“What does this mean, anyway? Who sent you to arrest me?”
“Sheriff Johnson,” I answered.
The man started upright, and said, as if amazed, in a quick, loud voice:
“Sheriff Johnson sent you to arrest me?”
“Yes,” I retorted, “Sheriff Samuel Johnson swore me in this morning as his deputy, and charged me to bring you into Kiota.”
In a tone of utter astonishment he repeated my words, “Sheriff Samuel Johnson!”
“Yes,” I replied, “Samuel Johnson, Sheriff of Elwood County.”
“See here,” he asked suddenly, fixing me with a look of angry suspicion, “what sort of a man is he? What does he figger like?”
“He’s a little shorter than I am,” I replied curtly, “with a brown beard and bluish eyes—a square-built sort of man.”
“Hell!” There was savage rage and menace in the exclamation.