“Well, Auntie Sue,” said the Sheriff, settling his ponderous bulk in one of the old lady's rocking-chairs, which certainly was not built to carry such a weight, “how are you? I haven't seen you in a coon's age. I'll swear, though, you ain't a minute older than you was when you first begun teachin' the little Elbow Rock school up there on the hill, are you?”
“I don't know, Sheriff,” Auntie Sue returned, with a nervous little laugh. “I sometimes think that I am a few days older. I have watched a good many sunsets since then, you know.”
The big officer's laughter almost shook the log walls of the house. To his quiet companion, who had taken a chair near the window, he said: “I'll have to tell you, Ross, that Auntie Sue owns every sunset in these Ozark Mountains. What was it you paid for them?” He turned again to their smiling hostess. “Oh, yes; fifty cents an acre for the land and fourteen dollars and a half for the sunsets. You'll have to be blamed careful not to trespass on the sunsets in this neighborhood, Ross.” Again, his hearty laugh roared out, while his chair threatened to collapse with the quaking of his massive body.
The gentleman seated at the window laughed quietly, in sympathy.
“You'll be all right, though, Ross,” the Sheriff continued, “as long as you're with me. Auntie Sue and me have been friends for about twenty year, now. I always stop to see her whenever I'm passing through the Elbow Rock neighborhood, if I ain't in too big a hurry. Stayed with her a week, once, five years ago, when we was after that Lewis gang. She knows I'd jail any man on earth that would even touch one of her sunsets.”
Then, as if the jesting allusion to his office reminded him of his professional duties, he added: “I plumb forgot, Auntie Sue, this gentleman is Mr. Ross. He is one of William J. Burns's crack detectives. Don't be scared, though, he ain't after you.”
Auntie Sue, while joining in the laughter, and acknowledging the introduction, regarded the business-looking gentleman by the window with intense interest.
“I think,” she said, slowly,—and the sweetness of her low, cultured voice was very marked in contrast to the Sheriff's thundering tones,—“I think, sir, that this is the first time in my life that I ever saw a real detective. I have read about them, of course.”
Mr. Ross was captivated by the charm of this beautiful old gentlewoman, who regarded him with such child-like interest, and who spoke with such sweet frankness and dignity. Smilingly, he returned:
“I fear, madam, that you would find me very disappointing. No one that I ever knew in my profession could hope to live up to the reputation given us by the story-books. No secret service man living can remotely approximate the deeds performed by the detectives of fiction. We are very, very human, I can assure you.”