[CHAPTER XIX]
THE UNMASKING OF SLUE FOOT MAGEE
CONNIE MORGAN did not leave the train at Dogfish Spur, but kept on to the county seat. In the morning he hunted up the sheriff, a bluff woodsman who, until his election to office, had operated as an independent stumpage contractor.
"Did you arrest three I. W. W.'s in Mike Gillum's camp on Willow River a while back?" he asked, when the sheriff had offered him a chair in his office in the little court-house.
"D'you mean those two-legged skunks that tried to brain Hurley when he was bringin' 'em in fer tryin' to burn out his camp?"
"Those are the ones."
"They're here. An' by the time they got here they know'd they hadn't be'n on no Sunday-school picnic, too. Doc swore out the warrants, an' I deputized Limber Bill Bradley, an' Blinky Hoy to go an' fetch 'em in. 'Treat 'em kind,' I tells 'em when they started. But, judgin' by looks when they got 'em out here, they didn't. You see, them boys was brought up rough. Limber Bill mixed it up with a bear one time, an' killed him with a four-inch jack-knife, an' Blinky Hoy—they say he eats buzz-saws fer breakfast. So here they be, an' here they'll stay 'til June court. They started hollerin' fer a p'liminary hearin', soon as they got here, but I know'd Hurley was strainin' hisself fer a good showin' this year, an' wouldn't want to stop an' come down to testify, so I worked a technicality on 'em to prevent the hearin'."
"A technicality?"
"Yeh, I shuck my fist in under their nose an' told 'em if they demanded a hearing, they'd git it. But it would be helt up in Hurley's camp, an' Limber Bill, an' Blinky Hoy would chaperoon 'em up, an' provided they was enough left of 'em to bother with after the hearin' them same two would fetch 'em back. So they changed their minds about a hearin', and withdraw'd the demand."