“I promise you,” said Aleck, solemnly. “I give you my word I won't.”
“And what 's more,” continued Creel, “if you 'll keep anybody else from doing it, I 'll vote for you next time for Sheriff.”
“I promise you that, too,” said Aleck, “and if anybody says you were there, let me know, and I 'll come up there and—and tell her you were n't. I can't do any more than that, can I?”
“No, you can't do any more than that,” admitted Creel, sadly, and, leaning over and shaking hands with the Sheriff cordially for the first time in some years, he rode away in profound dejection.
“Well, I 've got to face Mary,” he said, “and I reckon I might as well do it. Whiskey is a queer thing. I must have been a lot drunker than I thought I was, because if the Court had n't ruled it, I would have sworn I slept in that there wing room last night.”
“Well, that 's the best bluff I ever put up,” said Thompson to the throng about him as he turned back to the court-house.
The Sheriff's bluff became the topic of the rest of the term. Such audacity, such resourcefulness had never been known. Thompson became more popular than ever, and his re-election the following spring was admitted to be certain.
“That Aleck Thompson 's the smartest man that is,” declared one of his delighted adherents.
Thompson himself thought so, too, and his imitation of the Judge, of Dick Creel, and of himself in court became his most popular story.
Only the old Judge moved among the throng of tittering laymen calm, dignified, and unsuspecting.