Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/51

 to interfere as long as he could stand on his pins. That was not long. At about the time of one round Simpson made an end of it. He drove a straight clincher to Kane's windpipe and put him down for good.

The town marshal was coming in through the latticed half-doors at the end of the bar at that moment. He quickened out of the cautious, curious, peering attitude that was his habit when putting his nose into trouble—for he was an indifferently valiant marshal, to say the best—and ran forward, yanking out his gun.

"You the feller that's been 'personatin' a officer around here?" he demanded, coming up short in front of Simpson, gun wavering around like the wits of a waking man, to sort of include the whole Bar-Heart-Bar party.

The marshal was a little bow-legged cowpuncher-looking man, with a shallow chin and milky blue eyes. Simpson looked at him curiously, as he might have regarded some extraordinary insect flying in out of the night.

"It's about time somebody was doing it," he said.

"I can 'personate all the damn officers that's needed in this damn town!" the marshal blustered, feeling his dignity touched by Simpson's cool and contemptuous rating. "You come along with me, pardner; you're arrested."

"Oh, very well," Simpson agreed, carelessly, giving the "oh" a queer little stress with rising inflection. His way of saying the word, the nonchalant ease of his bearing, the quick lifting of his chin, all contributed to that expression of superiority that got through the marshal's hide like a cocklebur under a saddle blanket.

"I'll take you down, and I'll take you down right, 'per-