"It was this way," began the sheriff, while Elizabeth cast at Vance a glance of frantic and weary appeal, to which he responded with a gesture which indicated that the cause was lost.
"I was brung up mighty proper. I had a most amazing lot of prayers at the tip of my tongue when I wasn't no more'n knee-high to a grasshopper. But when a man has got a fire in him, they ain't no use trying to smother it. You either got to put water on it or else let it burn itself out.
"My old man didn't see it that way. When I got to cutting up he'd try to smother it, and stop me by saying: 'Don't!' Which don't accomplish nothing with young gents that got any spirit. Not a damn thing—asking your pardon, ladies! Well, sirs, he kept me in harness, you might say, and pulling dead straight down the road and working hard and faithful. But all the time I'd been saving up steam, and swelling and swelling and getting pretty near ready to bust.
"Well, sirs, pretty soon—we was living in Garrison City them days, when Garrison wasn't near the town that it is now—along comes word that Jack Hollis is around. A lot of you younger folks ain't never heard nothing about him. But in his day Jack Hollis was as bad as they was made. They was nothing that Jack wouldn't turn to real handy, from shootin' up a town to sticking up a train or a stage. And he done it all just about as well. He was one of them universal experts. He could blow a safe as neat as you'd ask. And if it come to a gun fight, he was greased lightning with a flying start. That was Jack Hollis."
The sheriff paused to draw breath.
"Perhaps," said Elizabeth Cornish, white about the lips, "we had better go into the living room to hear the rest of the sheriff's story?"
It was not a very skillful diversion, but Elizabeth had reached the point of utter desperation. And on the way into the living room unquestionably she would be able to divert Terry to something else. Vance held his breath.
And it was Terry who signed his own doom.
"We're very comfortable here, Aunt Elizabeth. Let's not go in till the sheriff has finished his story."
The sheriff rewarded him with a flash of gratitude, and Vance settled back in his chair. The end could not, now, be far away.