Ben’s face grew redder and his throat dry.
“I must ask you—again—not to smoke—in this stable,” he replied, in cracked and jerky tones.
“Yer stalling, young feller!” exclaimed the stranger. “Tell me what I’m asking you an’ tell it straight. Yer trying to hide something.”
Jim McAllister stepped into the stable at that moment.
“Sure he’s trying to hide something, Dave Brown,” said McAllister. “He’s trying to hide what he thinks of you for a deputy sheriff—that you’re as ignorant as you are fresh. He’s remembering his manners and trying to hide your want of them. He’s half O’Dell an’ half McAllister; so if you two want to talk in this stable about Richard Sherwood or anything else, I guess you’d better go out first and douse those cigars in a puddle or something.”
“I’m here in the name of the law, Jim McAllister,” said Mr. Brown, uncertainly.
“Same here, only more so,” returned Uncle Jim pleasantly.
“He’s in the right of it, Mr. Brown,” said Mel Lunt.
The officials left the stable, ground their cigars to extinction with the heels of their boots and came back.
“Yer darned particular,” remarked the deputy sheriff.