bout.

"Will Whittaker has disappeared. His father thinks he's been killed.
He left the ranch a week ago to come to town and nobody's seen him
since. I'm goin' after Sheriff Daniels."

"Gee-ee! Moses!" Ellhorn exclaimed, as his eyes, full of amazed
inquiry, sought Tuttle's. But amazed inquiry of like sort was all that
flashed back at him from Tuttle's mild blue orbs, and after an
instant's pause he went on: "Whew! won't hell's horns be a-tootin'
this afternoon! Confound this arm! Say, Tom, you-all go and tell
Emerson about it and I'll skate around and find out what's goin' on."

Tuttle hesitated. "You won't go to drinkin'?"

"Not this time, Tommy! There'll be excitement enough here in another
two hours without me making any a-purpose, and don't you forget it!
Things are a-goin' to be too serious for me to soak any of my wits in
whisky just now!"

"No, Nick," said Tuttle, looking at the other's helpless arm, "I
reckon I better go along with you-all, if there's likely to be any
trouble."

It was as Ellhorn predicted. Before night the town was buzzing with
excitement. Wild rumors flew from tongue to tongue, and with every
flight took new shape. Shops and offices were deserted and men
gathered in knots on the sidewalk, discussing the quarrel between the
cattlemen and Emerson Mead's possible connection with young
Whittaker's disappearance, and predicting many and varied tragic
results. All those who congregated on one side of the street scouted
the idea that the young man had been murdered, indignantly denied the
possibility of Emerson Mead's connection with his disappearance,
insisted that it was all a trick of the Republicans to throw discredit
on the Democrats, and declared that Will Whittaker would show up again
in a few days just as much alive as anybody. Nearly all the men who
had offices or stores in the long adobe building were Democrats, and
the saloon it contained, called the Palmleaf, was the place where the
men of that party congregated when any unusual excitement arose. On
the other side of the street were the offices of the Fillmore Cattle
Company, the White Horse saloon, and Delarue's store, all gathering
places for the Republican clans. There it was declared that
undoubtedly Emerson Mead had killed young Whittaker, and had come into
town to kill the father, too, that other outrages against the
Republicans would probably follow, and that the thing ought to be
stopped at once. But each party kept to its