Sheriff O'Malley might be called one of
the old school of rail-roosting, stick-whittling thinkers. He took his
time, and he did not commit himself too impulsively to any cause. But he
could act with surprising suddenness, and that made him always an
uncertain factor, so that lawbreakers feared him as they feared
nightmares.
The sheriff, then, stood around with his hands in his pockets and his
feet planted squarely under him, squeezing a generous quid of gum
between his teeth and very slightly teetering on heels and toes, while
the coroner made a cursory examination and observed, since it was coming
gray daylight, how the lamp lay shattered just where it had fallen with
Estan. He asked, in bad Spanish, a few questions of the grief-worn
senora, who answered him dully as she had answered Starr. She had heard
the call, yes.
"You know Elfigo Apodaca?" the sheriff asked suddenly, and watched how
the eyes of the senora went questioningly, uneasily, to Luis; watched how
she hesitated before she admitted that she knew him.
"You know his voice?"
But the senora closed her thin lips and shook her head, and in a minute
she laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes also, and would
talk no more.
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