CHAPTER V
CHASTISEMENT CONDIGN
Dan Tillinghurst and Little Jack Wilder sat under the big cottonwood in front of the court-house, commenting upon things in general, and, presently, more particularly upon Curtis Conrad and his mare, Brown Betty, when they espied him talking with the landlord in front of the hotel across the stream. The town of Golden lay in a gulch among the foot-hills. It had been a thriving silver camp in the older days. Discovered in the heyday of the pale metal, it had yielded so richly that the men flocking thither, in sheer, exultant contempt of the value of its yellow brother, had named the camp “Golden Gulch.” The mines had been in the bottom of the gulch, and near them, along the banks of the stream, had been built all the houses of the mining days. The earliest roads had run along each side of the water, and these were still the main streets of the town. Facing one another across the two streets and the bed of the creek were all the public buildings and business houses, the two hotels, some of the best residences, and many of the poorer ones. The Mexican quarter, called “Doby Town” by the Americans, straggled along these thoroughfares and up the hillsides just beyond the heart of the town. Down their entire length cottonwoods of notable girth and majesty spread their branches.
One of the largest and finest of these trees shaded the court-house corner where the Sheriff and his deputy were sprawling their legs and waiting for something to happen. The Sheriff was burly and broad-shouldered, although his legs had not quite been able to keep pace with the growing massiveness of his torso. The occasions were rare when his blue eyes were not twinkling with good humor, while his mouth beneath its absurd little moustache curved in a smile as habitual as his cheerful kindliness and universal optimism. Little Jack Wilder, who owed his descriptive title to his six feet three of height, was slender and lithe. He wasted neither words in talk nor bullets in pistol fights, and he had the reputation of being one of the best shots in the Southwest, as good even as Emerson Mead, over at Las Plumas in the adjoining county.
Curtis Conrad walked across the bridge that spanned the stream, Brown Betty at his heels, and met their “Hello, Curt!” with “Hello! Anything new?”
“Yes,” said Wilder, “anyway, there’s likely to be.”
“What sort?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” said Tillinghurst. “Jack’s been sashaying around Doby Town for the last two days with his eye on a Mexican horse thief, waitin’ for him to do something he can be arrested for; and the darn’ fool won’t do a thing! He just sits around respectable and behaves himself. Jack’s gettin’ all out of patience with him.”