"It do look uncommon extensive, don't it?" said Brizz.
All this while, Lem had grown more and more uneasy, and his first resentment was rapidly amounting to real anger under these unkind criticisms, and the jeering faces that now encircled the bench.
"I'll swear it do," reiterated Brizz. "Still, I'm a regular old rip when it comes to mowin'—come here young feller," he urged with a business-like flourish of the clippers. "Let's start early so's we'll get done for supper."
He laid a hand on Lem's shoulder. Whereupon, Lem rose up, his jaws set, his muscles tense, while a steady light shot his gray eyes.
"Ef yo'-all tech me with them things," he said, low and steady, "I'll take em away from yo' an,'—an' hit yo' with 'em."
The men were so enthralled with these festive proceedings that they failed to notice Last Time sneak up from behind, where he was taking it all in. When Lem stood up and showed fight, a chorus of low derisive laughter rippled around the circle which was instantly disrupted as Last Time burst ruthlessly into their midst, throwing one of the convicts completely off his feet.
"What you fixin' to do, Brizz?" he growled.
"Who—me?—I'm here to cut this man's hair," wherefore, the barber applied the clippers so unexpectedly and so roughly to the head of the man who had been seated next to Lem, that the unlucky fellow protested loudly. Last Time turned upon Blinky. He scowled at him for a second, his lips curled away fiercely, emphasizing an under-shot jaw.
"You old clothes thief," he hissed, "you rod-ridin', cheap, ugly leather-snatcher—you forgot the hammerin' I handed you last month, eh?" Last Time shot a quick look across the corridor at the guard's back. Then he reached out and took a clutching handful of Blinky's shirt-front, and thrust his right fist close to Blinky's nose. Blinky, who was a head taller, now hung away, white and dumb.
"You let this new man alone—do you get me? You let him alone. The next time I get at you I'll take your jaw off—I'll send you across the lot for many a day—get away—get," he snarled, with a violent, contemptuous push.