The sheriff was not a story teller. At times he was forced to go back and bring in other threads, but at last he finished, and attacked his old pipe again, while Hashknife tilted back in his chair and squinted at the ceiling.
“So old Marsh Hartwell turned down his son because he married Eph King’s daughter, eh?”
“Well, Jack was an awful fool to bring her here, wasn’t he?”
“Accordin’ to yore liver and lights,” said Hashknife thoughtfully. “On the other hand it was the natural thing to do. Did you folks ever think what a lot of —— it must’a been for that girl to have everybody dislikin’ her?”
“Well, I s’pose it wasn’t so awful nice, Hartley.”
“And folks kinda turned Jack down, too, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, yuh might say they did. But lookin’ at it——”
“From yore point of view? Say, sheriff, you folks have lived in this tight little valley until you’ve got so —— narrer that yuh could take a bath in a shotgun barrel. A lot of you folks can’t see higher than a cow’s vertebray. That’s a honest fact. I’m not tryin’ to start an argument.
“You never stop to think that bein’ cattlemen or sheepmen is only occupation, not blood. I’m not tryin’ to defend the sheep. I ain’t got no more use for a sheep than you have. I hate the danged things. I know what they’ll do to a range, and I know that the cattle business is rockin’ on the narrow edge right now, on account of the sheep; but I also know that sheepmen are just as human as cattlemen. They’re mostly cattlemen gone wrong.”
“Well, we won’t argue about sheepmen,” said the sheriff. “Jack’s own father accused him of bein’ a traitor, but I’ve got a sneakin’ idea that it’s Jack’s wife, not Jack.”