United States or Israel ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A conference was held in Jeffries's office. De Spain, Lefever, and some of the division staff discussed the situation raised by the affair. De Spain was instructed to see that Sassoon was brought in and made an example of for the benefit of his Calabasas friends. Accordingly, while the guard's life hung in the balance, the sheriff, Jim Druel, was despatched after Sassoon.
"What's going on in there, Bull?" asked de Spain after Bull had told him that Gale had driven him out, and he was heading for Calabasas. "Looks to me like old Duke's getting ready to die. Gale says he's going to draw his will to-night, and don't want nobody around got old Judge Druel in there." De Spain pricked up his ears. "What's that, Druel?" he demanded. Bull repeated his declaration.
Druel talked softly and through his nose: "I was only going to say it would be a good idea to have two witnesses." "Nita," suggested Gale. Duke was profane. "You couldn't keep the girl in the room if she had Nita to help her.
Duke listened thoughtfully, but seemingly with coldness. Druel looked from Gale to Duke, and appeared occasionally to put in a word to carry the argument along. De Spain suspected nothing of what they were talking about, but he was uneasy concerning Nan, and was not to be balked, by any combination, of his purpose of finding her.
"Were you there?" demanded Belle. "I was." "What did Laramie say?" "All he said to Druel was: 'If you don't keep 'em locked up, Druel, I take no responsibility for what happens. I come all the way from the jail with Laramie myself," recited the butcher; "walked right alongside him and Harry Tenison down t' the hotel." "Well, if you walked so far with him, is he coming here for supper?"
Barely ten feet from him, this room opened through an arch into the living-room, and where he stood he could hear all that was said. "Who's there?" demanded Duke gruffly. "Nobody," said Gale. "Go on, Druel." "That door never opened itself," persisted Duke. "The wind blew it open," said Gale impatiently. "I tell y' it didn't," responded Duke sternly; "somebody came in there, or went out.
From him, Belle learned that Van Horn and Stone had been held somewhere up at Tenison's incommunicado, by Lefever and Sawdy, while Laramie, opposed by the cattlemen's lawyer, was demanding from Justice Druel warrants for his prisoners; and that after they had reluctantly been issued, Sheriff Druel had pigeon-holed them until Tenison, backing Laramie, had told Druel after a big row, he would run him out of town if he didn't take his prisoners to jail.
"Then it may be I am making another mistake, Druel, in blaming you. It may not be your fault." "The fault is, you're fresh," cried Druel, warming up as de Spain appeared to cool. The line of tipplers backed away from the bar. De Spain, stepping toward the sheriff, raised his hand in a friendly way. "Druel, you're hurting yourself by your talk.
"I'm here for the second witness," was all he repeated, covering both men with short glances. Druel, his face muddily white as the whiskey bloat deserted it, shrunk inside his shabby clothes. He seemed, every time de Spain darted a look at him, to grow visibly smaller, until his loose bulk had shrivelled inside an armchair hardly large enough normally to contain it.
I supposed when I brought him in here after so much riding, that we had sheriff enough to keep him." He looked at Druel with such composure that the latter for a moment was nonplussed. Then he discharged a volley of oaths, and demanded what de Spain meant. De Spain did not move. He refused to see the angry sheriff.
Word Of The Day