“Whut—now?”
“They're over there in the woods across the river NOW and they want me to give him up to them. They say they have the sheriff with them and they want him for shooting a man on Leatherwood Creek, day before yesterday.”
“It's all a lie,” burst out old Judd. “They want to kill him.”
“Of course—and I was going to take him up to the county jail right away for safe-keeping.”
“D'ye mean to say you'd throw that boy into jail and then fight them Falins to pertect him?” the old man asked slowly and incredulously. Hale pointed to a two-store building through his window.
“If you get in the back part of that store at a window, you can see whether I will or not. I can summon you to help, and if a fight comes up you can do your share from the window.”
The old man's eyes lighted up like a leaping flame.
“Will you let Dave out and give him a Winchester and help us fight 'em?” he said eagerly. “We three can whip 'em all.”
“No,” said Hale shortly. “I'd try to keep both sides from fighting, and I'd arrest Dave or you as quickly as I would a Falin.”
The average mountaineer has little conception of duty in the abstract, but old Judd belonged to the better class—and there are many of them—that does. He looked into Hale's eyes long and steadily.