their back doorsteps in the mornin'." Of course they hid at this rondevoo and ketched Cicero and his victim, too.
Once he wuz found with a rifle fixed up in front of the cave rakin' the road in front, and they had to skulk up a back way to ketch him.
The last time he went he took a girl with him, one of the prettiest little girls in the neighborhood; he took his father's old white horse into the woods and a red woollen shawl of his mother's and had persuaded the girl to be a Captive Princess. And when found she wuz settin' on the horse, which wuz draped in scarlet, as become the charger of a Princess, and Cicero wuz walkin' by her side, ornamented with feathers and wampum. Well, the girl's father, bein' ragin' mad, horsewhipped Cicero hard, and then Cicero organized a band of banditta, called the Bloody League, that ravaged the man, stole his fruit, took his horses out of the lot and rode 'em, and finally drove his flocks off into the woods and barricaded 'em there.
That cost Hamen over forty-two dollars to settle, and Cicero didn't git into another scrape till most a month afterwards, when he got mad at one of the neighbor's boys and shot him, as a "dastardly foe" should be attacked by a bold buckaneer or bandit. The ball went through the boy's leg, and, though it made him lame for life, his folks, bein' poor, settled for five hundred dollars, and Cicero come home from jail and wuz fresh for new dime novels flavored by cigarettes. The next time he got into trouble he hid himself behind the bushes and shot at the man who had horsewhipped him, and for whom he cherished a deep, invincible hatred and thirst for revenge. He felt the honor of the Bloody League wuz
