The feller licks his lips but don’t speak. His face looks kinda funny—like he was scared to breathe. Hashknife walks up to him, slow, but this feller don’t move. The rest of the crowd seems hypnotized, but I wasn’t taking no chances. I sets the butt of my .45 against my hip and waits for the break to come.
Hashknife takes this feller’s gun out of its holster and tries to make him take it in his hand, but all this feller does is look like a dog that has been caught doing wrong. Hashknife takes the feller’s belt off, takes him by the shoulder and turns him around.
“Go home,” says Hashknife kinda hoarse-like. “Go home and be glad you’re alive.” I never seen anything like it. That feller walked away, kinda slouching, and Hashknife turned back to face the bunch.
It was Hashknife’s face and eyes that froze that bad hombre. He was hypnotized, but the minute Hashknife turned his back this feller came to. He swung sideways, grabbed his vest and flashed another gun.
I was looking for just that. He was about fifty feet from me, but I took a chance and shot twice.
Man, I was just in time. His bullet cut the dirt at Hashknife’s feet. He looks down at his pistol and then kinda tosses it away from him, like he was all through with it, and then turned as though he was going away—but he didn’t. I glances at the bunch and then at Hashknife, who was facing them with a gun in his hand.
“Hashknife,” says I, “you do take the worst chances. These Willer Crick rattlers has more than one set of fangs. Little more and that Alaska trip would ’a’ been all off.”
“You’re the little snake-hunter, Sleepy,” he grins. “Much obliged.”
Then he faces the bunch and they’re sure one uneasy crowd. Me downin’ that feller don’t mean nothin’ to them—much. Hashknife glances from face to face, and finally looks straight at Sillman.
“Eph Sillman was your son, wasn’t he?”