Bit by bit the story, to which I had not given much attention when I heard it, so casually, carelessly was it told, recurred to my memory.
“They say as how Williams cut up rough with Johnson, and drawed a knife on him, which Johnson gripped with his left while he pulled trigger.—Williams, I heerd, was in the wrong; I hain't perhaps got the right end of it; anyhow, you might hev noticed the Sheriff hes lost the little finger off his left hand.—Johnson, they say, got right up and lit out from Pleasant Hill. Perhaps the folk in Mizzoori kinder liked Williams the best of the two; I don't know. Anyway, Sheriff Johnson's a square man; his record here proves it. An' real grit, you bet your life.”
The narrative had made but a slight impression on me at the time; I didn't know the persons concerned, and had no reason to interest myself in their fortunes. In those early days, moreover, I was often homesick, and gave myself up readily to dreaming of English scenes and faces. Now the words and drawling intonation came back to me distinctly, and with them the question: Was the robber of Judge Shannon the same Williams who had once been the Sheriff's partner? My first impulse was to hurry into the street and try to find out; but it was the chief part of my duty to stay in the office till six o'clock; besides, the Sheriff was “out of town,” and perhaps would not be back that day. The hours dragged to an end at last; my supper was soon finished, and, as night drew down, I hastened along the wooden side-walk of Washington Street towards the Carvell House. This hotel was much too large for the needs of the little town; it contained some fifty bedrooms, of which perhaps half-a-dozen were permanently occupied by “high-toned” citizens, and a billiard-room of gigantic size, in which stood nine tables, as well as the famous bar. The space between the bar, which ran across one end of the room, and the billiard-tables, was the favourite nightly resort of the prominent politicians and gamblers. There, if anywhere, my questions would be answered.
On entering the billiard-room I was struck by the number of men who had come together. Usually only some twenty or thirty were present, half of whom sat smoking and chewing about the bar, while the rest watched a game of billiards or took a “life” in pool. This evening, however, the billiard-tables were covered with their slate-coloured “wraps,” while at least a hundred and fifty men were gathered about the open space of glaring light near the bar. I hurried up the room, but as I approached the crowd my steps grew slower, and I became half ashamed of my eager, obtrusive curiosity and excitement. There was a kind of reproof in the lazy, cool glance which one man after another cast upon me, as I went by. Assuming an air of indecision I threaded my way through the chairs uptilted against the sides of the billiard-tables. I had drained a glass of Bourbon whisky before I realized that these apparently careless men were stirred by some emotion which made them more cautious, more silent, more warily on their guard than usual. The gamblers and loafers, too, had taken “back seats” this evening, whilst hard-working men of the farmer class who did not frequent the expensive bar of the Carvell House were to be seen in front. It dawned upon me that the matter was serious, and was being taken seriously.
The silence was broken from time to time by some casual remark of no interest, drawled out in a monotone; every now and then a man invited the “crowd” to drink with him, and that was all. Yet the moral atmosphere was oppressive, and a vague feeling of discomfort grew upon me. These men “meant business.”
Presently the door on my left opened—Sheriff Johnson came into the room.
“Good evenin',” he said; and a dozen voices, one after another, answered with “Good evenin'! good evenin', Sheriff!” A big frontiersman, however, a horse-dealer called Martin, who, I knew, had been on the old vigilance committee, walked from the centre of the group in front of the bar to the Sheriff, and held out his hand with:
“Shake, old man, and name the drink.” The
Sheriff took the proffered hand as if mechanically, and turned to the bar with “Whisky—straight.” Sheriff Johnson was a man of medium height, sturdily built. A broad forehead, and clear, grey-blue eyes that met everything fairly, testified in his favour. The nose, however, was fleshy and snub. The mouth was not to be seen, nor its shape guessed at, so thickly did the brown moustache and beard grow; but the short beard seemed rather to exaggerate than conceal an extravagant outjutting of the lower jaw, that gave a peculiar expression of energy and determination to the face. His manner was unobtrusively quiet and deliberate.
It was an unusual occurrence for Johnson to come at night to the bar-lounge, which was beginning to fall into disrepute among the puritanical or middle-class section of the community. No one, however, seemed to pay any further attention to him or to remark the unusual cordiality of Martin's greeting. A quarter of an hour elapsed before anything of note occurred. Then, an elderly man whom I did not know, a farmer, by his dress, drew a copy of the “Kiota Tribune” from his pocket, and, stretching it towards Johnson, asked with a very marked Yankee twang: