“‘Greed!” roared Flip, whose pistol lay on the table. “We’ll do it cross the crick, at daylight.”
“It’s daylight now,” said Sim Ripson, hurriedly, after looking out of his window at the end of the bar.
He was a good storekeeper, was Sim Ripson, and he knew how to mix drinks, but he had an unconquerable aversion to washing blood stains out of the floor.
The two gamblers rushed out of the door, pistols in hand, and the crowd followed, each man talking at the top of his voice, and betting on the chances of the combatants.
Suddenly, above all the noise, they heard a cracked soprano voice singing with some unauthorized flatting and sharping:
“Another six days’ work is done,
Another Sabbath is begun.
Return, my soul, enjoy thy rest,
Improve the day thy God has blessed.”
Redwing stopped, and dropped his head to one side, as if expecting more; Flipp stopped; everybody did. Arkansas Bill, whose good habits had been laid aside late Saturday afternoon, exclaimed: