and bluish eyes--a square-built sort of man."

"Hell!" There was savage rage and menace in the exclamation.

"You kin put that up!" he added, absorbed once more in thought. I paid
no attention to this; I was not going to put the revolver away at his
bidding. Presently he asked in his ordinary voice:

"What age man might this Johnson be?"

"About forty or forty-five, I should think."

"And right off Sam Johnson swore you in and sent you to bring me into
Kiota--an' him Sheriff?"

"Yes," I replied impatiently, "that's so."

"Great God!" he exclaimed, bringing his clenched right hand heavily down
on the bar. "Here, Zeke!" turning to the man asleep in the corner, and
again he shouted "Zeke!" Then, with a rapid change of manner, and
speaking irritably, he said to me:

"Put that thing up, I say."

The bar-keeper now spoke too: "I guess when Tom sez you kin put it up,
you kin. You hain't got no use fur it."

The changes of Williams' tone from wonder to wrath and then to quick
resolution showed me that the doubt in him had been laid, and that I had
but little to do with the decision at which he had arrived, whatever