“Howsomever, hit ain’t none of my affair, an’ seein’ thet I’ve got a right far journey ahead of me, I’ll hike along.”
But the leader of the mounted group shook his head.
“One of my men got horse flung back thar an’ broke a bone inside him. I’m ther high sheriff of this hyar county, an’ I hereby summons ye ter go along with me an’ ack as a member of my possy.”
Under his tan Private Grant paled a little. This mischance carried a triple menace to his safety. It involved riding back to the county seat where some 57 man might remember his face, and recall that two years ago he had gone away on a three years’ enlistment. But even if he escaped that contingency, it meant tarrying in this neighborhood through which he had meant to pass inconspicuously and rapidly. To be attached to a posse comitatus riding the hills on a man hunt meant to challenge every passing eye with an interest beyond the casual.
Finally, though he might well have forgotten him, the man whose trail he was now called to take in pursuit had once known him slightly, and if they met under such hostile auspices, might recognize and denounce him.
But the sheriff sat enthroned in his saddle and robed in the color of authority. At his back sat five other men with rifles across their pommels, and with such a situation there was no argument. The law’s officer threw the bridle rein of the empty-saddled mount to the man in the road.
“Get up on this critter,” he commanded tersely, “and don’t let him git his head down too low. He follers buck-jumpin’.”
When Grant, alias Colby, found that the men riding with him were more disposed to somber silence than to inquisitiveness or loquacity, he breathed easier. He even made a shrewd guess that there were others in that small group who answered the call of the law as reluctantly as he.
Sam Mosebury was accounted as dangerous as a rattlesnake, and Bud doubted whether even the high sheriff himself would make more than a perfunctory effort to come to grips with him in his present desperation.