The shaft of light shifted, and out of the darkness, illuminated with ghastly brilliance, they saw thrust a hand holding a revolver. This hand seemed a thing apart, self-existent, with no corporeal attachment, and it appeared and disappeared like an apparition as the thumb-pressure wavered on the switch. One moment they were staring at the hand and revolver, the next moment at impenetrable darkness, and the next moment again at the hand and revolver.
“Now, I guess you'll come,” the constable gloated.
“You got another guess comin',” Billy began.
But at that moment the light went out. They heard a quick movement on the officer's part and the thud of the light-stick on the ground. Both Billy and the constable fumbled for it, but Billy found it and flashed it on the other. They saw a gray-bearded man clad in streaming oilskins. He was an old man, and reminded Saxon of the sort she had been used to see in Grand Army processions on Decoration Day.
“Give me that stick,” he bullied.
Billy sneered a refusal.
“Then I'll put a hole through you, by criminy.”
He leveled the revolver directly at Billy, whose thumb on the switch did not waver, and they could see the gleaming bullet-tips in the chambers of the cylinder.
“Why, you whiskery old skunk, you ain't got the grit to shoot sour apples,” was Billy's answer. “I know your kind—brave as lions when it comes to pullin' miserable, broken-spirited bindle stiffs, but as leery as a yellow dog when you face a man. Pull that trigger! Why, you pusillanimous piece of dirt, you'd run with your tail between your legs if I said boo!”
Suiting action to the word, Billy let out an explosive “BOO!” and Saxon giggled involuntarily at the startle it caused in the constable.