I am going to kill this venomous beast. Stand back!"

They shrank back against the walls, open-eyed, open-mouthed, trembling. Alethea-Belle unfastened for the second time the lid of the basket; once more the flat head protruded, hissing. Alethea-Belle struck sharply.

"It is harmless now," she said quietly; "its back is broken."

But the snake still writhed. Alethea-Belle shuddered; then she set her heel firmly upon the head.

"And now"--her voice was weak and quavering, but a note of triumph, of mastery, informed it--"and now I am going to cane you three boys; I am going to try to break your stubborn wills; but you are big and strong, and you must let me do it. If you don't let me do it, you will break my heart, for if I am too weak to command here, I must resign. Oh, I wish that I were strong!"

The mutineers stared at each other, at the small white face confronting them, at the boys and girls about them. It was a great moment in their lives, an imperishable experience. The biggest spoke first, sheepishly, roughly, almost defiantly--

"Come on up, boys; we'll hev to take a lickin' this time."

Alethea-Belle went back to the rostrum, trembling. She had never caned a boy before, and she loathed violence. And yet she gave those three lads a sound thrashing. When the last stroke was given, she tottered and fell back upon her chair--senseless.

Later, I asked her how she had caught the snake.

"After you left me," she said, "I sat down to think. I knew that the boys wanted to scare me, and it struck me what a splendid thing 'twould be to scare them. Just then I saw the snake asleep on the rocks; and I remembered what one o' the cowboys had said about their being stupid and sluggish at this time o' year. But my! when it came to catching it alive--I--nearly had a fit, I'd chills and fever before I was able to brace up. Well, sir, I got me a long stick, and I fixed a noose at the end of it; and somehow--with the Lord's help--I got the creature into my work-basket; and I carried it home, and put it under my bed, with a big stone atop o' the lid. But I never slept a wink. I'm teetotal, but I know now what it is to have the--the--"

"Jim-jams," said I.

"I believe that's what they call it in California. Yes, I saw snakes, rattlers, everywhere!"

"You're the pluckiest little woman in the world," said I.

"Oh no! I'm a miserable coward, and always will be. Now it's over I kind of wish I hadn't scared the little children quite so bad."

About a month later, when Alethea-Belle was leaving us and about to take up new quarters in Paradise, near the just finished village schoolhouse, Mrs. Spafford came to me. The schoolmarm, it seemed, had stepped off our scales. She had gained nearly ten pounds since the day of the great victory.

"Your good cooking, Mrs. Spafford--" Mrs. Spafford smiled scornfully.

"Did my good cooking help her any afore she whacked them boys? Not much. No, sir, her scholars hev put the flesh on to her pore bones; and I give them the credit. They air tryin' to pay for what their schoolmarm's put into their heads and hearts."

"Miss Buchanan has taught us a thing or two," I suggested.

"Yes," Mrs. Spafford replied solemnly, "she hev."

Looking back, I am quite sure that John Jacob Dumble's chief claim to the confidence of our community--a confidence invariably abused--was the fact that the rascal's family were such "nice folks," "so well- raised," so clean, so respectable, such constant and punctual "church- members." After the Presbyterian Church was built in Paradise, no more edifying spectacle could be seen than the arrival on Sunday mornings of the Dumble family in their roomy spring wagon. The old man--he was not more than fifty-five--had two pretty daughters and a handsome son. Mrs. Dumble, a comely woman, always wore grey clothes and grey thread gloves. She had a pale, too impassive face, and her dark hair, tightly drawn back from her brows, had curious white streaks in it. Ajax said a thousand times that he should not sleep soundly until he had determined whether or not Mrs. Dumble was a party to her husband's misdemeanours. My brother's imagination, as I have said before, runs riot at times. He was of opinion that the wearing of grey indicated a character originally white, but discoloured by her husband's dirty little tricks. Certainly Mrs. Dumble was a woman of silence, secretive, with lips tightly compressed, as if--as Ajax remarked--she feared that some of John Jacob's peccadilloes might escape from them.

The father was inordinately proud of his son, Quincey, who in many respects took after the mother. He, too, was quiet, self-possessed, and somewhat pale. He worked for us and other cattlemen, not for his father, and after the lad left school Ajax fell to speculating about him, as he speculated about the mother.

"Is Quincey on to the old man's games?" he would ask.

It must be recorded that John Jacob was very careful to keep within the limits of the law, but he ploughed close to the line, where the soil, as we all know, is richest and, comparatively speaking, virgin. But no man in the county was louder than he in denouncing such crimes as horse-stealing or cattle-lifting, crimes in those days disgracefully common. He might ear-mark a wandering piglet, for instance, or clap his iron upon an unbranded yearling; but who could swear that these estrays were not the lawful property of him upon whose land they were found?

At that time Ajax and I were breeding Cleveland Bays, and amongst our colts we had two very promising animals likely to make a match team, and already prize-winners at the annual county fair. One day in October, Uncle Jake, our head vaquero, reported the colts to be missing out of our back pasture. Careful examination revealed the cutting of the fence. Obviously the colts had been stolen.

Ajax suggested that we should employ old man Dumble to help us to recover the stolen property. He was shrewd and persevering, and he knew every man, woman, and child within a radius of fifty miles.

"Why, boys," said he, when we asked him to undertake the job, "I'd do more than this to help friends and neighbours. It's a dooty to hunt down these scallywags, a dooty, yas--and a pleasure."

We took the trail that night. The thief, so far as we could conjecture, had about twenty hours start, but then he would be obliged to travel by night and by devious mountain-paths. According to old Dumble, his objective would be Bakersfield, and to reach Bakersfield some dry plains must be traversed. At the watering-places upon these plains we might expect to hear from sheep-herders and vaqueros some information respecting animals so handsome and so peculiarly marked as our colts.

And so it proved. At a dismal saloon, where water was nearly as expensive and quite as bad as the whisky, we learned that a bright bay colt with a white star and stocking, and another with a white nose, had been seen early that morning. Old man Dumble gleaned more.

"We're dealing with a tenderfoot and a stranger to the saloon-keeper," he said, as we struck into the sage-brush wilderness. "The fool didn't know enough to spend a few dollars at the bar. He called for one lemonade."

"Well," said Ajax, "you are teetotal yourself; you ought to respect a man who calls for lemonade."

"I ain't a thief," said our neighbour. "If I was," he added, "I reckon I'd cover my tracks around saloons with a leetle whisky. Boys, there's another thing. This feller we're after is ridin' too fast. Them colts won't stand it. Young things must feed an' rest. The saloon-keeper allowed they were footsore a'ready, and kinder petered out. We must keep our eyes skinned."

"You're a wonder," said Ajax. "How you divined that the thief would travel this trail beats me."

"Wal," said old man Dumble, "it's this way. There's a big dealer comes three times a year to