But painful as was their humiliation as they stood in silence, gazing with saddened faces at the door through which the Girl had gone out, their cup of bitterness was not yet full.  The next moment the Sheriff, his lips curled inscrutably, said mockingly: 

“Well, boys, the right man has come at last.  Take your medicine, gentlemen.”

His words cut Sonora to the quick, and it was with difficulty that he braced himself to hear the worst.

“Who’s the man?” he inquired gruffly.

The Sheriff’s eyes fastened themselves upon him; at length with deadly coldness he drawled out: 

“Johnson’s the man.”

All the colour went out of Sonora’s face, while his lips ejaculated: 

“Gol A’mighty!”

“You lie!” blazed Trinidad in the next breath, and made a quick movement towards the Sheriff.

But Rance was not to be denied.  Seeing Nick advancing towards them he called upon him to verify his words; but that individual merely looked first at one and then the other and did not answer, which silence infuriated Sonora.

“Why, you tol’ me . . .?” he said with an angry look in his eye.

“Tol’ you, Sonora?  Why he tol’ me the same thing,” protested Trinidad with an earnestness that, at any other time, would have sent his listeners into fits of laughter.

This was too much for Sonora; he flew into a paroxysm of rage.

“Well, for a first-class liar . . .!”

“You bet!” corroborated Trinidad, relapsing, despite his anger, into his pet phrase.

For some minutes the dejected suitors continued in this strain, now arguing and then condoling with one another, the boys, meanwhile, proceeding to clear the school-room of the benches, casks and planks, lifting or rolling them back into place as if they were made of paper.

All of a sudden Sonora’s face cleared perceptibly.  Turning swiftly to the sheriff, who sat tilted back in a chair before the fire, he said with unexpected cheerfulness of voice: 

“Why, Johnson’s dead.  He got away, an’—­”

“Yes, he got away,” remarked Rance, dully, shaking the ashes from his cigar, which answer, together with the peculiar look which Sonora saw on the other’s face, made him at once suspicious that something was being held back from them which they had a right to know.  It came about, therefore, that, with a hasty movement towards the Sheriff, his eyes glaring, his voice husky, Sonora demanded: 

“Jack Rance, I call on you as Sheriff for Johnson!  He was in your county.”

Instantly the cry was taken up by the others, but it was Trinidad who, shaking his fist in Rance’s face, supplemented: 

“You hustle up an’ run a bridle through your p’int o’ teeth or your boom for re-election ’s over, you lily-fingered gambler!”

But the Sheriff did not move a muscle, though after a moment he answered coolly: 

“Oh, I don’t know as I give a damn . . .!” Which reply, to say the least, was somewhat disconcerting to the men who had surrounded him and were eyeing him threateningly.