Wal, we’d did our best–both Mace and me–and fell down. But right here is where somethin’ better’n just good luck seemed to take a-holt of things. In the first place, considerin’ what come of it, it shore was fortunate that Pedro Garcia, one of them trashy section-gang cholos, was just a-passin’ the house as she done that. He heerd the slam. He seen the look on Bergin’s face, too. And he fixed up what was the matter in that crazy haid of hisn.
In the second place, the very next day, blamed if Curry didn’t hunt Bergin up. “Sheriff,” he begun, “I ain’t been able to collect what’s due me from Mrs. Bridger. She ain’t doin’ nothin’ with the property, neither. So I call on you to put her off.” And he helt out a paper.
Put her off! Say! You oughta saw Bergin’s face!
“Curry,” he says, “in Oklahomaw, a dis-possess notice agin a widda ain’t worth the ink it’s drawed with.”
“Ain’t it?” says Curry. “You mean you won’t act. All right. If you won’t, they’s other folks that will.”
“Will they,” answers the sheriff, quiet. But they was a fightin’ look in his eyes. “Curry, go slow. Don’t fergit that the Gap property ain’t worth such a hull lot.”
The next thing, them cholos in the section-gang ’d heerd what Bergin was ordered to do. And, like a bunch of idjits, ’stead of gittin’ down on Curry, who was responsible, they begun makin’ all kinds of brags about what they’d do when next they seen the sheriff. And it looked to me like gun-play was a-comin’.
But not just yet. Fer the reason that the sheriff, without sayin’ “I,” “Yas,” ’r “No” to nobody, all of a suddent disappeared.
“What in the dickens has struck him!” I says t’ Mace.
“Just you wait,” she answers. “It’s got t’ do with Mrs. B. He ain’t down in a cellar this time.”