Blue Kingdom by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781428518193
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 2011-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

Sheriff Ban Petersen had two qualities that were invaluable in his profession. In the first place, he knew how to shoot straight. In the second place, he had no sense of humor. In all men who laugh, there is a strain of the easy-going, and those who go easily, gently through life are not always prepared for the worst that they may find in the human nature of others. It was very different with Sheriff Ban Petersen. He was always ready to look to the bottom of any problem of crime, and no motive was too small or too mean to escape the keen eye of the sheriff.

In the same manner, he never thought that any jail was “safe enough.” He trusted in this world nothing but himself, and the result was a career that grew more and more brilliant. But of all that he had done, nothing promised so much for him as the bit of luck that made him the captor of that famous member of a famous band—Oscar Chelton. Good fortune had thrown Chelton into his hands, and the sheriff was determined that nothing on earth should get him away. Having got his man, it only needed that the sheriff should deliver him at the right place. Thereafter, his name would be among the immortals. He could be sheriff forever, and no man would dare to run against him. But that was only true if he kept Chelton from slipping through his hands.

In this case, he did not depend upon himself alone, but he occupied the rear of the smoking car on the train with his prisoner and a hand-picked posse of six men. They were mountain men, these, and they were armed, therefore, not with revolvers but with rifles. For his own part, the sheriff had not much faith in revolvers when they were used by anyone less expert than himself, or a Tankerton, say. Rifles were the safe bet.

“A slow shot but a sure shot is what we want,” he was fond of saying.

But even with the prisoner manacled to his own left arm, and with six hardy riflemen about him, the sheriff was not perfectly at ease, but examined every platform of every station that the local passed through, searching for suspicious faces in the groups that were often standing there.

The curious, from time to time, came back into the smoking car, and the sheriff regarded all these intruders with an intense interest. He would have been very glad to have the smoking car entirely to himself, but, since this could not be, he had to content himself with warning the passengers to keep three seats away from him and his armed escort. Even so, he sometimes unfastened Chelton from his arm, clamped the manacle to the side of the seat, and went forward to assess any man who appeared to him a possible danger.

It was at one of the smallest flag stations that the blind man got on board. Even this fellow the sheriff insisted upon examining, while the posse smiled covertly.

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