“Whoever they be that lifted my steers,” he said grimly, “I damn their souls to hell! I’d damn their bodies, too, believe me, men, if I knowed ’em an’ could throw my gun on ’em. Shuriff, here, might take me to jail next minute an’ I’d go happy.”
Selwood, sitting at a table desultorily playing cards, pushed back his hat and smiled.
“Nobody’s going to take you to jail for killing a rustler, Jake,” he said, “we’d give you a reward instead. I’d give a lot to have the chance myself.”
“Why don’t ye hunt fer it, then?” demanded Conlan testily, “ef I was shuriff——”
“Yes?” said Selwood, laying his cards flat on the table for a moment and facing him, “what would you do if you were sheriff?”
“I’d try, anyway,” said the old man, with a touch of scorn, “to find a trace of somethin’. I’d not stay on my own ranch an’ let th’ world go hang! I’d ride th’ hills, ’tenny rate.”
A slow paleness crept into Selwood’s face, giving it an odd ashen hue, like a candle. He laid down his hand definitely and looked round at the ten or twelve men lounging in the room.
Among them were Bossick and one or two others who had suffered at the hands of the mysterious thieves of Nameless.
“I know that Jake here voices the feeling which has been growing against me for some time,” he said evenly, “and this is as good a time as any to speak about it.”
“You’re our sheriff, Price, an’ a damned good one,” spoke up Bossick loyally, “an’ I for one have nothing to say against you. I know—no one better—what you’re up against. I trailed my own stuff into that river with you, an’ I know that they simply vanished. I’ve done my own darndest to unravel th’ mystery, an’ I can’t see what more any man’d do, sheriff or not!”