“Hell I can’t!” Johnny roared. “She’s here, ain’t she?”
“Will you give up if we let you go?” Ferris demanded.
“Ain’t no givin’ up this time, Hobe. Don’t you be so sad about me.”
“You damn fool! You pore damn fool!” he repeated over and over again as he went downhill, Stub in his arms.
There came another lull. And then reënforcements arrived for Kent—Gallup, and no less a person than Jasper Roddy, the sheriff of Shoshone County; and a man Johnny did not know, the Rev. Murray Whitaker.
There was a prodigious amount of consultation soon after Gallup arrived. The boy could see them surrounding Aaron’s rig. The upshot of it was the ascent of the sheriff to the little flat.
“You hear me, there?” Roddy demanded.
“I hear you all right,” Johnny replied. “But I don’t like your voice.”
“You’re under arrest,” the sheriff bawled. “Shootin’ with intent to kill, and five or six other things. I want that horse-stealin’ Injun what’s with you, too.”
“I’d admire to see you git him,” Johnny laughed. “I always had a hankerin’ to see just how yellow you was.”