"By ----!" gibbered Block. "By ----! I'll down you here an' now!"
A tall man with square features tapped the raving sheriff on the shoulder.
"Don't cuss no more before a lady," advised the square-featured man. "An' don't go draggin' at no gun. This ain't Fort Creek County. Yo're in Paradise Bend, an' I just guess yuh won't beef any sport with his hands tied. This goes as it lays."
From the crowd came murmurs of approval. Public opinion was changing front. Mrs. Burr smiled serenely.
"Yo're a real gent, Jim Mace," she said, addressing the square-featured man. "I always knowed you'd protect a defenseless female. Dan Smith," she continued, turning to the marshal, "unlock them handcuffs."
Dan Smith hesitated. Then Block spoiled his own case. He seized Loudon by the shoulders. Loudon promptly kicked him in the skins [Transcriber's note: shins?] and endeavoured to repeat his former assault with the handcuffs. But the two men holding him wrestled him backward.
"Do I get him?" bellowed Block, rabid with pain, for Loudon had kicked him with all his strength. "Do I get him, or are yuh goin' to let a woman tell yuh what to do?"
"Stranger," said Mace, sharply, "you've done chattered enough. In yore own partic'lar hog-waller yuh may be a full-size toad, but up here yo're half o' nothin'. Understand?"
The sheriff looked about him wildly. The Paradise Benders, cold, unfriendly, some openly hostile, stared back. Wrought up though he was, the sheriff had wit enough to perceive that he was treading close to the edge of a volcano. The sheriff subsided.
"Dan," said Mace, "it's come to a show-down. It's the word o' Mis' Burr agin' Block's. There's only one answer. If I was you I'd unlock them handcuffs."
"Yo're right, Jim," agreed the marshal. "I will."
"Gimme my gun," demanded Loudon, when his hands were free.
"In a minute," parried the marshal. "Sheriff, if I was you I'd hit the trail. Yore popularity ain't more'n deuce-high just now."
"I'll go," glowered Block. "But I'll be back. An' when I come I'll have a warrant. I reckon the Sheriff o' Sunset will honour it, even if you won't."
"Bring on yore warrant," retorted the marshal.
The rumble of wheels and thud of hoofs attracted Loudon's attention. Over the heads of the crowd he saw the high sides of a tarpaulin-covered wagon and, sitting on the driver's seat, Captain Benjamin Burr and Scotty Mackenzie.