At the appointed hour—ten o’clock—Lex Sangerly left Dot in the hotel parlor and stepped over to Quintell’s office to accompany the broker on an inspection tour of the Lucky Boy placer claims. He went with reluctance, feeling more keenly than on the day previous his suspicions of Quintell in regard to the right of way matter, to which was added a profound indignation and rage against this wildcatter who was, from all Lex could hear, the cause of the Huntington raid.
A few minutes after Lex’s departure, Mrs. Liggs and Sheriff Warburton arrived in camp, and, as the result of a short talk he had with Dot, Warburton prevailed on her to take no immediate action looking to the arrest of Quintell, until he had investigated the case. Leaving the two women, he strolled out of the hotel and stood listening to a discussion going on among the members of a crowd of men standing before the entrance. Lemuel Huntington was being roundly condemned. There were ominous grumblings, threats being voiced; mob law was being openly fomented. To Warburton, wise in the psychology of crime and the natures of men, darkness alone was needed to spread the flame of lawlessness over that wild desert settlement. It would sweep through the underworld section, and thence from one mine bunk house to another, calling out the habitués of the dens and the grimy underground workers to mass in one vicious, formidable army, that, venting its violence on the Huntington ranch and its household, might finish out the night with an orgy of destruction and murder in the camp itself.
He looked up and down the street. Groups of men were everywhere. His eyes rested on the gilt sign bearing Quintell’s name, on the Brokers’ Exchange Building. A grim smile parted his lips. Quintell was surely a power in Geerusalem, he told himself. Presently his eye fell on the dapper figure of the town constable. The fellow, in correct mining camp attire—the rakish cut approved by the ranking element—stood spread-legged on the sidewalk, complacently smoking a cigarette. Warburton’s jaws set. He strode over to the man.
“Hullo, Mitchell!” he said gruffly.
The other glanced at the sheriff’s face with its two weeks’ growth of bristly whiskers, at the dirty shirt and overalls, then back at their owner’s face.
“It isn’t possible that it’s Sheriff Warburton?” he began, with a grin.
“It is. When I’m doin’ my duty, Mitchell, I don’t tog up. I’d like to talk to you a minute.” He led the way to the hotel office, halting just inside the entrance. “What’re you goin’ to do about this thing—all this lynch-law stuff they’re cookin’ up?” he asked.
The constable chuckled. “Do? Why, I’m powerless to do anything. A man would be crazy to interfere. The sentiment of the camp is such that if I butted in, they’d swear I was trying to protect Huntington and——”
“What’re you sportin’ that tin buzzer for,” broke in Warburton, with a contemptuous nod at the silver star on the breast of Mitchell’s tailored coat.
The man flushed angrily. “Say, Warburton, what’s eating you, anyhow?” he asked defiantly. “I’m constable of this township and——”