"Publicly, I ain't takin' no side.
Privately, I'm feelin' different. Knowed your dad. Taggart's bad
medicine for this section. Different with you."
"How different?"
"Straight up. Anybody that lives around Betty Clayton's got to be."
Calumet looked at him with a crooked smile. "I reckon," he said, "that
you don't know any more about women than I do. So-long," he added. He
went into the "Chance" saloon, leaving the sheriff looking after him
with a queer smile.
Ten minutes later when Calumet came out of the saloon the sheriff was
nowhere in sight.
Calumet went over to where his wagon stood and, concealed behind it,
took a six-shooter from under his shirt at the waistband and placed it
carefully in a sling under the right side of his vest. Then he removed
the cartridges from the weapon in the holster at his hip, smiling
mirthlessly as he replaced it in the holster and made his way up the
street.
With apparent carelessness, though keeping an alert eye about him, he
went the rounds of the saloons. Before he had visited half of them
there was an air of suppressed excitement in the manner of Lazette's
citizens, and knowledge of his errand went before him. In the saloons
that he entered men made way for him, looking at him with interest as
he peered with impersonal intentness at them, or, standing in doorways,
they watched him in silence as he departed, and then fell to talking in
whispers.
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