“How so?” put in the judge, still seeking information for his own enlightenment.
“Why, you see, if you tie up that band wagon Dan Silver can't use it for parading. He ain't got but just the one, and a circus parade without a band wagon will look pretty sick, I should say. It'll look more like something else, a funeral, for example.” The pleased grafter grinned maliciously.
“It's like this—the band wagon is the key to the whole works,” he went on. “It's the first thing off the lot when the parade starts—the band-wagon driver is the only one that has the route. You cut the band wagon out and you've just naturally got that parade snarled up to hell and gone.”
Judge Priest got upon his feet and advanced upon the exultant stranger. He seemed more interested than at any time.
“Suh,” he asked, “let me see if I understand you properly. The band wagon is the guidin' motive, as it were, of the entire parade—is that right?”
“You've got it,” Stanton assured him. “Even the stock is trained to follow the band wagon. They steer by the music up ahead. Cop the band wagon out and the rest of 'em won't know which way to go—that's the rule where-ever there's a road show traveling.”
“Ah hah,” said the judge reflectively, “I see.”
“But say, look here, judge,” said Stanton. “Begging your pardon and not trying to rush you nor nothing, but if you're going to attach that band wagon of Dan Silver's for me you gotter hurry. That parade is due to leave the lot in less'n half an hour from now.”
He was gratified to note that his warning appeared to grease the joints in the old judge's legs. They all three went straightway to the sheriff's office, which chanced to be only two doors away, and there the preliminaries necessary to legal seizures touching on a certain described and specified parade chariot, tableau car or band wagon were speedily completed. Stanton made oath to divers allegations and departed, assiduously combing himself and gloating openly over the anticipated discomfiture of his late partner. The sheriff lingered behind only a minute or two longer while Judge Priest in the privacy of a back room impressed upon him his instructions. Then he, too, departed, moving at his top walking gait westward out Jefferson Street. There was this that could be said for Sheriff Giles Birdsong—he was not gifted in conversation nor was he of a quick order of intellect, but he knew his duty and he obeyed orders literally when conveyed to him by a superior official. On occasion he had obeyed them so literally—where the warrant had said dead or alive, for example—that he brought in, feet first, a prisoner or so who manifested a spirited reluctance against being brought in any other way. And the instructions he had now were highly explicit on a certain head.
Close on Sheriff Birdsong's hurrying heels the judge himself issued forth from the sheriff's office. Hailing a slowly ambling public vehicle driven by a languid darky, he deposited his person therein and was driven away. Observing this from his place in front of the drug store, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby was moved to remark generally to the company: “You can't tell me I wasn't right a while ago about Judge Billy Priest. Look at him yonder now, puttin' out for home in a hack, without waitin' for the parade. There certainly is something wrong with the judge and you can't tell me there ain't.”