“Taking care of them; that’s your job, Wint. Maybe that just means fining them, and sending them to jail.”
“I tell you I won’t do that again,” Wint exclaimed. “I told you the order I gave Jim Radabaugh.”
“We-ell,” said Amos slowly. “That’s all right. Far as it goes. Might go farther.”
“Farther? How?” Wint demanded. “What can I do?”
“I hadn’t anything pa’ticular in mind,” Amos said carelessly. “Hadn’t a thing in mind.” He looked at Wint sidewise. Wint’s face was white with the intensity of his thought. Amos said slowly: “Looks like a shame to have drunk folks around in as pretty a town as Hardiston.”
“A shame?” Wint cried. “It’s damnable.”
“Guess most folks don’t like it,” Amos reminded him. “Town voted dry. Guess that shows most folks wanted it to be dry, don’t it?”
“I suppose it does,” Wint agreed. Amos looked at him; and Wint moved abruptly in his chair, and his eyes began to flame. The puzzle cleared; he began to understand. He began to understand himself, his own thoughts, his feeling that he was to blame for—Hetty. He began to understand, and his lips set. He said, half aloud: “By God, it means a fight! A hell of a fight in Hardiston.”
“Fight?” Amos asked casually, as though he were thinking of something else. “I like a fight, I’d like to see a good one.” And he added, after a moment: “I might take a hand; if it weren’t a private fight, or something.”
Wint sat forward in his chair, looked around the room. “Where’s the telephone?” he asked.