I gets off my bronc, limbers up my legs and looks around. The sign on the store proclaims it to be the Sundown Mercantile Company.
“Sundown City,” says Hashknife. “She’s a cow-town, pure and simple.”
“Pure and simple ——!” says I.
“Why argue?” he says, sarcastic-like. “All day long you finds fault. You’d kick if yuh was goin’ to get hung, Sleepy Stevens. Ain’t nothin’ right in your eyes?”
“Pure and simple ——”
I reckon the argument had gone far enough, but that wasn’t no way to bust it up. A bullet splinters the top of the tie-rack, another one busts the glass in the store-window and another one scorches a lousy dog which was asleep in the shade of the saloon porch, and it went ki-yi-ing off down the street. Three punchers comes gallivantin’ out of the saloon-door, sifting lead back inside, while several more oozes out the back door, hunting for a place to get behind. I never seen so much lead wasted and nobody saturated. Somebody heezes more bullets in our direction, and I stands there with my mouth wide open until Hashknife kicks my feet from under me, drops a rifle in my lap and then does a dive across the sidewalk.
“Yuh might do a little somethin’ for yourself,” says he, as I sits there digging dirt out of my eyes from the last bullet. Then he yells:
“Sleepy, you —— fool, get under cover! Ain’tcha got no sense?”
I crawls under the sidewalk and sprawls beside him.
“Yuh ain’t got the sense that —— gave geese in Ireland,” says he. “Watcha settin’ over there for? You ain’t got no brains a-tall.”