In many ways my brother was a stranger to me and for several months working with him I wasn’t sure that I liked him very much. But there was an innocence and good faith to him that was convincing. He could be very sincere and intense about things and you discovered yourself seeing the world through his eyes and forgetting everything else. Sometimes we’d leave the Wichita jail and pound down a board sidewalk with suit pants stuffed inside our boots and Bob would announce, “I picked out a hotel room and got us a table at the Ambassador Grill; then we’ll go play snooker. How would that be?” And I’d try to object but my mind would go blank; there didn’t seem any alternative. If a night went his way he’d reward me with fantastic smiles and charitable speech; if he saw me bridle a bit he’d say graciously, “But why don’t you do the thinking, Emmett. No reason I should have the vote on every dang thing,” and like as not I’d botch it, the night would be miserable.

He was paid at the same rate that Frank was, a pissant two dollars a prisoner and six cents per mile traveling expenses, from which he paid room and board for himself, his assistants, and his suspects. After he rendered his accounts to the federal court, thirty-five percent was deducted as the marshal’s fee and the bill sent on to Washington where the money could be delayed for months; so some weeks the only meals we had were what we took at farms we visited, and I scrounged a quarter a day sweeping out a saloon in Pawhuska or stacking cords of firewood for some widow in Ponca City. The two of us were stung so bad at times that we started administering our own fines for the smaller infractions and we put the money straight into our pockets.

I discovered two of the cowpokes I’d known at the Turkey Track ranch were rustling cow ponies for a race-horse trainer named Charlie Pierce, and I caught them in a copse of sycamores burning alterations on the brands. That would’ve been Bitter Creek Newcomb and Blackface Charley Bryant. Newcomb threw his hands up but Bryant extended a pistol at my face and I nearly cashed in right there but for the fact that we started conversing. I told them I couldn’t see jail for them since they were buddies, but they convinced me they ought to be penalized something just to keep my conscience unsullied, and they paid me thirty dollars in silver coins that I split with my brother that evening.

Bob and I had a big restaurant supper of ham hocks and beans, during which he wiped his mouth with a napkin and concluded that what I’d done was almost legal and the sort of simple justice that he’d recommend in the future.