Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/154

 der. He did not believe in pushing his jurisdiction into the rough hills and scrubby forests of No Man's Land. Any man was as good as a sheriff there, where all men stood together to turn back the arm of the law. Other sheriffs of border counties had not been so wise as this man of McPacken. They had followed trails over the border, and they never had returned.

Two days later a cattleman rode into McPacken with the report of a dead man found a few miles over the line by some of his herders. The fellow had nothing in his possession but a dollar watch, some matches, tobacco and cigarette papers, with the exception of a rough map of McPacken and the roads leading into it. The situation of the bank on the public square was accurately marked. There were two bullet wounds in the man's breast.

The people of McPacken glowed with admiration for their city marshal, who had fallen in vain defense of their money. With the same breath they marvelled over the tenacity of life shown by these Texas men. This second bandit was found fully seventy miles from McPacken. The annals of that country did not record an instance where a man had lived to travel that far with two big bullets through his gizzards and his lights. They lived hard in Texas, and they died hard. And that was a cinch. So everybody said.

The sheriff alone expressed doubt, disbelief. He had been willing to yield the first man to the glory of the dead officer, but he would not go so far with the second one, found away across the line of No Man's