Sundown Slim Part 28

"See you and raise you one, Jack. They'll bluff Sun clean off his hind feet. He won't stick."

"I'll chance it, Bud. And, besides, I need you right where you are."

"I'm sure happy!" exclaimed the irrepressible Bud, grinning.

Corliss laughed, then shook his head. "I'll tell you one thing," he said, facing his foreman. "I've been 'tending too many irons and some of 'em are getting cold. I don't want trouble with any one. I've held off from Loring because--oh--because I had a good reason to say nothing. Billy's out of it again. The coast is clear, and I'm going to give old man Loring the fight of his life."

The whoop which Shoop let out startled the team into a lunging gallop.

"Go it, if you want to!" said Corliss as the buckboard swung around a turn and took the incline toward Antelope. "I'm in a hurry myself."

Nevertheless, he saved the team as they struck the level and held them to a trot. "Wise old head," was Shoop's inward comment. And then aloud: "Say, Jack, I ain't sayin' I'm glad to see you get beat up, but that bing on the head sure got you started right. The boys was commencin' to wonder how long you'd stand it without gettin' your back up. She's up. I smell smoke."

At Antelope, Shoop put up the horses. Later he joined his employer and they had supper at the hotel. Then they strolled out and down the street toward the sheriff's home. When they knocked at the door it was opened by a plump, dark-eyed woman who greeted them heartily.

"Come right in, boys. Jim's tendin' the baby." And she took their hats.

They stepped to the adjoining room where Sheriff Jim sat on the floor, his coat off, while his youngest deputy, clad only in an abbreviated essential garnished with a safety-pin, sat opposite, gravely tearing up the evening paper and handing the pieces to his proud father, who stuffed the pieces in his pants pocket and cheerfully asked for more.

"Election?" queried Shoop.

"And all coming Jim's way," commented Corliss.

The baby paused in his balloting and solemnly surveyed the dusty strangers. Then he pulled a piece of paper from his father's pocket and offered it to Shoop. "Wants me to vote, the little cuss! Well, here goes." And, albeit unfamiliar with plump aborigines at close range, the foreman entered into the spirit of the game and cast his vote for the present inc.u.mbent, deputizing the "yearlin'" to handle the matter. The yearling however, evidently thought it was time for a recount. He gravitated to the perspiring candidate and, standing on his hands and feet,--an att.i.tude which seemingly caused him no inconvenience,--reached in the ballot-box and pulling therefrom a handful of votes he cast them ceiling-ward with a shrill laugh, followed by an unintelligible spluttering as he sat down suddenly and began to pick up the scattered pieces of paper.

"You're elected," announced Shoop.

And the by-play was understood by the three men, yet each maintained his unchanged expression of countenance.

"You see how I'm fixed, boys," said the sheriff. "Got to stick by my const.i.tuent or he'll howl."

"We're in no hurry, Jim. Just drove into town to look around a little."

"I'll take him now," said Mrs. Jim, as she came from the kitchen drying her hands on her ap.r.o.n.

The elector, however, was of a different mind. He greeted his mother with a howl and a series of windmill revolutions of his arms and legs as she caught him up.

"Got mighty free knee-action," remarked Shoop. "Mebby when he's bedded down for the night you can come over to the 'Palace.'"

"I'll be right with you." And the sheriff slipped into his coat. "How you feeling, Jack?"

"Pretty good. That's a great boy of yours."

"Sure got your brand," added Shoop. "Built close to the ground like his dad."

Sheriff Banks accepted these hardy compliments with an embarra.s.sed grin and followed his guests to the doorway.

"Good-night!" called Mrs. Jim from the obscurity of the bedroom.

"Good-night, ma'am!" from Shoop.

"Good-night!" said Corliss. "Take good care of that yearling."

"Well, now, John, as if I wouldn't!"

"Molly would come out," apologized Jim, "only the kid is--is grazin'.

How's the feed holdin' out on the Concho?" which question following in natural sequence was not, however, put accidentally.

"Fair," said Corliss. "We looked for you up that way."

"I was over on the Reservation. I sent Tom up there to see after things," and the sheriff gestured toward the distant Concho. "Sent him up to-night. Let's go over to the office."

Corliss shook his head. "Don't want to see him, just now. Besides, I want to say a few things private."

"All right. There was a buyer from Kansas City dropped in to town to-day. Didn't see him, did you?"

"Cattle?"

"Uhuh."

"No. We just got in."

They turned and walked up the street, nodding to an occasional lounger, laughing and talking easily, yet each knew that their banter was a meandering current leading to something deeper which would be sounded before they separated.

Sheriff Banks suddenly stopped and slapped his thigh. "By Gum! I clean forgot to ask if you had chuck. You see that kid of mine--"

"Sure! But we put the 'Palace' two feeds to the bad," a.s.serted Shoop.

They drifted to the hotel doorway and paused at the counter where each gravely selected a cigar. Then they clumped upstairs to Corliss's room. Jim Banks straddled a chair and faced his friends.

Shoop, excusing himself with humorous politeness, punched the pillows together and lay back on the bed which creaked and rustled beneath his weight. "These here corn-husk mattresses is apologizin'," he said, twisting around and leaning on his elbow.

"Well, Jack," said the smiling sheriff, "shoot the piece."

"Or the justice of the peace--don't matter," murmured Shoop.

Corliss, leaning forward, gazed at the end of his cigar. Then he raised his eyes. "Jim," he said quietly, "I want Sundown."

"So do I."

Corliss smiled. "You've got him, all right. What's your idea?"

"Well, if anybody else besides you asked me, Jack, they'd be wasting time. Sundown is your man. I don't know anything about him except he was a Hobo before he hit the Concho. But I happen to know that he was pretty close to the place where Fadeaway got his, the same day and about the same time. I've listened to all the talk around town and it hasn't all been friendly to you. You can guess that part of it."

"If you want me--" began Corliss.

"No." And the sheriff's gesture of negation spread a film of cigar-ash on the floor. "It's the other man I want."

"Sundown?" asked Shoop, sitting up suddenly.