Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/54

 "But I don't want the credit for it, Mr. Justice! Damn it all, man, I tell you I don't want the credit for it!"

Hall was sweating. In his excited denial of this honor, as Justice seemed to hold it, the railroad doctor got up, pushed the little table out of the way as if clearing a space to enforce his vehement word by physical demonstration.

"Well, I wouldn't git excited over it, as the Dutchman said when his wife swallered the dollar. I don't know, of my own knowledge and belief, who laid Bud out. I just heard the boys sayin' it was you."

"Burnett knows better—Burnett can tell you I didn't even know the man had been killed till he told me. He said Sandiver made a break to get away."

"It don't make no difference who done it, Bud's dead. He was a bad egg, it's a darn good thing for this county he's out of the way. But it's goin' to aggervate this trouble, it's goin' to bring them Simrall fellers over here like a swarm of hornets. Every man in this town'll have to hang a gun on him now, and be ready to hop up and fight."

"Did you want the scoundrel to kill that old man and get away?" Hall demanded hotly, challenging Jim's manner, which was half complaining, half doleful, as of a man who had been wronged and yet was too generous to come out with open censure.

"No, you done the right thing; you done the thing any man with a grain of sand'd 'a' done," Jim hastened to make it right. "I was aimin' to tell you how it's goin' to be from now on till we settle this question for good at the polls next June. It's goin' to be shootin' and killin' right and left, or I miss my guess, and I tell you right