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I addressed the bar-keeper: "Say, do you know the folk here in Osawotamie?" After a pause he replied: "Most on 'em, I guess." Another pause and a second question: "Do you know Tom Williams?" The eyes looked at me with a faint light of surprise in them; they looked away again, and came back with short, half suspicious, half curious glances. "Maybe you're a friend of his'n?"
While weighing it in my hand, the Sheriff's words recurred to me, "It wouldn't stop any one with grit in him." What did he mean? I didn't want to think, so I put the cartridge in again, cocked and replaced the pistol in my right- side jacket pocket, and drove on. Osawotamie consisted of a single street of straggling frame-buildings.
Down the hill I went, and across the bridge and out into the open country. I drove rapidly for about five miles more than halfway to Osawotamie and then I pulled up, in order to think quietly and make up my mind. I grasped the situation now in all its details. Courage was the one virtue which these men understood, the only one upon which they prided themselves.
Was I to give my life for a stupid practical joke? "Yes!" a voice within me answered sharply. "It would be well if a man could always choose the cause for which he risks his life, but it may happen that he ought to throw it away for a reason that seems inadequate." "What ought I to do?" I questioned. "Go on to Osawotamie, arrest Williams, and bring him into Kiota," replied my other self.
"It shoots true," he said meditatively, "plumb true; but it's too small to drop a man. I guess it wouldn't stop any one with grit in him." My anger would not allow me to consider his advice; I thrust the weapon in my pocket: "I haven't got a buggy. How am I to get to Osawotamie?" "Mine's hitched up outside. You ken hev it." Rising to my feet I said: "Then we can go."
At the next section-line I turned to the right, and ten or fifteen minutes later saw Osawotamie in the distance. I drew up, laid the reins on the dashboard, and examined the revolver. It was a small four-shooter, with a large bore. To make sure of its efficiency I took out a cartridge; it was quite new.
"These words have just been given to us by Judge Shannon himself, who tells us also that the outrage took place on the North Section Line, bounding Bray's farm. "After this speech the highway robber Williams rode towards the township of Osawotamie, while Judge Shannon, after drawing the buckboard to the edge of the track, was compelled to proceed homewards on foot.