Though it is shootin' ahead of the story and resoomin' forward, yet I d'no but I may as well tell of Cicero's adventures, and casualties now as any time, they have got to be told anyway, though I hate to. But seed sown has got to spring up, and somebody has got to harvest it. The cigarettes he smoked constantly weakened and softened his mind, I believe, so the blood curdlin' and dashin' idees he partook of in them novels had a good chance to take root. Four times durin' the next year did he disappear mysteriously, jest as some of his heroes had, to be brought back agin after a long search by his agonized parents. The first time he run away with Arabeller and wuz overtook before they had gone any great distance, and she soon afterwards wuz shipped west by her folks, to the ranch of an uncle in Colorado to be broke in as he broke his mustangs, and I don't know what did become of her, married some cowboy, I spoze. And, bein' foiled in his matrimonial ventures as some of his wild ideals had, he lived for booty. He soon afterwards disappeared into the forest, taking a neighbor's little boy with him, little Teddy Dewey, and sent back a note to the boy's parents demandin' ransom: "Teddy would be sent home if the sum of seventy-five cents wuz put at the foot of a dead tree where the shadow at midnight made the shape of a coffin; if the money wuz deposited there at midnight Teddy would be found on
