The Sheriffs Bluff | Page 4

show you." Thompson rattled his big keys again savagely.
Turkle caught him with both hands.
"Oh, Aleck, don't talk that a-way," he pleaded in a tremulous voice. "Don't talk that a-way!" He burst into tears and flung his arms around the Sheriff's neck. He protested that he had never, seen him take a drink in his life; he would go and tell the Judge so; if necessary, he would swear to it on a Bible.
"Aleck, you know I love you better than anybody in this world--except my wife and children. Yes, better than them--better than Jinny. Jinny will tell you that herself. Oh! Aleck!" He clung to him and sobbed!
His friends indorsed this and declared that they would bring him back if the Judge demanded his presence. They would "promise to bring him back dead or alive at any time he sent for him."
As Turkle and his friends were always warm supporters of the Sheriff, a fact of which they did not fail to remind him, Thompson was not averse to letting him off, especially as he felt tolerably sure that the Judge would, as they said, forget all about the matter, or, if he remembered it, would, as he had done before, simply order him to discharge the prisoner. So, after dragging the culprit to the jail door to scare him well and make his clemency the more impressive, he turned him over to the others on condition that he would mount his mule and go straight home and not come back again during the term. This Turkle was so glad to do that he struck out at once for the stable at what Thompson called a "turkey trot," and five minutes later he was galloping down the road, swinging mightily on his sorrel mule, but whipping for life.
That night Thompson was much toasted about the court-house for his humanity. Several of his admirers, indeed, got into somewhat the same condition that Turkle had been in.
Even Dick Creel, who had come to court that day, lapsed from virtue and fell a victim to the general hilarity.

III
The next morning when court was opened, the Judge was even more than usually dignified and formal. The customary routine of the morning was gone through with; the orders of the day before were read and were signed by the Judge with more than wonted solemnity. The Clerk, a benignant-looking old man with a red face and a white beard, took up his book and adjusted his glasses to call the pending docket: the case of "Dolittle vs. Dolittle's Ex'ex.," and the array of counsel drew their chairs up to the bar and prepared for the work of the day, when the Judge, taking off his spectacles, turned to the Sheriff's desk.
"Mr. Sheriff, bring in that unfortunate inebriate whom I sentenced to confinement in the gaol yesterday. The Court, while sensible of the imperative necessity of protecting itself from all unseemly disorder and preserving its dignity undiminished, nevertheless always leans to the side of mercy. The Court trusts that a night's incarceration may have sufficiently sobered and chastened the poor creature. The Court will therefore give him a brief admonition and will then discharge him."
The Judge sat back in his large arm-chair and waited benignantly with his gaze resting placidly in front of him, while a deathly silence fell on the crowd and every eye in the courthouse was turned on the Sheriff.
Thompson, standing at his desk, was staring at the Judge with jaw dropped and a dazed look like a man who had suddenly to face judgment. He opened his lips twice as if to speak, then turned and went slowly out of the court-house like a man in a dream, while those left behind looked in each other's eyes, some half scared and others more than half amused.
Outside, Thompson stopped just between two of the great pillars. He rammed his hands deep in his pockets and gazed vacantly over the court-green and up the road.
"What will he do with you! Remove you!" asked two or three friends who had slipped out of the door behind him and now stood about him.
"He 'll put me in jail--and remove me."
*****
"No matter if he says black 's white and white 's black, don't you open your mouth or you 'll get it. It 's much as I can do to keep you out of jail this minute."
"But, Sheriff--! But, Aleck--! Just wait a minute! I don't----"
The next instant he was inside the courthouse and the Sheriff was marching him up the aisle between the upturned faces. He planted him at the bar immediately before the Court, pulling off his hat in such a way as to drag his hair over his face and give him an even more dishevelled appearance than before. Then he moved around to