Captain Bill finished reading and regarded the judge steadily.
"This is your own order, Judge," he said. "What is the meaning of it?"
Judge Welch started in to repeat some of the arguments of the afternoon.
"You won't take the advice of your best friends," he said, "and are bound to start something here that will cause the blood to flow in these streets."
Captain Bill looked at him and let his gun rest a little more easily on his arm.
"If that is what you brought this gang here for, we'll start it now," he said.
There was a spontaneous round of applause, from both the lobby and the balcony. The ladies in the latter strained forward to get a view of the man who had defied a command of soldiers and who now, before their very eyes, was facing a sheriff's armed posse, undismayed.
"I'll tell you, Judge," Captain Bill went on. "You-all look like fifteen cents in Mexican money, to me, when I'm doing my duty, you and your ki-ki militia here, and your Mexican sheriff that you told me yourself was no good, and had done nothing, and was locked up in his own jail for protection when I come here."
There was more applause at this point—also, laughter, the latter rather nervous, on the part of the ladies. Captain Bill proceeded: