“Yes, he’s my uncle,” said Westy.
“He know yer got a gun?”
“Sure, he does.”
“Well, you’d better ’phone him when you get to Chandler if you don’t want ter spend the night in a cell.”
Westy balked at the sound of this talk, but he only tightened his sweaty palm in his pocket and said, “He didn’t kill the deer. Why should I ’phone to him?”
Farmer Sands poked his billy-goat visage around in front of Westy’s face and stared but said nothing.
In Chandler, the trio aroused some curiosity as they went through the main street and Westy felt conscious and ashamed. He wished that Mr. Terry would conceal his flaunting badge. As they approached the rather pretentious County Court House, he began to feel nervous. The stone building had a kind of dignity about it and seemed to frown on him. Moreover in the brick wing he saw small, heavily barred windows, and these were not a cheerful sight.
What he feared most of all was that once in the jaws of that unknown monster, the law, he would spoil everything by saying more than he meant to say. He was probably saved from this by the dignitary before whom he was taken. The learned justice was so fond of talking himself that Westy had no opportunity of saying anything and was not invited to enlarge upon the simple fact that he had killed a deer. Probably if the local dignitary had known Westy better he would have expressed some surprise at the boy’s act but since, to him, Westy was only a boy with a gun (always a dangerous combination) there was nothing so very extraordinary in the fact of his shooting a deer. Fortunately, he did not ask questions for Westy would not have gone to the extreme of actually lying.
He stood before the desk of the justice, one sweaty palm encircled about his precious fortune in his pocket, and felt frightened and ill at ease.
“Well, my young friend,” said the justice, “those who disregard the game laws of this state must expect to pay the penalty.”