“I was watchin’ his pocket,” interrupted Jim. “I could ’a’ jumped on him afore he got his gun out.”
“Yes,” replied the sheriff, smiling, “and my deputy was in the clothes-press, in case of a row. You might run up and tell him the coast’s clear. Bet he’s about frozen.”
“Now, that’s one on me, Scotty—”
“Oh, it was a bluff, and Fisty didn’t have the nerve to call it.”
“I wasn’t meaning that.” Curious Jim drew himself up impressively. “I ain’t no constable or sheriff or detective, and I reckon I’m sort of a joke to some folks, but Dave Ross is a friend of mine. Reckon you know ’most everything what’s goin’ on, but you don’t know Dave Ross paid fur my doctorin’ when I had the ammonia,—advancin’ the money out of my pay as is comin’ fur next year,—and I reckon you’re thinkin’ I’d be proud-like to be the hull works at Fisty’s trial,—but thar’s where you’re wrong. All I want to do is to git Fisty where he can’t do no more shootin’, and if Fisty had ’a’ come at Ross a’ter he was married to Swickey Avery, by God! Scotty, I’d have plugged him m’self!”
“Shake!” said the sheriff, extending his hand.
A slow smile came to Cameron’s lean features as he pump-handled the extended “arm of the law” vigorously.
Then he turned and climbed the hotel steps, whistling like a schoolboy.
CHAPTER XXXII—HOSS AVERY’S TRIBUTE
Flitting whitethroats and chewinks shot in and out of the sun-patches of the May woods, and a hen-partridge stood stiffly on the end of a log, clucking to the young brood that scurried through the ferns, as David, pausing frequently as though looking for some one, came down the trail from the three cabins.