as
possible and then attended to the shipment of Emerson Mead's cattle.
When he appeared on Main street again in the afternoon he found the
town dividing itself into two hostile camps. The Palmleaf and the
White Horse saloons were, respectively, the headquarters of the two
factions, and men were dropping their work and leaving their shops and
offices to join the excited crowds that filled the two saloons and
gathered in groups on the sidewalks. On the west side of Main street
the general temper was pleased, exultant, and inclined to jeer at the
other side whenever a Republican met a Democrat. On the east side,
anger and the determination to get even, shone in men's eyes and
sounded in their talk.

In the afternoon news came that the territorial district court had
decided in favor of the Democrats a controversy over the sheriff's
office that had been going on ever since the election the previous
autumn, when on the face of the returns the Republican candidate,
John Daniels, had been declared elected. The Democrats had cried
"fraud," and carried the case into the courts, where it had ever since
been crawling slowly along, while Daniels held the office. The
election had been so hotly contested that each side had counted more
votes than had been registered. But each had felt so confident that it
could cover up its own misdeeds and hide behind its execration of
those of its enemy that neither had had any doubt about the outcome.

The news of the decision embittered the quarrel which had been opened
by the arrest of Emerson Mead. There were threats of armed resistance
if the Democrats should attempt to take the office, and both John
Daniels and Joe Davis, who had been the Democratic candidate, went
about heavily armed and attended by armed friends as bodyguards, lest
sudden death at the mouth of a smoking gun should end the dispute.

Toward night the angry talk and the buzzing rumors again centered
about Emerson Mead. It began to be said on the west side of the street
that this whole controversy over the sheriff's office had been worked
up by Mead and his friends in order that they might get his party into
power and, under its protection, harass the cattle company and by
arrests and murders ruin their business and take their stock. As the
talk whizzed and buzzed along the street men grew more and more
reckless and angry in their assertions. They lashed themselves into a
state in which they really believed, for the time bei