This was in the forenoon. That evening the Dago Duke leaned against the door-jamb of the White Elephant Saloon and watched Dan Treu coming from Dr. Harpe's office with failure written upon his face. His white teeth gleamed in a smile of amusement as he waited for the sheriff.
"Don't swear, Dan. Never speak disrespectfully of a lady if you can help it."
"Dago," said the sheriff, with his slow, emphatic drawl, "I wish she was a man just for a minute—half a minute—one second would do."
"She laughed at you, yes?"
"She laughed at me, yes? Well, I guess she did. She gave me the merry ha! ha! I told her you had seen two men on horseback pass her out there in the hills, that I had seen the mark of her buggy wheels and the tracks of the two horses on the run and that the print of moccasins led from the sheep-wagon into the brush. She looked at me with that kind of stare where you can see the lie lying back of it and said—
"I didn't see anybody. I've told you that and I'll swear to it if necessary."
"'Look here, Doc,' I says, 'if you don't tell that you saw these men we'll tell it for you.'"
"That's when she laughed, cackled would be a better word, it sure wasn't a laugh, you'd call ketchin', and says—
"'You fly at it. Try startin' something like that and see what happens to you. I got some pull in this town and you'll find it out if you don't know it. You'll wake up some mornin' and find yourself out of a job. Who do you think would take that drunken loafer's word against mine? And beside, why should I keep anything back that would clear Essie Tisdale? You're crazy, man! Why, she's a friend of mine.'
"You called the turn on her all right, Dago; she said just about what you said she would say."