“If that is true,” Nona Parke’s voice cut like a knife across his sentence, “you are a pack of dirty cowards—and you are too late.”
She thrust the weeping girl away from her and faced them, with her head up, her gray eyes wide with scorn.
“Is it true?” she demanded. “What do you want here, all of you with rifles, as if you were going to war?”
“We want him,” Buck Walters pointed at Rock. “And we will take him, dead or alive. He is a thief.”
“That,” said Nona without a moment’s hesitation, “is a lie.”
Duffy, Walters, and Charlie Shaw had stepped up on the porch. They stood within eight feet of Rock, apparently secure in the belief that under thirty pairs of watchful eyes he could neither escape nor menace them.
“You two girls better go inside,” Duffy said. “Leave us men handle this thing. They ain’t no room for argument, I guess.”
“Guess again, Elmer,” Rock said quietly. “There is lots of room for argument. In the first place, I am not Doc Martin. I can prove that by you, Duffy, and by Buck Walters himself.”
“What the hell are you givin’ us?” Walters growled.