Shinn flushed dully under his yellow skin. "That or something else. Anyway, every one's agreed that she's gotter go."
"Who's everybody?"
"Meeting, held at my place." Recovering, Hines backed up his partner.
"Yes? First I heard of it. Was Flynn there? Thought not; he ain't much of a mixer. Didn't ask me, did you?"
Hines shuffled uneasily. "'Twas held after a prayer-meeting—you might ha' been there."
"Prayer-meeting, eh? Real Christian, wasn't it, to try and take the bread out of a good girl's mouth?"
"Good?"
At Hines's sneer the trustee rose, hand gripping hard on a heavy crook, eyes one gray glare under ragged brows, temple veins ridged and swollen. "I said 'good.'"
On the frontier a man must usually furnish material proof of courage, but there are exceptions from whom imminent fearlessness distils as an exhalation affecting all who come within its atmosphere. Carter was such a one; Glaves another. Though neither had found it necessary to "make good" physically during the settlement's short history, their ability to do so was never at question. Behind the reserve of one, crabbed sarcasm of the other, danger lay so close to the surface that it was always felt, could never be quite forgotten. Indeed, as regards Glaves, the feeling took form in the opinion often delivered when the qualities of men were under discussion—"If the old man ever gets started, some one will earn a quick funeral." Now Hines quailed, and even the truculent Shinn observed silence.
Glaring on the shrinking Hines, the trustee went on: "Never forgot how Carter bluffed you out on that hay business, did you? An' as you wasn't man enough to get back at him, you 'lowed to take it out of his wife? Well, you ain't going to. You kin go back an' tell them that sent you that so long as Flynn an' me sit on the board she'll teach this school."