"I thought we agreed not to say nothing about that feller."
"Yes, but—well, I might—you'll look after her, won't you, Lafe?"
"Sure. They'll be all right. Don't you worry. Good-night."
He was very serious as he took his way homeward. What he planned to do amounted to a moral revolution in Badger, and there would assuredly be an outcry and a tremendous to-do. True, the town had been purged before. Once, in the hottest of the hot weather, driven to frenzy by Brother Ducey's exhortations—he was a genius in choosing the purgatorial months for his vivid pictures of a living hell—a crowd of citizens had rushed from the meeting, and, surging across the sand-flats to the establishment of Dutch Annie's predecessor, had ousted the merry sisters in the dark of the night. But, as is usual in such cases, reaction from their zeal was swift and far-reaching. Dutch Annie came and flourished; and when the citizens of Badger elected Johnson sheriff, no mention of this cancer in the body social was made in the program of reform.
Lafe now reflected on these things from a new view-point. His conclusion was: "It ain't decent. Hetty's got the rights of this, I reckon."
To many aspects of their Border life, he had given scant thought. Where much that ought to be viewed with horror is tolerated as an established factor in communal life by law-abiding people, a man tends to become complaisant of laxity. Many evils existing in Badger had never struck the sheriff as such, simply because they had always been; but he was learning. Little glimpses of Hetty's healthy outlook on things shook his own code of conduct to its spine and filled him with a species of awe.
"Let 'em roar," he said firmly. "It'll be a mighty fine wedding present for her. Besides, it'll make Steve wild."
The sheriff was an execrable politician, else he would have proceeded differently. Had he possessed the sagacity of a ward leader, how he would have corralled the reform vote by going at his task with beating of drums and a fanfare of announcements. Lafe took quite another method. He paid a call, in a spirit approaching friendliness, and after some vehement protests, he departed with a promise extracted.
Dutch Annie was as good as her word. Next day a little company of pilgrims boarded the stage, bound for the railway. They looked sadly worn in the glare of sunlight, in spite of extravagant efforts with the rouge pot and the powder rag, but they put a brave face on the situation and exchanged badinage with a few choice spirits gathered to witness the departure.
"Well, so long, Lafe," said Dutch Annie, who was a just woman, according to her lights. "It was right mean, but I reckon you had to do it. And you've acted the gen'l'man, which is more'n I can say for a lot of loafers in this here town."