"What made you bring Tuckleton back?" she asked pouring fresh water over the b.u.t.ter.

"I met him coming away from here, and I didn't like the way he looked.

I thought maybe--" He let it go at that.

"He was here for a while," said Hazel, bringing her bowl to the table and beginning again to knead the yellow ma.s.s of b.u.t.ter. "I don't like that man."

Billy was at the table instantly. "Look here, Hazel----"

"Look here, Billy," she mimicked, lifting calm black eyes to his face.

"Don't you go fussbudgeting. I'm quite capable of managing my admirers."

"Admirers! Him!" gasped Wingo.

"He proposed to me. I turned him down."

"Shows your good sense," said Billy, going over to the chair lately vacated by Rafe Tuckleton and sitting down. "But I'd like to know what he's thinking of, the old jake."

Her amused eyes sought his. "Am I such a poor match as that?"

"You know what I mean," he grumbled. "He's got no right proposing to you, no right a-tall. Why, he's old enough to be your father."

"So he is. Do you know, I never thought of that?"

"You're foolin' now," grunted Billy. "Tell you, Hazel, what you want is some young feller with property and all his teeth."

"I don't want anybody," she declared, "young or otherwise. Billy, you're sheriff now--" she continued, changing the subject.

"Not yet," he interrupted. "I don't take office till the first of the year."

She nodded. "I understand. And I want to ask you a question.

It's--it's--you will say it's none of my business, I expect."

"Anything's your business you want to ask questions about. Fly at it."

"Who elected you sheriff, Billy?"

He regarded her in some surprise. "The voters."

"I know, but who manages the voters?"

"You mean the party machine?"

"That's it. Well now, Bill, suppose the machine put a man in office, would he have to do what the machine told him?"

"He would, if he was that kind of a man."

She straightened and gave him a level look. "Billy, they say the gang that runs this county elected you sheriff."

"Who's they--Rafe Tuckleton?"

"Never mind who. What I want to know is do you have to do what that gang tells you to do?"

"I don't have to. Has anybody been saying I'd have to?"

"I--you hear rumors sometimes, Billy. Will you have a free hand, then?"

"So far as my powers extend, I will," he said.

"And you'll use it?"

"I'll use it," curiously.

"Is--is that quite safe?"

"Safe?"

"Safe to antagonize the gang?"

"It may not be safe for the gang."

Hazel raised a great gob of b.u.t.ter in her two hands and squeezed it out slowly between her fingers. "Couldn't you give 'em their way, sort of?

Not in everything. I don't mean that. But just enough to keep 'em good-natured?"

His curiosity changed to blank amazement. "You know what you're asking, I suppose," he said coldly. "I thought you didn't like Rafe Tuckleton?"

"I hate him," was her simple statement. "But I--I'm afraid."

"Afraid? How afraid?"

"Afraid for you."

"Why for me?"

"Because--oh, it's so hard to explain!" she almost wailed. "You misunderstand me so. You think I'm asking favors on their account!"

He believed he detected a sob in her voice. This would never do.

Couldn't have Hazel crying.

"If you'd only explain," he suggested soothingly.

"Well," she said, her hands busy in the b.u.t.ter, "Sally Jane Prescott was over here yesterday, and she said what a darn good thing your election was for Crocker County; how you'd reform it and all that, and how you'd surely put out of business the gang that's running it now. I agreed with her, of course, but I never really realized till--till later what it might mean to you."

She paused. He awaited her pleasure. After a minute's silence she continued.

"You see, Billy, you've been pretty nice to me--uncle and me. And you've come to be sort of a--sort of a friend--kind of and--and I--we don't want to see you hurt," she finished with a rush.

"So that's the reason you think I'd better go easy on the gang."