“Go home, Slade,” said Davis; “go at once, and behave yourself, and you may yet escape.”
“No,” he replied, “you are now my prisoner. I will hold you as a hostage for my own safety.”
“All right, Slade,” said the judge, smiling, and still continuing to converse with Lott.
“Oh, I mean it,” replied Slade with an oath, pulling a derringer from his pocket and aiming it at Davis.
William Hunt, who had been an eyewitness of these proceeding now stepped up, and, facing Slade defiantly, said to him,
“You are not going to hurt him. He can do and act he pleases, and don’t you dare to touch him.”
Slade made some careless rejoinder.
“Slade,” said Hunt, “if I’d been sheriff, the first thing I would have done when I got up this morning would have been to arrest you. By that means I would have saved your life, probably prevented bloodshed, and we would have had a quiet town to-day.”
“We had better make you sheriff, then,” replied Slade.
“No, I have no wish for it; but if I were, I have got nerve enough to arrest you, and would certainly have done so.”