Gordon Young

“ I knew that Daniel Cornwall had enemies; some of them—one at least—a very powerful man who thought himself more or less helpless so long as Daniel retained possession of a little black steel box, or rather of its contents. ”

“ Moreover, I never bothered the police with complaints. The police and courts everywhere more or less respect the ruling of Western juries to the effect that the man who draws last and shoots first is innocent.
So those two old fellows, wholly unaware that I knew a great deal about the cause of their fears, with a kind of grotesque eagerness, in which both became excited, tried to tell me the history of their haunting terrors. It was a long story and Daniel lied a great deal. ”

“ Even the police, East and West, certainly no friends of mine, were not without a kind of—hum—let me say a kind of gratitude for the way I had come out of corners into which I had occasionally been crowded.
Law-abiding citizens, whom the police feel it their duty to protect and to avenge, do not shoot at people from the rear or from shadows, do not pick quarrels and lay traps. ”