FROM THE LIFE
to report progress. The roughs of Middleburg had enlisted under the sheriff eagerly. "Say, Ben," Warren asked, "how about that river-front gang that you've been after? You know them when you see them, don't you? … Then why can't you manage things so as to have some of them sworn in as deputies, and grab any one of them that brings in a prisoner, and lock him up, too? Eh?" And later, when Teague reported not only that the Rubes were being gathered in, but that two desperadoes of the river-front gang had been held, on John Doe warrants, with their prisoners, Warren chuckled: "Good work, Teague. Look out, now. Be careful or you'll have both parties storming your jail."
He telephoned to his daughter to say that he would not be home to dinner, and the cheerfulness of her disappointment seemed to betray that she was counting on his absence for an opportunity to see Pritchard. He telephoned again some hours later, when he hoped that Pritchard would be with her, and her voice was shaken with an agitation that he understood. By this tune he had finished his work on his direct primary bills and he locked them away in a private drawer. He even allowed himself a cigar, and sat back smoking it with a misered satisfaction, his eyes on the shining metal of his telephone, waiting.
When Teague reported that the lynching had been averted that thirty-odd of the would-be
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