The justice of the peace imposed the sentence with alacrity. It had the appearance of spite, but Jeff exhibited no resentment and left for the county town in charge of a deputy, without a word of protest. To me, he appeared a broken man.
Not a word of enlightenment would the sheriff give, although all Badger was agog with excitement and babbled questions wherever he moved. They would cling to his arm in their eagerness, but he shook them off. At dinner, he ordered me to fetch my horse, for he planned a hard ride.
It was early afternoon when we set out for Satan's Kingdom. Our way took us through the Willows, which we threaded at dusk. We were passing a certain pile of rocks, when the sheriff pointed with his forefinger.
"Look," he said.
The Mother of Cottonwoods towered above the lesser trees, plain to the sight. She was black and stark, bare as though blasted by lightning. We jogged along mutely.
"Look a-here," the sheriff said, as we neared the mountain village, "you done heard that shooting. What did you hear? Tell me as near as you can."
I strove to focus all my faculties on the task.
"There was a first shot—that must have been Bud's."
"Never mind whose it was," said Johnson.
"Then there seemed to be two very close together. I'm not sure about that, Lafe, because it might have been one, sort of drawn out. But I was watching Jeff's hand and it looked only half-way out of his shirt when that second shot started."