till it was too dark to drive nails, but must cut short his working day,
and went over to the hotel to quell Ford.

Ingress by way of the front door was obviously impracticable; the
marshal ducked around the corner just in time to avoid a painful
meeting with a billiard ball. Mother McGrew had piled two tables against
the dining-room door and braced them with the mop, and stubbornly
refused to let Tom touch the barricade either as man or officer of the
law.

"Well, if I can't get in, I can't do nothing," stated Tom, with
philosophic calm.

"He's tearing up the whole place, and he musta found all them extra
billiard balls Mike had under the bar, and is throwin' 'em away," wailed
Mrs. McGrew, "and he's drinkin' and not payin'. The damage that man is
doin' it would take a year's profits to make up. You gotta do something,
Tom Aldershot--you that calls yourself a marshal, swore to pertect the
citizens uh Sunset! No, sir--I ain't a-goin' to open this door, neither.
I'm tryin' to save the dishes, if you want to know. I ain't goin' to let
my cups and plates foller the glasses in there. A town full uh men--and
you stand back and let one crazy--"

Tom had heard Mrs. McGrew voice her opinion of the male population of
Sunset on certain previous occasions. He left her at that point, and
went back to the group across the street.

At length Sandy, whose imagination had been developed somewhat beyond
the elementary stage by his reading of romantic fiction, suggested
luring Ford into the liquor room by the simple method of pretending an