After a brief examination Toothpick straightened, caught the sheriff’s eye and nodded.
“I ain’t no match for sneaks. If yuh know where to find him, go fetch Jim-twin Allen!” the sheriff cried passionately.
“Yuh might tell folks I’ve gone north to see my mother,” Toothpick warned.
CHAPTER II
AN UNEXPECTED GUEST
In spite of the fact that Cannondale was the county seat, and that it had also the advantage of being on the transcontinental railroad, it had always remained just a cow town.
Main Street, little over a block in length, was the business center. It was paralleled by Madison and North Streets. Madison was given over to one or two boarding houses, a few cottages, and many empty lots. North Street was closely lined with Mexican shacks. State and Depot Streets intersected Main.
The town had three hotels, two large, combination dance-and-gambling halls, and ten smaller saloons. Of the gambling halls the Red Queen was far the most pretentious. Located in the center of the block on Main Street, it was really the hub of the whole town.
On the day before the trial of Pete Cable for murder the Red Queen was doing a land-office business, for Dame Rumor had been busy, and it was freely predicted that there was bound to be trouble at the trial.
Just what form this trouble would take no one seemed to know, but a murder trial, with the added attraction of a possible jail breaking or lynching, was sufficient to send every able-bodied man within riding distance scurrying into town.
Thus, on this occasion, every hotel was full and the hitching racks along Main Street were lined with horses and buckboards; crowds milled about the courthouse, surged in and out of saloons, gathered in hotel lobbies and in the street, drank, sang, and excitedly discussed the coming trial. The general opinion was that Pete Cable would hang. In spite of this, however, odds were offered freely in the Red Queen that the accused man would be acquitted.