So, all and all, I began to look pretty good to folks. It was a case of nothing looking better than something, because all anyone had to do was listen to me and look at me a while to know that I wasn’t against anything very much, except having my pay stopped, and that I wouldn’t have enough gumption to do anything even if I did want to. I’d just let things go along like they always had, because there wasn’t much point in trying to change ‘em. And when the votes were counted, I was still sheriff.

I’m not saying that there weren’t a lot of folks who really liked me. There ‘was’ a lot of ‘em, folks that I’d been kids with and who knew me as a nice friendly fella who was always ready to do a favor if it didn’t put him out of pocket too much or offend someone else. But it seemed to me that I didn’t have as many friends as I’d used to. Even the very folks I’d favored, them most of all, it seemed like, weren’t as friendly as they had been. They seemed to kind of hold it against me because I ‘hadn’t’ cracked down on ‘em. And I didn’t know quite what to do about it, since I’d never really got the habit of doing anything, and I didn’t know how I was going to get myself elected again. But I knew I was going to have to do ‘something’. I was going to have to do something or think of something entirely different from the stuff I’d come up with in the past. Or I’d be out of a job when fall came.

I rounded the corner from the depot, and turned into Main Street. Then I started to duck back off of it, because there was a heck of a racket a couple of blocks down the street, a lot of fellas jamming the sidewalk. It looked like a fight of some kind was going on, which meant that I’d better get out of sight before I had to arrest someone besides maybe getting hurt myself.

I started to dart back around the corner; then, somehow, I caught myself, and I went on down the street to where the ruckus was.

It wasn’t really a fight, like I’d been afraid of. Just Tom Hauck beating a colored fella named Uncle John. It seemed like Tom had been coming out of the hardware store with a box of shotgun shells when Uncle John had bumped into him or vice versa. Anyway, he’d dropped the shells and some of ‘em had spilled off into the street mud. Which was why he’d grabbed hold of the colored fella and started beating him.

I pushed myself between them, and told Tom to stop.

I felt kind of funny about it, because Tom was the husband of Rose Hauck, the gal who was so generous with me. I guess a fella always feels kind of funny in a situation like that;guilty, I mean,.like he ought to give the fella any break that he can. Aside from that, Tom was a lot bigger than I was—mean fellas are always bigger than I am—and he was about half-loaded with booze.