'Hello!' he shouted. 'Did ye ketch him?'
The foremost of the party rode slowly forward: the horse was jaded; the rider slouched in the saddle with an aspect of surly exhaustion.
'Ketch him!' thundered out Gid Fletcher's gruff voice. 'Ketch the devil!'
The bold-faced deputy was brazening it out. He rode up with as dapper a style as a man may well maintain who has been in the saddle ten hours without food, sustained only by the strength of a 'tickler' in his pocket, whose prospects are jeopardized and whose official prestige is ruined. The demeanour of the other riders expressed varying degrees of injured disaffection as they threw themselves from their horses.
The blacksmith dismounted in front of the cumbersome doors of his shop, on which still hung the sheriff's padlock, and with the stiff gait of one who has ridden long and hard he strode across the clearing, and stopped before the group in front of the store.
He looked infuriated. It might have been a matter of wonder that so tired a man could nourish so strong and active a passion.
'Look a-hyar, 'Cajah Green!' he exclaimed, with an oath, 'folks 'low ter me ez I ain't got no right ter my reward fur ketchin' that thar greased peeg,—ez ye hed ter leave go of—kase he warn't landed in jail or bailed. That air the law, they tells me.'
'That's the law,' replied the sheriff. His chair was tilted back against the wall of the store, his hat drawn over his brow. He spoke with the calmness of desperation.
'Then 'pears like ter me ez I hev hed all my trouble fur nuthin', an' all the resk I hev tuk,' said the blacksmith, coming close, and mechanically rolling up the sleeve of his hammer-arm.
'Edzac'ly.'