"My old man didn't see it that way. When I got to cutting up he'd try to smother it, and stop me by saying: 'Don't!' Which don't accomplish nothing with young gents that got any spirit. Not a damn thing--asking your pardon, ladies! Well, sirs, he kept me in harness, you might say, and pulling dead straight down the road and working hard and faithful. But all the time I'd been saving up steam, and swelling and swelling and getting pretty near ready to bust. "Well, sirs, pretty soon--we was living in Garrison City them days, when Garrison wasn't near the town that it is now--along comes word that Jack Hollis is around. A lot of you younger folks ain't never heard nothing about him. But in his day Jack Hollis was as bad as they was made. They was nothing that Jack wouldn't turn to real handy, from shootin' up a town to sticking up a train or a stage. And he done it all just about as well. He was one of them universal experts. He could blow a safe as neat as you'd ask. And if it come to a gun fight, he was greased lightning with a flying start. That was Jack Hollis." The sheriff paused to draw breath. "Perhaps," said Elizabeth Cornish, white about the lips, "we had better go into the living room to hear the rest of the sheriff's story?" It was not a very skillful diversion, but Elizabeth had reached the point of utter desperation. And on the way into the living room unquestionably she would be able to divert Terry to something else. Vance held his breath. And it was Terry who signed his own doom. "We're very comfortable here, Aunt Elizabeth. Let's not go in till the sheriff has finished his story." The sheriff rewarded him with a flash of gratitude, and Vance settled back in his chair. The end could not, now, be far away. CHAPTER 12 "I was saying," proceeded the sheriff, "that they scared their babies in these here parts with the name of Jack Hollis. Which they sure done. Well, sir, he was bad." "Not all bad, surely," put in Vance. "I've heard a good many stories about the generosity of--" He was anxious to put in the name of Black Jack, since the sheriff was sticking so close to "Jack Hollis," which was a name that Terry had not yet heard for his dead father. But before he could get out the name, the sheriff, angry at the interruption, resumed the smooth current of his tale with a side flash at Vance. "Not all bad, you say? Generous? Sure he was generous. Them that live outside the law has got to be generous to keep a gang around 'em. Not that Hollis ever played with a gang much, but he had hangers-on all over the mountains and gents that he had done good turns for and hadn't gone off and talked about it. But that was just common sense. He knew he'd need friends that he could trust if he ever got in trouble. If he was wounded, they had to be someplace where he could rest up. Ain't that so? Well, sir, that's what the goodness of Jack Hollis amounted to. No, sir, he was bad. Plumb bad and all bad!