How they were as good as their word and how, when Johnny returned, they
stood aside and let Johnny and the sheriff fight it out. How the sheriff
beat Johnny to the draw, but was wounded in the left arm while Johnny
fired a second shot as he lay dying on the floor of the lean-to. How the
sheriff's wound was dressed by the companions of the dead Johnny, and how
he was safely dismissed with honor, as between brave men, and how
afterwards he hunted those same men down one by one.
It was quite a long story, but the audience followed it with a breathless
interest.
"Yes, sir," concluded the sheriff, as the applause of murmurs fell off.
"And from yarns like that one you wouldn't never figure it that I was the
son of a minister brung up plumb peaceful. Now, would you?"
And again, to the intense joy of Vance, it was Terry who brought the
subject back, and this time the subject of all subjects which Elizabeth
dreaded, and which Vance longed for.
"Tell us how you came to branch out, Sheriff Minter?"
"It was this way," began the sheriff, while Elizabeth cast at Vance a
glance of frantic and weary appeal, to which he responded with a gesture
which indicated that the cause was lost.
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