De Launay saw only the uniforms. His wrath surged up. What were policemen doing in this country of range and sheriffs? What had they to do with the West? They stood for all that had come to the country, all the change and innovation that he hated.
He expressed his feelings by letting the first policeman have it on the point of the jaw. The second he proceeded to walk over, to beat back and to drive through the door, out into the big room and clear 131 to the sidewalk. The man resisted, swinging his mace, but he found De Launay a cold, inhumanly accurate and swift antagonist, whom it was difficult to hit and impossible to dodge. Twice he was knocked down, and twice he leaped up, swinging his mace at a head that was never there when the club reached its objective.
The policeman whom De Launay had first knocked down had arisen quickly and, seeing his Nemesis now pursuing his comrade, ran to the rescue. De Launay could avoid a club in the hands of the man in front of him but that wielded by the man behind was another matter. It fell on his head just as he was driving the other policeman through the door into the street. It was a shrewd blow and he went to the ground under it.
While they waited for the patrol wagon, the two policemen tried to gather information about the cause of the fight, but they found Johnny the Greek somewhat reticent. The cowboy still was upstairs, held there by Snake Murphy. The others were more or less confused in their ideas. Johnny was chiefly anxious that the police should remove the prisoner and refrain from any close inquiry into the premises, so he merely stated that the fellow had come in drunk and had made an attack on some of the men playing pool. His henchman was seeing to it that the robbed and wronged cowboy had no opportunity to tell a story that would send the police upstairs. 132
Half conscious and wholly drunk, De Launay was carted to Sulphur Falls’ imposing stone jail, where he was duly slated before a police sergeant for drunkenness, assault and battery, mayhem, inciting a riot, and resisting an officer in the performance of his duty. Then he was led away and deposited in a cell. Here he went soundly to sleep.
In the course of time he began to dream. He dreamed that he was on a raft which floated on a limitless sea of bunch grass, alkali and sagebrush, where the waves ran high and regularly, rocking the raft back and forth monotonously and as monotonously throwing him from side to side and against a mast to which he clung. Right in front of the raft, floating in the air above the waves, drifted a slender, veiled figure, and through the veil sparkled a pair of eyes which were bottomless and yet held the colors of the rainbow in their depths. Above this figure, which beckoned him on, and after which the raft drifted faster and faster, was a halo of sparkling hair, which caught and broke up the light into prismatic colors.
The raft sailed faster and faster, rotating in a circle until it was spinning about the ghostly figure, which grew more and more distinct as the raft gyrated more crazily. Raft, desert, waves and sky became confused, hazy, fading out, but the figure stood there as he opened his eyes and the stanchion thumped him in the ribs. 133
His sleep and his liquor-drugged mind came back to him and he found himself lying on his bunk in a cell, while Solange stood before him and a turnkey poked him in the ribs and rocked him to wake him up.
Sick, bruised and battered, he raised himself, swung his feet to the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed. He tried to stand, but his head swam and he became so dizzy that he feared to fall.
“Don’t get up,” said Solange, icily.