“I dunno how I could bear up, though,” he said, with apology in the cadence of his voice, “if I didn’t crack a joke wunst in a while, considering I’m just broke into harness.”
“That’s a fact,” admitted the martial elder, visibly and solemnly placated. “Do you know what we were doin’ while you yelled, an’ capered, an’ cut up them monkey-shines in front of the jail?” he demanded sternly, turning to Tubal Cain Sims. “We were cuttin’ a man down that tried to hang himself.”
“Suicidin’,” put in the deputy, as if making a nice distinction between this voluntary suspension and the legal execution.
“An’ we were bringin’ the man to himself agin.”
“He’s crazy, crazy as a loon,” interpolated the deputy in a mutter, pulling the trigger and snapping the hammer of the empty weapon, and sighting it unpleasantly down the hall, aiming alternately at the sheriff and at Tubal Cain Sims, who could scarcely repress an admonition, but for awe’s sake desisted.
“Or more likely, simulatin’ insanity,” said the sheriff; “it’s plumb epidemic nowadays ’mongst the crim’nals.”
“Well, he come mighty nigh lightin’ out for a country where no vain pretenses avail,” remarked the loquacious deputy, one eye closed, and drawing a very fine line from the bridge of old Sims’s nose with the empty pistol.
“This is a country where they don’t avail, either,” retorted the sheriff, “not with any reasonable jury. And twelve men, though liable to be fools, ain’t fools o’ the same pattern. That’s the main thing: impanel a variety o’ fools, an’ the verdic’ is generally horse sense. Now, sir,” turning on Tubal Cain Sims, who could feel his hat rising up on his hair, “what do you want, anyhow?”
“Ter git out,—that’s all; ter git out o’ hyar!” exclaimed Tubal Sims, sickened with a ghastly horror of the presentment of the scene they had left, the walls that harbored it, the roof that sheltered it. Oh for the free pure mountain air, the wild untrodden lengths of the mountain wilderness, fresh with the sun and the dew, and the vigor of natural growths, and the sweet scent of woodland ways! As he cast up his eyes to the high window above the staircase he could have cried out aloud to see the bars, and he gazed at the door in a desperation that started the drops on his brow and brought the blood to his face, as if the intensity of his emotion had been some strong physical effort.
“What did you get in here for, then?” demanded the sheriff. “Most folks have to be fetched.”