accusing groan met this statement.
"I tell you I didn't say anything of the kind," roared Webb, his bull voice overtopping them all.
"Well, what did you say, then?" challenged Calhoun Bennett.
"I said we tried to use her as a grindstone," said Webb, "but it didn't work."
"Weak case, boys; weak case," said Sherwood.
The little group, their eyes wide, their nostrils distended, waited accusingly for Webb to proceed. After an interval, the sheriff, staring critically at the lighted end of his cigar, went on in a drawling voice:
"Yes, we, couldn't get a hole through her to hang her axle on. We blunted all our drills. Every Sunday we'd try a new scheme. Finally we laid her flat under a tree and rigged a lightnin' rod down to the centre of her. No use. She tore that lightning all to pieces."
He looked up at them with a limpid, innocent eye, to catch John
Sherwood gazing at him accusingly.
"John Webb," said he "you forget that I came out here in, '48. On your honour, do you expect me to believe that yarn?"
"Well," said Webb, gazing again at his cigar end, "no—really I don't. The fact is," he went on with a perfectly solemn air of confidence, "the fact is, I've lived out here so long and told so many damn lies that now without some help I don't know when to believe myself."
"Do we get that drink?" insisted Calhoun Bennett.
"Oh, Lord, yes, you always get a drink."
"Well, come on and get it then—you, too, of course, Mr. Sherwood."
The gambler arose, and began leisurely to fold his paper and to put away his spectacles.
"I see you got Mex Ryan off, Cal," he observed. "You either had extraordinary luck, or you're a mighty fine lawyer. Looked like a clear case to me. He just naturally went in and beat Rucker half to death in his own store. How did you do it?"
"I assure yo' it was no sinecure," laughed the tall, dark youth. "I earned my fee."
"Yes," grumbled Webb, "but he got six months—and I got to take care of him. Cluttering up my jail with dirty beasts like Mex Ryan! Could just as easy have turned him loose!"
"That would have been a little too much!" smiled Bennett. "It was takin' some risk to let him off as easy as we did. It isn't so long since the Vigilantes."
"Oh, hell, we can handle that sort of trash now," snorted Webb.
"Who was backing Mex, anyway?" asked Rowlee curiously.
"Better ask who had it in for Rucker," suggested the fourth member of the group, a man who had not heretofore spoken. This was Dick Blatchford, a round-faced, rather corpulent, rather silent though jovial-looking individual, with a calculating and humorous eye. He was magnificently apparelled, but rather untidy.
"Well, I do ask it," said Rowlee.
But to this he got no response.
"Come on, ain't you got that valuable paper folded up yet?" rumbled
Webb to Sherwood.
They all turned down the high-pillared veranda, toward the bar, talking idly and facetiously of last night's wine and this morning's head. A door opened at their very elbow, and in it a woman appeared.
II
She was a slender woman, of medium height, with a small, well-poised head, on which the hair lay smooth and glossy. Her age was somewhere between thirty and thirty-five years. A stranger would have been first of all impressed by the imperious carriage of her head and shoulders, the repose of her attitude. Become a friend or a longer acquaintance, he would have noticed more particularly her wide low brow, her steady gray eyes and her grave but humorous lips. But inevitably he would have gone back at last to her more general impression. Ben Sansome, the only man in town who did nothing, made society and dress a profession and the judgment of women a religion, had long since summed her up: "She carries her head charmingly."
This poised, wise serenity of carriage was well set off by the costume of the early fifties—a low collar, above which her neck rose like a flower stem; flowing sleeves; full skirts with many silken petticoats that whispered and rustled; low sandalled shoes, their ties crossed and recrossed around white slender ankles. A cameo locket, hung on a heavy gold chain, rose and fell with her breast; a cameo brooch pinned together the folds of her bodice; massive and wide bracelets of gold clasped her wrists and vastly set off her rounded, slender forearms.
She stood quite motionless in the doorway, nodding with a little smile in response to the men's sweeping salutes.
"You will excuse me gentlemen, I am sure," said Sherwood formally, and instantly turned aside.
The woman in the doorway thereupon preceded him down a narrow, bare, unlighted hallway, opened another door, and entered a room. Sherwood followed, closing the door after him.
"Want something, Patsy?" he inquired.
The room was obviously one of the best of the Bella Union. That is to say, it was fairly large, the morning sun streamed in through its two windows, and it contained a small iron stove. In all other respects it differed quite from any other hotel room in the San Francisco of that time. A heavy carpet covered the floor, the upholstery was of leather or tapestry, wall paper adorned the walls, a large table supported a bronze lamp and numerous books and papers, a canary, in a brass cage, hung in the sunshine of one of the windows, flitted from perch to perch, occasionally uttering a few liquid notes under its breath.
"Just a little change, Jack, if you have some with you," said the woman. Her speaking voice was rich and low.
Sherwood thrust a forefinger into his waistcoat pocket, and produced one of the hexagonal slugs of gold current at that time.
"Oh, not so much!" she protested.
"All I've got. What are you up to to-day, Patsy?"
"I thought of going down to Yet Lee's—unless there is something better to do."
"Doesn't sound inspiring. Did you go to that fair or bazaar thing yesterday?"
She smiled with her lips, but her eyes darkened.
"Yes, I went. It was not altogether enjoyable. I doubt if I'll try that sort of thing again."
Sherwood's eye suddenly became cold and dangerous.
"If they didn't treat you right—"
She smiled, genuinely this time, at his sudden truculence.
"They didn't mob me," she rejoined equably, "and, anyway, I suppose it is to be expected."
"It's that cat of Morrell's," he surmised.
"Oh,
