The crowd laughed. "Hey, Mac; give us a speech!"
"You ought to be booted, the whole lot o' yeh!" he replied.
"That houn' in there's run the bank into the ground, with every cent o' money we'd put in," said Barney. "I s'pose ye know that."
"Well, s'pose he has—what's the use o' jumpin' on 'im?"
"Git it out of his hide."
"I've heerd that talk before. How much you got in?"
"Two hundred dollars."
"Well, I've got two thousand." The crowd saw the point.
"I guess if anybody was goin' t' take it out of his hide, I'd be the man; but I want the feller to live and have a chance to pay it back. Killin' 'im is a dead loss."
"That's so!" shouted somebody. "Mac ain't no fool, if he does chaw hay," said another, and the crowd laughed. They were losing that frenzy, largely imitative and involuntary, which actuates a mob. There was something counteracting in the ex-sheriff's cool, humorous tone.