“What will be done?”
“Nothin’.”
“You mean the sheriff of a county can disappear—and nothing be done about it?”
“He kin in Gibeon. Oh, you keep your eye peeled. Delorme and Fownes’ll smooth it over somehow, and the folks kind of likes it. Gives ’em suthin’ to talk about. Sure. When the’ hain’t no other topic they’ll fetch up the sheriff and argue about what become of him. But nobody’ll ever know—for sure.”
“I’m going to see Mrs. Churchill,” said Carmel, with sudden determination. “It’s news. It’s the biggest news we’ll have for a long time.”
“H’m!... I dunno. Deputy Jenney and Peewee Bangs they dropped in here a few days back and give me a tip to lay off the sheriff. Anyhow, everybody knows he’s gone.”
Carmel made no reply. She reached for her hat, put it on at the desirable angle, and went out of the door. Tubal stared after her a moment, fired an accurate salvo at a nail head in the floor, and walked back into the shop with the air of a man proceeding to face a firing squad.
Carmel walked rapidly up Main Street past the Busy Big Store and Smith Brothers’ grocery and Miss Gammidge’s millinery shop, rounding the corner on which was Field & Hopper’s bank. She cut diagonally across the Square, past the town pump, and proceeded to the little house next the Rink. The Rink had been erected some twenty-five years before during the roller-skating epidemic, but was now utilized as a manufactory of stepladders and plant stands and kitchen chairs combined in one article. This handy device was the invention of Pazzy Hendee, whose avocation was inventing, but whose occupation was constructing models of full-rigged ships. It was in the little house, square, with a mansard roof, that Sheriff Churchill’s family resided. Carmel rang the bell.
“Come in,” called a woman’s voice.
Carmel hesitated, not knowing this was Gibeon’s hospitable custom—that one had but to rap on a door to be invited to enter.