The Mountain DivideSpearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
General
The Mountain Divide
Spearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
Western stories
Up Front Street, through the various groups of men still discussing
the events of the evening, Scott, followed only by Bill Dancing, made
his way, nodding and patiently or pleasantly grinning as the greetings
or ridicule of the crowd were thrown at him. He went to the rooms of
the sheriff only to find them locked, and made his way down town again
looking through the resorts in a search for Brush.
After much trouble, he found him at a gaming-table, inclined to appear
sceptical as to the story that Levake had killed an unoffending
brakeman. When Scott repeated Stanley's demand that Levake be
arrested, the sheriff slammed down his cards and declared he would not
be made a cat's-paw for any man; that the brakeman, according to
accounts reaching him, had been killed in a fair fight and he would
hear no more of it. Then, as if his game had been unreasonably
interfered with and his peace of mind injured, he rose from the table
to relieve his annoyance.
Meantime Bill Dancing slipped into his vacated seat, picked up the
discarded hand of cards and announced it was too good to throw away.
"Will anybody," Bill asked dryly, "play the hand with me while Brush
is arresting Levake?" The laugh of Brush's own companions at this
proposal stung him as an imputation of his cowardice, and he made an
additional display of rage to counteract the unconcealed contempt in
which his cronies held him.
He turned on Scott angrily. "Go arrest the man yourself, if you want
him," he thundered.
Scott snapped up the suggestion. He pointed a lean finger at the
shifty peace officer. "Deputize me to do it, if you dare, Brush!" he
softly exclaimed, fixing his brown eyes on the flushed face of the
coward.
Not a man in the room moved or spoke. Brush saw himself trapped.
Scott's finger called for an answer and the sheriff found no escape.
"I knew you hadn't the nerve to give me a deputy's badge," laughed
Scott, to spur the man's lagging courage; "you are too afraid of
Levake."
The taunt had its effect. Brush raved about his courage, and Bill
Dancing, slapping him ferociously on the back, convinced him that he
really was a brave man. Taken volubly in tow by the two railroad
emissaries, who were far from being as simple as they seemed, Brush
returned to his lodgings at the jail to issue the coveted paper
authorizing Scott to serve any warrants in his stead.
Before the ink was dry on the certificate the word had gone down Front
Street, and the town knew that Levake's arrest was in prospect. As
Dancing and Scott left the jail and walked down to the station, they
were surrounded by a curious throng of men watching for further
developments in the approaching crisis of the struggle with outlawry
in the railroad town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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