“Well that’s a question. He ain’t a Sillman and he ain’t nothin’ else—much. It’s a question, I reckon. Nobody on the Crick is beholdin’ to his folks that I knows on.”
Sol Vane swallers hard and begins to chaw again.
“He’s your kid, Sillman,” says Hashknife soft-like.
“I’d like to—” begins Glory, but Sillman stops her.
Then he says to Hashknife:
“Hartley, you ain’t got no business hornin’ in like this. Willer Crick can handle its own affairs, and Willer Crick will decide what is to become of the kid.”
“And you’re his gran’paw,” says Hashknife, “gran’paw to a nice little harmless kid like this. And you say that Willer Crick will tend to him. Why—” Hashknife teeters on his toes and hooks his thumb over the belt above his gun—“why, you herd of mangy curs! You pack of gutter pups! Go ahead, you chinless maverick—reach for your gun! No? Then listen to me, you lousy cowards! You, Sillman! I thought you was an inch or two above this carrion, but you ain’t. You’re all alike. You’ve married your own relations until your brains are warped and shrunk so badly that you ain’t above eatin’ your own kind. The cannibal will protect its own blood, but you coyotes won’t.”
Them Willer Crickers never made a false move. Maybe they’d ’a’ nailed us, bein’ about five to one and all armed, but we’d ’a’ sure give the buzzards a feed, and them men knowed we would.
“I wish,” says Hashknife, “I wish I had education enough to tell folks what I think of yuh. There’s a lot of words I don’t know, dang the luck.”
The old man steps down from the doorway and moves in beside Hashknife.