"You're goin' to get into trouble if you don't shut up," Lambert cautioned.
"Look at him shut his old eyes and stretch his neck! Ain't it the sweetest——"
The man in the chair lifted himself in sudden grimness, sat up from between the barber's massaging hands, which still held their pose like some sort of brace, turned a threatening look into the road. If half his face was sufficient to raise the declaration from Taterleg that the man was uglier than he, all of it surely proclaimed him the homeliest man in the nation. His eyes were red, as from some long carousal, their lids heavy and slow, his neck was long, and inflamed like an old gobbler's when he inflates himself with his impotent rage.
He looked hard at the two men, so sour in his wrath, so comical in his unmatched ugliness, that Lambert could not restrain a most unusual and generous grin. Taterleg bared his head, bowing low, not a smile, not a ripple of a smile, on his face.
"Mister, I take off my hat to you," he said.
"Yes, and I'll take your fool head off the first time I meet you!" the man returned. He let himself back into the barber's waiting hands, a growl deep in him, surly as an old dog that has been roused out of his place in the middle of the road.
"General, I wouldn't hurt you for a purty, I wouldn't change your looks for a dollar bill," said Taterleg.
"Wait till I git out of this chair!" the customer threatened, voice smothered in the barber's hands.
"I guess he's not a dangerous man—lucky for you," said Lambert. He drew Taterleg away; they went on.
The allurements of Glendora were no more dazzling by night than by day. There was not much business in the saloon, there being few visitors in town, no roistering, no sounds of uncurbed gaiety. Formerly there had been a dance-hall in connection with the saloon, but that branch of the business had failed through lack of patronage long ago. The bar stood in the front of the long, cheerless room, a patch of light over and around it, the melancholy furniture of its prosperous days dim in the gloom beyond.