Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/177

 the crowd so strongly they drew aside out of it, making a little channel the width of the door. Dr. Hall stood before them, the pistol in one hand, the big dark bottle in the other.

Nance, the station agent, was down at the farther end of this little lane. He hopped nimbly aside into the dark. Part of Hall's perplexities cleared away. He stood in the door, Sandiver remaining where he had planted himself after leaving the chair.

"Gentlemen, I'm not going to trust any more committees in this town to take my prisoners to jail," Dr. Hall announced in friendly, calm voice. He stuck the pistol in his waistband as he spoke, nobody but Sandiver knowing it was as harmless as the whiskered citizen's spike.

"We'll see he gets there, all right, Doc," somebody said, lightly assuring, the way one speaks to a child when playing to deceive it. The irrepressible humor of Damascus was beginning to spout.

"Pass him out here, and don't do so damn much stallin' around!" another demanded.

Dr. Hall turned to the basin, poured generously from the big bottle upon the sponge; picked it up, and turned to the door again. They fell away with a scramble before him, his movement was at once so determined, confident and threatening. He faced them, the dripping sponge in his hand.

"Gentlemen, I turned a man over to a crowd of you not so very long ago," he said, "a man by the name of Bud Sandiver. When that man left my hands he wasn't half as badly hurt as this one is, but five or six men swore he dropped dead on the way to the jail door, and he didn't have over fifty feet to go. You thought it was