“So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?” he asked gravely. “Knew him when he was a kid?”
Slowly Denny Bolton’s eyes traveled from the Judge’s face. His lips opened with equal deliberation.
“I reckon I knew him––pretty well,” he admitted.
The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he nodded thoughtfully.
“Er––had a few set-to’s with him, yourself, now and then?”
He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was a heavy silence before Young Denny replied.
Then, “Maybe,” he said, noncommittally. “Maybe I did.”
The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynard wheeled in his chair toward the man on the desk and fell to pounding his knee again in the excess of his appreciation.
“Maybe,” he chortled, “maybe he did! Well––I––reckon!”