Git after him, boys!" So into the saddle they went
with a rush, fifteen tried men on fifteen chosen horses, and went down the
street with a roar of hoof-beats. That was the body and muscle of the
sheriff's work going out to avenge him, but the mind of the law remained
behind.
It was old Billy, the clerk. No one paid particular attention to Billy, and
they never had. He was useless on a horse and ridiculous with a gun, and
the only place where he seemed formidable was behind a typewriter. Now he
sat looking, down into the dead face of Pete Glass, trying to grasp the
meaning of it all. From the first he had been with Pete, from the first the
invincibility of the little dusty man had been the chief article of Billy's
creed, and now his dull eyes, bleared with thirty years of clerical labor,
wandered around on the galaxy of dead men who looked down at him from the
wall. He leaned over and took the hand of the sheriff as one would lean to
help up a fallen man, but the fingers were already growing cold, and then
Billy realized for the first time that this was death.
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