It was saying: "Does anyone else want to argue with me?"
It was immediately apparent no one did.
II
Oliver Meek tried to explain it carefully, but it was hard when people were so insistent. Hard, too, to collect his thoughts so early in the day.
He sat on the edge of the bed, white hair tousled, his night shirt wrinkled, his bony legs sticking out beneath it.
"But I'm not a gun fighter," he declared. "I'm just on a holiday. I never shot at a man before in all my life. I can't imagine what came over me."
The Rev. Harold Brown brushed his argument aside.
"Don't you see, sir," he insisted, "what you can do for us? These hoodlums will respect you. You can clean up the town for us. Blacky Hoffman and his mob run the place. They make decent government and decent living impossible. They levy protection tribute on every businessman, they rob and cheat the miners and prospectors who come here, they maintain vice conditions...."
"All you have to do," said Andrew Smith brightly, "is run Blacky and his gang out of town."