Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

After a time, he glanced at her and saw that she was no longer crying. She was furious. “After all I
did for you,” she said. “Why, you’d be long dead from Dick if I hadn’t helped you, and you’d never
have gotten out of Deadwood if I hadn’t talked Wyatt into helping you, and you’d have lost your bones
in Laramie if I hadn’t helped you see a plan . . .”
“That’s true, Emily.”
“And this is the thanks I get! You cast me aside like an old rag.”
She was really angry. Yet somehow he realized it was he who was being cast aside. “Emily . . .”
“I said don’t touch me!”
It was a relief when the sheriff came up to them, tipped his hat politely to Emily, and said, “You
William Johnson of Philadelphia?”
“I am.”
“You the one staying at the Inter-Ocean?”
“I am.”
“You have some identification of who you are?”
“Of course.”
“That’s fine,” the sheriff said, taking out his gun. “You’re under arrest. For the murder of William
Johnson.”
“But I am William Johnson.”
“I can’t see how. William Johnson is dead. So whoever you are, you’re surely not him, are you?”
Handcuffs were snapped on his wrists. He looked at her. “Emily, tell him.”
Emily turned on her heel and walked away without a word.
“Emily!”
“Let’s go, mister,” the sheriff said, and pushed Johnson toward the jail.
It took a while for the details to come out. His first day in Cheyenne, Johnson had cabled his father in
Philadelphia, asking him to send $500. His father had immediately cabled the sheriff’s office to
report that someone in Cheyenne was impersonating his dead son.
Everything Johnson produced—his Yale class ring, some crumpled correspondence, a newspaper
clipping from the Deadwood Black Hills Weekly Pioneer—was taken as proof that he had robbed a
dead man and probably killed him as well.
“This fellow Johnson’s a college man from back East,” the sheriff said, squinting judiciously at
Johnson. “Now that couldn’t be you, could it.”
“But it is,” Johnson insisted.
“He’s rich, too.”
“I am.”
The sheriff laughed. “That’s a good one,” he said. “You’re a rich college man from back East, and
I’m Santa Claus.”
“Ask the girl. Ask Emily.”
“Oh, I did,” the sheriff said. “She said she’s real disappointed in you, you gave her a big story
about yourself and now she sees you for what you are. She’s living it up in your hotel room and
selling off those crates of whatever it is you brought with you to town.”
“What?”
“She’s no friend of yours, mister,” the sheriff said.
“She can’t sell those crates!”