Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/41

 fellow was coming out of it. They upended him, where he scowled bloodily at his captors, and tied his hands with the blue silk handkerchief he wore about his neck. Hall turned away from him at that point, his interest in him being concluded. He found the patriarch huddled at the bottom of the steps still breathing, although he had got a bullet through the lung.

Jim Justice had come out of his retreat, money untouched, hearty life illuminating his face again. He held the door open for them to carry the wounded defender of the town under the shelter of his questionably hospitable roof. Somebody told Hall the wounded man was Major Bill Cottrell, county recorder and treasurer. They stretched the old fellow on a bed, and some one went off on the jump to summon Old Doc Ross.

Hall returned to the hotel office, thought of supper dispersed by his adventure among the bullets in the square. Several men were there, talking with considerable excitement; others were collected on the hotel porch, where Jim Justice's chair stood like an abdicated throne. Hall went outside, wondering what had been the motive in the dash of the three shooters, and the reason for their animosity toward Major Bill Cottrell. He noted that the men in the office stopped talking when he appeared, some of them grinning in an unmistakably friendly way, but exchanging glances and grins between themselves which had another meaning, unaccountable to him.

While standing outside the door, noting the sudden animation of the town which this foray had awakened, Hall was approached by a man who offered his hand with a familiar grin, introducing himself as Burnett. He was a man of medium height, about Hall's age, that is to say