“Suppose we sleep on the thing—the whole four of us,” suggested the short man. “I said sleep, please note! This general show-down has cleared the air up here a whole lot, I'll say! And Wagg has steered away the dicks! They won't be strolling in, and till we have settled on a plan I'm sure nobody will feel like strolling out. The night watch is disbanded.”
He marched off toward the camp. The others trailed on behind him.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE STIR OF THE YEAST
Mr. Delmont Bangs was naturally of an observant nature. While he was in Egypt he was keeping his eyes particularly wide open. He was looking for two men wanted by the state. Mr. Bangs was the deputy warden who had gone up to the summit of Devilbrow in order to view the landscape o'er and pass the word to Mr. Wagg. Mr. Bangs rode along every highway and byway, day after day, not missing a trick. He was not especially sanguine in regard to locating the missing convicts in that section, but he was obeying the warden's orders; after a day or so he was also obeying an impulse to satisfy his curiosity in lines quite apart from his official quest.
He spent his nights at Files's tavern and grabbed his meals wherever he happened to be.
But after a time he found that housewives were unwilling to give him anything to eat. He was sure that they had not soured on him because he was a state catchpole. When he first arrived in town and gave out the news of his mission and issued a general call for tips he was welcomed heartily by everybody; the women, especially, hoped that he would find the villains and put them where they could not threaten unprotected females. Mr. Bangs had not been able to spend his money for food at farmhouses; the women would not accept any pay, and gave him their best.
However all at once they could not be induced to give food or even to sell it. They acted as if they did not care to be bothered; some of them declared that they were too busy to do cooking. They would not allow Mr. Bangs to stick his nose into their houses; they snapped refusal at him from behind doors only partially opened and foot-braced.
Men with whom Bangs conversed wore an air of abstraction. They plainly were not interested in Mr. Bangs or in the convicts whom he was pursuing. He tackled them on all sorts of subjects, hoping to hit on the topic which was absorbing so much of their attention. He went so far as to ask them bluntly what they were carrying on their minds besides hair. Those who were not surly looked scared.