Curtis laid the book before the sheriff, who pushed a stubby forefinger against the letters and read the paragraph laboriously. His thick wits were moved by it, and he said: "Seems a clear case, and yet the reservation is included in the lines of Pinon County. 'Pears like the county'd ought 'o have some rights."
"Well, here comes the posse," said Curtis; "we'll talk it all over with them after lunch. Come in, boys!" he called cheerily to the straggling herders, who came in sheepishly, one by one, their spurs rattling, their big, limp hats twisted in their hands. They had pounded the alkali from each other's shirt, and their red faces shone with the determined rubbing they had received. All the wild grace of their horsemanship was gone, and as they sidled in and squatted down along the wall they were anything but ferocious in manner or speech.
"Ah, now, this is all right," each man said, when Curtis offered chairs. "You take the chair, Jim; you take it, Joe—this suits me."
Lawson was interested in their cranial development, and their alignment along the wall gave a fine opportunity for comparison. "They were, for the most part, shapeless and of small capacity," he said afterwards—"just country bumpkins, trained to the horse and the revolver, but each of them arrogated to himself the judicial mind of the Almighty Creator."
The sheriff, leaning far back in the big Morris chair, wore a smirking smile which seemed to say: "Boys, I'm onto this luxury all right. Stuffed chair don't get me no back-ache. Nothing's too rich for my blood—if I can get it."
The young fellows were transfixed with awe of Calvin, for, though the last to enter the house, he walked calmly past the library door on into the dining-room, and a moment later could be heard chatting with the girls, "sassy as a whiskey-jack."
One big, freckled young fellow nudged his neighbor and said: "Wouldn't that pull your teeth? That wall-eyed sorrel has waltzed right into the kitchen to buzz the women. Say, his neck needs shortening."
"Does he stand in, or is it just gall?"
"It's nerve—nothing else. We ain't onto our job, that's all."
"Oh, he knows 'em all right. I heered he stands in with the agent's sister."