A moment later the sheriff rushed into the room. He was at white heat, and the looks he threw at the scout and the trapper were anything but reassuring.
The crowd outside once more clustered about the open door and the windows. There was to be something more doing, and each spectator held his breath and watched and listened.
“Somebody said there was a row here,” growled Bloom. “I heard up the street that Jake Phelps an’ that pesky trouble maker, Nate Dunbar, was roughin’ it with each other.”
The sheriff was addressing himself to the hotel clerk, but Buffalo Bill took it upon himself to answer.
“They didn’t get so far as an exchange of shots, sheriff. I happened in, just as the affair began to look serious, and ordered Jake Phelps out of town.”
Bloom had whirled away on his heel as soon as the scout began to speak; then, suddenly changing his mind, he whirled back when he had finished.
“You ordered him out o’ town?” he scowled.
“Oh, yes,” answered the scout passively. “If they had both stayed in town there would have been trouble.”
“Tell me this, you who make yourself so high and mighty wherever you happen to plant yourself: What business you got orderin’ anybody out o’ Hackamore?”
A glimmer arose in the scout’s eyes.