"Jim Halliday isn't sorry you did it. He's as proud as a boy with his first pants over the haul he made yesterday. I hear he's going to be measured for a brand-new, tailor-made cartridge belt and six-shooter as a memento of the occasion." "He'd better hurry up, then, before the occasion turns a back somersault on him. I reckon what he needs most is a new hat that will be about six sizes too big for him a week from now. Jim Halliday's all right as long as he keeps to his own side of the street, but he'd better not come over here or he'll be filled so full of bullets that he won't know himself from a dice box. Say, Judge, what's become of that John Chiny's pigtail they say I cut off?" "I suppose it's in the hands of the district attorney and will be brought in as part of the evidence when your case is tried." "Harry Gillam's got it, has he? Well, I want it myself. It's mine, and I want it as a reminder not to mix my drinks. What had I better do about this business, Judge?" "There's only one thing you can do, Nick--plead guilty and throw yourself on the mercy of the court, and trust to your confounded Irish luck to get you off easy." Nick Ellhorn sent a telegram to Thomson Tuttle to return as quickly as possible and then attended to the shipment of Emerson Mead's cattle. When he appeared on Main street again in the afternoon he found the town dividing itself into two hostile camps. The Palmleaf and the White Horse saloons were, respectively, the headquarters of the two factions, and men were dropping their work and leaving their shops and offices to join the excited crowds that filled the two saloons and gathered in groups on the sidewalks. On the west side of Main street the general temper was pleased, exultant, and inclined to jeer at the other side whenever a Republican met a Democrat. On the east side, anger and the determination to get even, shone in men's eyes and sounded in their talk. In the afternoon news came that the territorial district court had decided in favor of the Democrats a controversy over the sheriff's office that had been going on ever since the election the previous autumn, when on the face of the returns the Republican candidate, John Daniels, had been declared elected. The Democrats had cried "fraud," and carried the case into the courts, where it had ever since been crawling slowly along, while Daniels held the office. The election had been so hotly contested that each side had counted more votes than had been registered. But each had felt so confident that it could cover up its own misdeeds and hide behind its execration of those of its enemy that neither had had any doubt about the outcome.