"They did?" asked Barclay, from his chair behind the stove.
"Sure," replied Mr. Mercheson; "roasted him good and brown. There wasn't a man in the smoker but me to stand up for him."
"So you stood up for the old scoundrel, did you?" asked Barclay.
"Sure," answered the travelling man. "Anything to get up an argument, you know," he went on, beginning to see which way sentiment lay in the shop. "I've been around town this morning, and I find the people here don't approve of him for a minute, any more than they did on the train."
"What do they say?" asked Barclay, braiding a four-strand whip, and finding that his cunning of nearly fifty years had not left his fingers.
"Oh, it isn't so much what they say—but you can tell, don't you know; it's what they don't say; they don't defend him. I guess they like him personally, but they know he's a thief; that's the idea—they simply can't defend him and they don't try. The government has got him dead to rights. Say," he went on, "just to be arguing, you know last evening I took a poll of the train—the limited—the Golden State Limited—swell train, swell crowd—all rich old roosters; and honest, do you know that out of one hundred and twenty-three votes polled only four were for him, and three of those were girls who said they knew his daughter at the state university, and had visited at his house. Wasn't that funny?"
Barclay laughed grimly, and answered, "Well, it was pretty funny considering that I'm John Barclay."
The suspense of the group in the shop was broken, and they laughed, too.
"Oh, hell," said Mr. Mercheson, "come off!" Then he turned to McHurdie and tried to talk trade to him. But Watts was obdurate, and the man soon left the shop, eying Barclay closely. He stood in the door and said, as he went out of the store, "Well, you do look some like his pictures, Mister."
There was a silence when the stranger went, and Barclay, whose face had grown red, cried, "Damn 'em—damn 'em all—kick a man when he is down!"