In front of Soule's drug store his weekday cronies sat—the elder statesmen of the town—tilted back in hard-bottomed chairs, with their legs drawn up under them out of the tides of foot travel. But he passed them by, only nodding an answer to their choraled greeting, and went inside back behind the prescription case and sat down there alone, smoking his pipe soberly.
“Wonder what ails Judge Priest?” said Sergeant Jimmy Bagby. “He looks sort of dauncy and low in his mind, don't he?”
“He certainly does,” some one agreed.
Half an hour later, when the sheriff came in looking for him, Judge Priest was still sitting alone behind the prescription case. With the sheriff was a middle-aged man, a stranger, in a wrinkled check suit and a somewhat soiled fancy vest. An upper pocket of this vest was bulged outward by such frank articles of personal use as a red celluloid toothbrush, carried bristle-end up, a rubber mustache-comb and a carpenter's flat pencil. The stranger had a longish mustache, iron-gray at the roots and of a greenish, blue-black color elsewhere, and he walked with a perceptible limp. He had a way, it at once developed, of taking his comb out and running it through his mustache while in conversation, doing so without seeming to affect the flow or the volume of his language.
“Mornin', Judge Priest,” said the sheriff. “This here gentleman wants to see you a minute about gittin' out an attachment. I taken him first to the county judge's office, but it seems like Judge Landis went up to Louisville last night, and the magistrates' offices air closed—both of them, in fact; and so seein' as this gentleman is in a kind of a hurry, I taken the liberty of bringin' him round to you.”
Before the judge could open his mouth, he of the dyed mustache was breaking in.
“Yes, sirree,” he began briskly. “If you're the judge here I want an attachment. I've got a good claim against Dan Silver, and blame me if I don't push it. I'll fix him—red-lighting me off my own privilege car!” He puffed up with rage and injury.
“What appears to be the main trouble?” asked the judge, studying this belligerent one from under his hatbrim.
“Well, it's simple enough,” explained the man. “Stanton is my name—here's my card—and I'm the fixer for this show—the legal adjuster, see? Or, anyhow, I was until last night. And I likewise am—or was—half partner with Dan Silver in the privilege car and in the speculative interests of this show—the flat joints and the rackets and all. You make me now, I guess? Well, last night, coming up here from the last stand, me and Silver fell out over the split-up, over dividing the day's profits—you understand, the money is cut up two ways every night—and I ketched him trying to trim me. I called him down good and hard then, and blame if he didn't have the nerve to call in that big boss razor-back of his, named Saginaw, and a couple more rousters, and red-light me right off my own privilege car! Now what do you know about that?”
“Only what you tell me,” replied Judge Priest calmly. “Might I ask you what is the process of red-lightin' a person of your callin' in life?”