"We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I've known
persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and
buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat
sandwiches at the railroad station without being shot at or even
roped and drug about by the citizens of the town.
"Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of
training me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was
always looking ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing. What
he wanted to do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work
under the porch and have hens scratching in the yard. The one
main thing in his mind seemed to be the yard.
" `Bud,' he says to me, `by instinct and sentiment I'm a
contractor. I want to be a contractor. That's what I'll be when I
get out of office.'
" `What kind of a contractor?' says I. `It sounds like a kind of
a business to me. You ain't going to haul cement or establish
branches or work on a railroad, are you?'
" `You don't understand,' says Luke. `I'm tired of space and
horizons and territory and distances and things like that. What I
want is reasonable contraction.
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