“He ain’t shooting up nobody,” he argued from the platform, where he was doing “inside work” on his dining-room while the storm lasted.  “He never does cut loose with his gun when he’s drunk.  If I arrested him, I’d have to take him clear up to Garbin—­and I ain’t got time.  And it wouldn’t be nothin’ but a charge uh disturbin’ the peace, when I got him there.  Y’oughta have a jail in Sunset, like I’ve been telling yuh right along.  Can’t expect a man to stop his work just to take a man to jail—­not for anything less than murder, anyhow.”

Some member of the deputation hinted a doubt of his courage, and Tom flushed.

“I ain’t scared of him,” he snorted indignantly.  “I should say not!  I’ll go over and make him behave—­as a man and a citizen.  But I ain’t going to arrest him as an officer, when there ain’t no place to put him.”  Tom reluctantly threw down his hammer, grumbling because they would not wait till it was too dark to drive nails, but must cut short his working day, and went over to the hotel to quell Ford.

Ingress by way of the front door was obviously impracticable; the marshal ducked around the corner just in time to avoid a painful meeting with a billiard ball.  Mother McGrew had piled two tables against the dining-room door and braced them with the mop, and stubbornly refused to let Tom touch the barricade either as man or officer of the law.

“Well, if I can’t get in, I can’t do nothing,” stated Tom, with philosophic calm.

“He’s tearing up the whole place, and he musta found all them extra billiard balls Mike had under the bar, and is throwin’ ’em away,” wailed Mrs. McGrew, “and he’s drinkin’ and not payin’.  The damage that man is doin’ it would take a year’s profits to make up.  You gotta do something, Tom Aldershot—­you that calls yourself a marshal, swore to pertect the citizens uh Sunset!  No, sir—­I ain’t a-goin’ to open this door, neither.  I’m tryin’ to save the dishes, if you want to know.  I ain’t goin’ to let my cups and plates foller the glasses in there.  A town full uh men—­and you stand back and let one crazy—­”

Tom had heard Mrs. McGrew voice her opinion of the male population of Sunset on certain previous occasions.  He left her at that point, and went back to the group across the street.

At length Sandy, whose imagination had been developed somewhat beyond the elementary stage by his reading of romantic fiction, suggested luring Ford into the liquor room by the simple method of pretending an assault upon him by way of the storeroom window, which could be barred from without by heavy planks.  Secure in his belief in Ford’s friendship for him, Sandy even volunteered to slam the door shut upon Ford and lock it with the padlock which guarded the room from robbery.  Tom took a chew of tobacco, decided that the ruse might work, and donated the planks for the window.