At the searing thought of his chum’s defenselessness, Joel groaned aloud, rocking back and forth on his hard seat.
“An’ it was all my own fault!” he mumbled, brokenly. “All my own foolishness! What’n blue blazes can I do? What—what IS there to do? Oh, Trevy, you trusted me! You was glad to come along with me. An’ see what I’ve made happen to you!”
CHAPTER VI: DESERTED
A day earlier, Joel Fenno had been happily, if always grouchily, the master of his own actions.
To-day, Joel Fenno sat huddled miserably in a police station cell, at La Cerra, a hundred miles from home.
The man did not know how long he crouched there in growing mental torment, on the hard cell bench. It seemed to him a handful of centuries in duration. Actually, it was something under an hour.
Then a policeman came to lead him to the captain’s room at the front of the station. Besides the captain, two other men were in the room. One of them was jolly and elderly. The captain treated him with grudging respect and addressed him as “Judge.” The other was a lazy-looking chap, much younger, with a shock of red hair and a snub nose. The awesome police captain, apparently, was on comradely terms with him.
As Joel shuffled miserably into the private room, it was this red-headed youth who greeted him.