He had a system of government peculiarly his own;
and no one possessed the heart or temerity to upset it, no matter what
may have been the political inducements. It would have been like trying
to improve the laws of nature to put a new man in his place. He had
become a fixture that only dissolution could remove. Be it said,
however, that dissolution did not have its common and accepted meaning
when applied to Anderson Crow. For instance, in discoursing upon the
obnoxious habits of the town's most dissolute rake--Alf
Reesling--Anderson had more than once ventured the opinion that "he was
carrying his dissolution entirely too far."
And had not Anderson Crow risen to more than local distinction? Had not
his fame gone abroad throughout the land? Not only was he the Marshal of
Tinkletown at a salary of $200 a year, but he was president of the
County Horse-thief Detectives' Association and also a life-long delegate
to the State Convention of the Sons of the Revolution. Along that line,
let it be added, every parent in Tinkletown bemoaned the birth of a
daughter, because that simple circumstance of origin robbed the
society's roster of a new name.
Anderson Crow, at the age of forty-nine, had a proud official record
behind him and a guaranteed future ahead. Doubtless it was of this that
he was thinking, as he leaned pensively against the town hitching-rack
and gingerly chewed the blade of wire-grass which dangled even below the
chin whiskers that had been with him for twenty years.
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