The Sheriff And His Partner | Page 8

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?"
"I don't know him, but I'd like to meet him."
"Would you, though?" Turning half round, the bar-keeper took down a
bottle and glass, and poured out some whisky, seemingly for his own
consumption. Then: "I guess he's not hard to meet, isn't Williams, ef
you and me mean the same man."
"I guess we do," I replied; "Tom Williams is the name."
"That's me," said the tall man who was leaning on the bar near me,
"that's my name."
"Are you the Williams that stopped Judge Shannon yesterday?"
"I don't know his name," came the careless reply, "but I stopped a man
in a buck-board."
Plucking out my revolver, and pointing it low down on his breast, I
said:
"I'm sent to arrest you; you must come with me to Kiota."
Without changing his easy posture, or a muscle of his face, he asked in
the same quiet voice:
"What does this mean, anyway? Who sent you to arrest me?"
"Sheriff Johnson," I answered.
The man started upright, and said, as if amazed, in a quick, loud voice:
"Sheriff Johnson sent you to arrest me?"

"Yes," I retorted, "Sheriff Samuel Johnson swore me in this morning as
his deputy, and charged me to bring you into Kiota."
In a tone of utter astonishment he repeated my words, "Sheriff Samuel
Johnson!"
"Yes," I replied, "Samuel Johnson, Sheriff of Elwood County."
"See here," he asked suddenly, fixing me with a look of angry
suspicion, "what sort of a man is he? What does he figger like?"
"He's a little shorter than I am," I replied curtly, "with a brown beard
and bluish eyes--a square-built sort of man."
"Hell!" There was savage rage and menace in the exclamation.
"You kin put that up!" he added, absorbed once more in thought. I paid
no attention to this; I was not going to put the revolver away at his
bidding. Presently he asked in his ordinary voice:
"What age man might this Johnson be?"
"About forty or forty-five, I should think."
"And right off Sam Johnson swore you in and sent you to bring me into
Kiota--an' him Sheriff?"
"Yes," I replied impatiently, "that's so."
"Great God!" he exclaimed, bringing his clenched right hand heavily
down on the bar. "Here, Zeke!" turning to the man asleep in the corner,
and again he shouted "Zeke!" Then, with a rapid change of manner, and
speaking irritably, he said to me:
"Put that thing up, I say."
The bar-keeper now spoke too: "I guess when Tom sez you kin put it
up, you kin. You hain't got no use fur it."

The changes of Williams' tone from wonder to wrath and then to quick
resolution showed me that the doubt in him had been laid, and that I
had but little to do with the decision at which he had arrived, whatever
that decision might be. I understood, too, enough of the Western spirit
to know that he would take no unfair advantage of me. I therefore
uncocked the revolver and put it back into my pocket. In the meantime
Zeke had got up from his resting-place in the corner and had made his
way sleepily to the bar. He had taken more to drink than was good for
him, though he was not now really drunk.
"Give me and Zeke a glass, Joe," said Williams; "and this gentleman,
too, if he'll drink with me, and take one yourself with us."
"No," replied the bar-keeper sullenly, "I'll not drink to any damned
foolishness. An' Zeke won't neither."
"Oh, yes, he will," Williams returned persuasively, "and so'll you, Joe.
You aren't goin' back on me."
"No, I'll be just damned if I am," said the barkeeper, half-conquered.
"What'll you take, sir?" Williams asked me.
"The bar-keeper knows my figger," I answered, half-jestingly, not yet
understanding the situation, but convinced that it was turning out better
than I had expected.
"And you, Zeke?" he went on.
"The old pizen," Zeke replied.
"And now, Joe, whisky for you and me--the square bottle," he
continued, with brisk cheerfulness.
In silence the bar-keeper placed the drinks before us. As soon as the
glasses were empty Williams spoke again, putting out his hand to Zeke
at the same time:
"Good-bye, old man, so long, but saddle up in two hours. Ef I don't

come then, you kin clear; but I guess I'll be with you."
"Good-bye, Joe."
"Good-bye, Tom," replied the bar-keeper, taking the proffered hand,
still half-unwillingly, "if you're stuck on it; but the