It was quite a long story, but the audience followed it with a breathless interest.
“Yes, sir,” concluded the sheriff, as the applause of murmurs fell off. “And from yarns like that one you wouldn't never figure it that I was the son of a minister brung up plumb peaceful. Now, would you?”
And again, to the intense joy of Vance, it was Terry who brought the subject back, and this time the subject of all subjects which Elizabeth dreaded, and which Vance longed for.
“Tell us how you came to branch out, Sheriff Minter?”
“It was this way,” began the sheriff, while Elizabeth cast at Vance a glance of frantic and weary appeal, to which he responded with a gesture which indicated that the cause was lost.
“I was brung up mighty proper. I had a most amazing lot of prayers at the tip of my tongue when I wasn't no more'n knee-high to a grasshopper. But when a man has got a fire in him, they ain't no use trying to smother it. You either got to put water on it or else let it burn itself out.
“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!
“But he had them qualities that a young gent with an imagination is apt to cotton to. He was free with his money. He dressed like a dandy. He'd gamble with hundreds, and then give back half of his winnings if he'd broke the gent that run the bank. Them was the sort of things that Jack Hollis would do. And I had my head full of him. Well, about the time that he come to the neighborhood, I sneaked out of the house one night and went off to a dance with a girl that I was sweet on. And when I come back, I found Dad waiting up for me ready to skin me alive. He tried to give me a clubbing. I kicked the stick out of his hands and swore that I'd leave and never come back. Which I never done, living up to my word proper.
“But when I found myself outside in the night, I says to myself: 'Where shall I go now?'
“And then, being sort of sick at the world, and hating Dad particular, I decided to go out and join Jack Hollis. I was going to go bad. Mostly to cut up Dad, I reckon, and not because I wanted to particular.
“It wasn't hard to find Jack Hollis. Not for a kid my age that was sure not to be no officer of the law. Besides, they didn't go out single and hunt for Hollis. They went in gangs of a half a dozen at a time, or more if they could get 'em. And even then they mostly got cleaned up when they cornered Hollis. Yes, sir, he made life sad for the sheriffs in them parts that he favored most.
“I found Jack toasting bacon over a fire. He had two gents with him, and they brung me in, finding me sneaking around like a fool kid instead of walking right into camp. Jack sized me up a minute. He was a fine-looking boy, was Hollis. He gimme a look out of them fine black eyes of his which I won't never forget. Aye, a handsome scoundrel, that Hollis!”
Elizabeth Cornish sank back in her chair and covered her eyes with her hands for a moment. To the others it seemed that she was merely rubbing weary eyes. But her brother knew perfectly that she was near to fainting.
He looked at Terry and saw that the boy was following the tale with sparkling eyes.
“I like what you say about this Hollis, sheriff,” he ventured softly.
“Do you? Well, so did I like what I seen of him that night, for all I knew that he was a no-good, man-killing, heartless sort. I told him right off that I wanted to join him. I even up and give him an exhibition of shooting.
“What do you think he says to me? 'You go home to your ma, young man!'
“That's what he said.
“'I ain't a baby,' says I to Jack Hollis. 'I'm a grown man. I'm ready to fight your way.'
“'Any fool can fight,' says Jack Hollis. 'But a gent with any sense don't have to fight. You can lay to that, son!'
“'Don't call me son,' says I. 'I'm older than you was when you started out.'