It looked to me like a case of, if you can’t lick ‘em join ‘em, so I eased my way through the crowd and grabbed Sam by the hand.

“I want you to know I’m a thousand per cent behind you, Sam,” I said. “All these dirty stories going around about you, I know they ain’t true Sam, even if it sounds like they are, so you got my moral support a thousand per cent, and I’m goin’ to be right up on the speaker’s platform with you tonight to prove it!”

He said, “Well, uh,” and cleared his throat awkwardly. He said, “Well, uh, that’s certainly very nice of you, Sheriff. But, uh—uh—”

What he wanted to say was that he didn’t want me within a thousand miles of him, let alone on the same speaker’s platform. But the kind of fella he was, he didn’t know how to say it.

“Well—uh, now—” he tried again. “I surely appreciate your offer, Sheriff, but wouldn’t it be better if, uh—”

I slapped him on the back, cutting him off. I said, by golly, I was going to do it and he didn’t need to worry about takin’ favors from me, because I wasn’t really doin’ him one.

“I figure it’s just the right thing to do,” I said. “You might say it’s something I got to do. So come tonight I’m goin’ to be up there on the platform with—‘oof’.”

Zeke Carlton shoved past me, digging his elbow into my ribs. He dropped an arm around Sam’s shoulders, and jerked his head at me.

“I’ll say it for you, Sam. You don’t want Nick around you, because he’s a sneaky, half -assed, triflin’ no-good excuse for a sheriff, and you’d be hurt just by bein’ seen with him, even if he didn’t stick a knife in your ribs!”

Sam cleared his throat again, looking more uncomfortable than ever. Zeke glared at me, like he wanted to spit in my face.

I said, “Well, now Zeke, that ain’t hardly no way to talk. Here it is Sunday, and we’re still here on the church grounds, and god-dang if you ain’t calling me names and using bad words like ‘half-assed’.”

“Balls!” he sneered. “Who the hell are you to be correctin’ me? Why—”

“I’m the sheriff,” I said, “an’ it’s my job to look out for wrong-doin’ particularly seem’ that the Lord ain’t abused right in His own front yard. So you just better not do it no more, Zeke, or I’ll by-golly march you right down to the lock-up!”

Zeke let out an angry snort; laughed on a shaky note. He looked around at the crowd, trying to swing them to his side. But we’re a real God-fearin’ community, like you probably gathered, and everyone was frowning at him or givin’ him frosty looks.

That made him madder than ever. “Why, God da—, gosh. Damm it, don’t you see what he’s trying to do? He’s trying to get at Sam through me! He knows I’m backing Sam so he wants to make trouble for me!”