay here with Otis, Seth,” he directed. Then he glanced at the spot across the stream where the moving figure had disappeared in the trees. For an instant he pondered, uncertain.

“No,” he announced in a moment, “that wont do. It would take two of us to get him, now that he’s in that timber. Guess we’ll have to let him go.”

“Wait a minute,” objected the deputy. “I’ll fix it so we can both go.”

He swung from the saddle, reached in his saddlebags and drew forth a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs.

“Hate to do this, Otis,” he began hurriedly, “but we wont be gone long. Just step over by this tree.”

Otis dismounted, not at all pleased that his pledge not to attempt to escape had not been accepted. He resolved, however, to make no protest, knowing that were he in the place of his captors, he would take every precaution to prevent the escape of a prisoner, if he deemed that prisoner guilty of murder. So without a word he stepped to the tree.

The deputy snapped one of the steel circlets about his left wrist. Then he brought Otis’ right hand about the trunk of the tree, a fairly large lodgepole pine, and snapped the other end of the handcuffs about his right wrist. Otis was left standing, facing the tree, his arms about its trunk, and his wrists pinioned on the other side of the pine.

“Sorry,” the deputy told him shortly as he flung himself into the saddle again. “We’ll be back pretty soon.”

The Sheriff had said nothing while Markey had been fastening Otis’ arms about the tree. Otis watched them ford the creek and plunge into the timber on the farther bank. He was glad that the tree was far enough removed from the road that none of his friends, who might be passing, could discover him in his humiliating predicament. Pie-face stood on the creek bank, a few yards distant, cropping the grass by the water’s edge. Otis knew that so long as his bridle was dragging there would be no danger of his straying away into the timber.

For perhaps five minutes Otis struggled vainly to work himself into a position where he might draw his tobacco and cigarette papers from his 

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