As we jumped to our feet
Joe eyed me with an evident suspicion that I was the Jonah of the party,
and said: "O Lord! I've never done anything to deserve this. Did you
ever do anything to deserve this?"
In addition to my private duties, I sometimes served as deputy sheriff
for the northern end of our county. The sheriff and I crisscrossed in
our public and private relations. He often worked for me as a hired hand
at the same time that I was his deputy. His name, or at least the
name he went by, was Bill Jones, and as there were in the neighborhood
several Bill Joneses--Three Seven Bill Jones, Texas Bill Jones, and
the like--the sheriff was known as Hell Roaring Bill Jones. He was a
thorough frontiersman, excellent in all kinds of emergencies, and a
very game man. I became much attached to him. He was a thoroughly good
citizen when sober, but he was a little wild when drunk. Unfortunately,
toward the end of his life he got to drinking very heavily. When, in
1905, John Burroughs and I visited the Yellowstone Park, poor Bill
Jones, very much down in the world, was driving a team in Gardiner
outside the park. I had looked forward to seeing him, and he was equally
anxious to see me.
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