Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/310

 look to you to enforce the law to the limit, and they know you'll do it. They stand behind you to a man."

The new county attorney was sitting close by, a young man of ingratiating presence with plenty of barber's perfumed grease on his sleek black hair. He looked a little resentful, and colored up as if he considered a retort that would put the cattlemen right in their presumption that all the executive power of that county lay in the sheriff's hands. He held his tongue, but placed no restraint over his tricky eye, which he winked at Puckett in mocking discount of this innocent aggrandizement of power. The county attorney had a dark and sensuous eye with a slow, fat lid, suggestive of bribery and intrigue.

They gave Bill another cheer, the yipping of the cowboys like a red border on the uproar that spread wide over the townsite of Pawnee Bend. These vociferous young men kept their guns in the leather, having been warned beforehand of the peril voters' heads would be in from the indiscriminate dropping of lead around the landscape.

Yipping was only a sort of half expression for a cowboy of that day, who felt that he had something inside him unsaid unless he had shot off his gun in the climax of his exuberance. They must have something to make their happiness complete, and nothing but a speech from Sheriff Bill Dunham would seem to fill the void.

It seemed to Bill Dunham, standing before his expectant supporters, who appeared to be just one immense, good-natured, half-challenging grin, that his