Again Elizabeth cut in. But this time there was only a sporadic chattering in response. Coffee was steaming before them, Wu Chi's powerful, thick, aromatic coffee, which only he knew how to make. They were in a mood, now, to hear stories, that tableful of people. An expected ally came to the aid of Vance. It was Terence, who had been eating his heart out during the silly table talk of the past few minutes. Now he seized upon the first clear opening.
"Sheriff Minter, I've heard a lot about the time you ran down Johnny Garden. But I've never had the straight of it. Won't you tell us how it happened?"
"Oh," protested the sheriff, "it don't amount to much."
Elizabeth cast one frantic glance at her brother, and strove to edge into the interval of silence with a question directed at Mr. Gainor. But he shelved that question; the whole table was obviously waiting for the great man to speak. A dozen appeals for the yarn poured in.
"Well," said the sheriff, "if you folks are plumb set on it, I'll tell you just how it come about."
There followed a long story of how Johnny Garden had announced that he would ride down and shoot up the sheriff's own town, and then get away on the sheriff's own horse—and how he did it. And how the sheriff was laughed at heartily by the townsfolk, and how the whole mountain district joined in the laughter. And how he started out single-handed in the middle of winter to run down Johnny Garden, and struck through the mountains, was caught above the timberline in a terrific blizzard, kept on in peril of his life until he barely managed to reach the timber again on the other side of the ridge. How he descended upon the hiding-place of Johnny Garden, found Johnny gone, but his companions there, and made a bargain with them to let them go if they would consent to stand by and offer no resistance when he fought with Johnny on the latter's return. How they were as good as their word and how, when Johnny returned, they stood aside and let Johnny and the sheriff fight it out. How the sheriff beat Johnny to the draw, but was wounded in the left arm while Johnny fired a second shot as he lay dying on the floor of the lean-to. How the sheriff's wound was dressed by the companions of the dead Johnny, and how he was safely dismissed with honor, as between brave men, and how afterwards he hunted those same men down one by one.
It was quite a long story, but the audience followed it with a breathless interest.
"Yes, sir," concluded the sheriff, as the applause of murmurs fell off. "And from yarns like that one you wouldn't never figure it that I was the son of a minister brung up plumb peaceful. Now, would you?"
And again, to the intense joy of Vance, it was Terry who brought the subject back, and this time the subject of all subjects which Elizabeth dreaded, and which Vance longed for.
"Tell us how you came to branch out, Sheriff Minter?"