“How about the kid?” asks some one.
“He don’t count,” declares another. “He’s the brat of a outlander. Mebbe we better look around fer them two gun-fighters.”
“I’m lookin’ fer ’em, y’betcha,” states the feller who has promised to dance our hair. “All I needs is one look.”
Hashknife steps away from the side of the building and around the corner, with me on his heels. The folks are grouped in kind of a half-circle around the doorway. Glory and the old man are on the steps, with the kid between ’em. On the left side of the doorway is Jim Sillman. Standing at the rear of the half-circle, looking like a turkey gobbler in a flock of turkeys, stands Sol Vane, craning his long, dirty neck and chewing a mouthful of tobacco that stretches his face all out of shape. They turns and looks at us.
“Yuh might use up that one look right now,” says Hashknife.
The bunch kinda sway away from each other. One cinch, there’s never any chance for pot-shooting on Willer Crick. I sees Sol Vane swaller real hard and the bulge is gone from his skinny cheeks. The rest of the bunch just seem to stare at us.
Hashknife has got his eyes on that big-talker, who is just about in the center of the crowd. He’s sort of round-shouldered, fish-eyed and looks like he ain’t been curried for a year. His eyes are flat, if you know what I mean. They’re like the eyes they put in mounted animals. He’s got a big gun hanging on his hip, but he ain’t made a move toward it yet.
“You, I’m talkin’ to,” says Hashknife. “You dirty centipede. Set your eyes on me, feller. I’m the hombre you spoke about. Reach for your gun, you cross between a polecat and buzzard. Make good, can’t yuh?”
I never seen Hashknife like that before. This is once that he ain’t laughing. Maybe he knows that one shot will spill the whole works, and the odds are all against us.