"But you didn't know they had been brung to town all this distance to be laid beside Red. You didn't know Red had been stabbed so he could be added, too. You didn't know the three of them had been left on the street to rile up every man with blood in his veins. Why, Wilfred, it's an insult to the whole state of Texas, Such high-handed doings ain't to be bore. If Brick Willock don't want to be tried in court, is that an excuse for killing off all that might witness against him? It might of been ONCE. But we're determined to have a county of law-abiding citizens. Such free living has got to be nipped in the bud, or we'll have another No-Man's Land. We're determined to live under the laws. This is civilization. The cattle business is dead, land is getting tied up by title-deeds, the deer's gone, and there's nothing left but civilization. And I am the—er—as sheriff of Greer County I am a—I am the angel of civilization, you may say."
Mizzoo started up, too excited to notice Wilfred's suddenly distorted face. It was no time to display a sense of the ludicrous; the young man hotly burst into passionate argument and reasonable hypothesis.
"We've got civilization," Mizzoo declared doggedly, "and we aim to hold on to her, you bet! There's going to be no such doings as three corpses stretched out on the sidewalk for breakfast, not while I'm at the helm. How'd that look, if wrote up for the New York papers? That ain't all—remember that ghost I used to worry my life out over, trying to meet up with on the trail? Him, or her or it, that haunted every step of the way from Abilene to the Gulf of Mexico? It's a flitting, that ghost is! Well, I don't claim that no ghost is in my jurisdiction. Brick's flesh and blood, there's bone to him. As my aunt (Miss Sue of Missouri) used to say, 'he's some MAN.'"
Waving aside Mizzoo's ghost, Wilfred elaborated his theory of an Indian attack, described Brick's peaceable disposition, his gentleness to Lahoma—then dwelt on the friendship between himself and Brick, and the relations between himself and Brick's ward.
"It all comes to this," Mizzoo declared: "if you could make me think Willock a harmless lamb and as innocent, it wouldn't change conditions. This neighborhood calls for his life and'd take it if in reach; and my warrant calls for his arrest. All I can promise is to get him, if possible, behind the bars before the mob gets him in a rope. As my aunt, whom I have oft-times quoted my aunt (Miss Sue of Missouri, a woman of elegant sense)—'that's the word,' she used to say, 'with the bark on it!'"
Wilfred permitted himself the pleasure of taunting Mizzoo with the very evident truth that before Willock was hanged or imprisoned, he must first be caught.
Mizzoo grinned good-naturedly. "Yap. Well, we've got a clew locked up in jail right now that could tell us something, I judge, and will tell us something before set free; its name is Bill Atkins. He's a wise old coon, but as sour as a boiled owl,—nothing as yet to be negotiated with him than if he was a bobcat catched in a trap. We're hoping time'll mellow him—time and the prospect of being took out and swung from the nearest limb—speaking literary, not by nature, as you know trees is as scarce about here as Brick Willock himself."
Wilfred insisted on an immediate visit to Bill. "Brick declared he wouldn't tell Bill his hiding-place," he said, "for he didn't want to get him into trouble. He'll tell me if he knows anything—and if he doesn't, it's an outrage to shut him up, old as he is, and as rheumatic as he's old."
On the way to the rudely improvised prison, Mizzoo defended himself. "He wasn't too old and rheumatic to fight like a wildcat—why, he had to be lifted up bodily and carried into his cell. Not a word can we get out of him, or a bite of grub into him. I believe that old codger's just too obstinate to die!"
When they reached the prison door, the crowd gathered about them, eager for news, watching Mizzoo unfasten the door as if he were unlocking the secret to Willock's whereabouts. There were loud imprecations on the head of the murderer, and fierce prophecies as to what would happen to Bill if he preserved his incriminating silence. It seemed but a moment before hurrying forms from many directions packed themselves into a mass before the jail.