II
I’ve always thought I’d like to marry a home body,” remarked Trumbull, giving a hitch to his belt. “And I don’t mean you, Wilkins.”
What followed was a little startling. Orla Wilkins rose from his chair with a quickness surprising in a man who looked so clumsy. He took down the shotgun that Trumbull had observed and heard about and sat down again with the barrels of the gun resting across his knees in the general direction of Trumbull. The silent menace which that old muzzle-loader had seemed to give off had not been imaginary.
“Doris don’t want to get married,” said Wilkins grimly. “Not to-night, nor any time.”
Trumbull looked at the black muzzles, the big thumb of Wilkins as it pulled back the hammers, and up into the man’s eyes. They were flat and impenetrable, dulled by much eating. They might mean business, and they might not. It is an uncomfortable feeling to have a double-barreled shotgun, said to be loaded with buckshot, pointed at one’s middle.
“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” said Trumbull, with a slight growl in his voice. “Just what for are you pointing that shooting iron at me?”
“Because I can set down to shoot,” Wilkins told him, without any change of expression of tone. “If I was to lick you it would be a lot of work, and most likely we’d bust some furniture.”
“Bah!” Trumbull barked a laugh. “You don’t think you can kill a man and get away with it, do you? You’re a bluff!”
“This here is my house,” replied Wilkins heavily, “and if you was to make a move I didn’t like, and I was to shoot you, it ain’t likely they could prove anything except self-defense. Doris wouldn’t swear her own brother into jail. A man has got an awful strong holt on the law when he’s in his own house.”
Maybe he would shoot. Johnny Trumbull did not like the cloudiness of that large face. He glanced at Doris and saw that she had gone pale; her little fingers were white against the edge of the table. She ought to know her brother better than anybody else.
“You won’t have to shoot me in self-defense,” returned Trumbull, and he began deliberately to fill his pipe.
“Ain’t you going to get out?” asked Wilkins.
“No!” thundered Trumbull suddenly. “Shoot a helpless man if you want to!”
There was dead silence for a while after that; broken at last by a faint gasp of relief from Doris that nothing had happened. Wilkins sat motionless and expressionless, and Trumbull puffed calmly at his pipe.
“The first time you make a motion toward me or my sister that gives me an excuse,” announced Wilkins at length, “I’ll blow a hole in you that a dog could jump through!”
“The first time I catch you without that gun you’ll have to fight,” Trumbull replied. “I don’t care whether it tires you all out or not.”
“Don’t have any trouble with him, Johnny!” exclaimed Doris. “Last year two husky fellows got between him and his gun, and he half killed them before he threw them out!”
“I’ll take a chance if he’ll put up the gun,” returned Trumbull.
Wilkins grunted what might have been intended for a laugh of scorn; he did not take the trouble to make answer to that offer. Trumbull smoked and watched the shotgun and wondered just what he was going to do next. He might have been allowed to come again if he had not brought on the crisis to-night. Now he knew that he would have a great deal of difficulty getting into the Wilkins’ home, once he had gone out. How long could he sit here? And what good would it do him if he sat here forever?