Sheriff on the Spot Read Free

shrugged and reholstered his gun. He stooped and got his hands underneath Purdue’s shoulders, dragged him over the threshold and around to the open door of the empty adobe jail.
    He pushed him onto the floor and let him lie there in a limp heap, closed the barred door and padlocked it securely.
    He strode back into the lean-to and kicked Jeth’s gun into a corner, picked up the silver badge and dropped it into a shirt pocket. He turned down the lantern and gave it a quick shake to put it out, then went out and closed the door behind him. He figured it had been just about half an hour since Fred Ralston’s visit as he started toward the Jewel Hotel.

2
    Pat Stevens had to traverse the entire single block of Main Street from the village square to reach the Jewel Hotel at the other end. There weren’t many saddled horses at the hitchracks along the way. Half a dozen of the old-timers had remained loyal to the Gold Eagle Saloon, and their horses were tied outside, but nine-tenths of the other riders in town were congregated at the Jewel.
    A lop-sided yellow moon faced Pat in the east as he strode along the boardwalk past the almost deserted business houses and restaurants. There was already the sharp tang of autumn in the night air in that portion of the southern part of Colorado lying eastward from the Rockies, and Pat drew in great draughts of the clean, cool air in an effort to clear the confusion from his mind as he strode forward.
    The night air didn’t have the usual effect on his mind. He was a simple man, accustomed to simple situations and direct answers. His way of meeting almost any emergency was by straightforward action. He felt, now, that he should have taken Fred Ralston by the throat back there in the lean-to, and choked an explanation out of him. He didn’t quite know why he had restrained himself from doing that.
    Instead, he had let Ralston go away thinking he had talked to Jeth Purdue. By that action, he had invited the continuance of whatever sinister plot Ralston, Deems and Kitty Lane were involved in together.
    Looking at it that way, Pat realized he’d be responsible for anything that had happened or might happen at the Jewel Hotel. He could have stopped it merely by letting Ralston know that Jeth Purdue had not yet assumed office. Instead of that, he’d had to play smart and encourage them to go on with their plan. Pat’s lips twisted in a mirthless smile as he thought it out that way. He was acting, by golly, like a smart city detective instead of a simple western sheriff. Like he wanted something to happen so he could look smart by solving it the way detectives always did in storybooks.
    His pace increased and he became more and more uneasy as he approached closer to the hotel. Twenty-five or thirty saddled horses stood outside, and bright light and music streamed out of the swinging doors and wide plate-glass windows of a large, ground-level room beyond the entrance into the hotel lobby.
    Some of Pat Stevens’ uneasiness evaporated as he shouldered the swinging doors aside and stepped into the saloon. The bar was crowded with laughing men, and half a dozen were grouped around the accordion and tinny piano at the end of the room singing a popular song of the day in loud disharmony.
    Certainly, he thought, nothing very serious had happened here as yet. It gave him a sort of foolish feeling to walk into this scene of gaiety and good fellowship when he had been fearing something else.
    He tipped his Stetson back on his head, hooked his thumbs in his gun-belts and looked around for Fred Ralston or Kitty Lane. Neither of them was in the saloon adjunct to the hotel. Neither did he see either Sam Sloan or one-eyed Ezra about. But as he stood there in the doorway, Joe Deems detached himself from the group at the bar and came toward him with a hearty greeting:
    â€œWell, well. If it’s not Patrick Stevens. Going to loosen up and celebrate now that you’ve got rid