"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included indiscriminately. "You come here with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned cowards, I say."
In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud Smith, the weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat hurt him.
"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and agin p'raps you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new marshal, but as fer's I've been able to discover there's no one hereabouts hankerin' fer the job." He spat at a crack in the cottonwood floor meditatively, struck true, and seemed mildly pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin' comfortably rapidly as it is, without adding any marshals to the collection. I've known Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private advice is to let him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the river to supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's feelin' as he's feelin' now."
"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky Missourian, who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the first time he isn't looking."
For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically, meditatively.
"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he commented at last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of Pete not lookin'. I ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the feller who tackles that job to say his prayers before he starts. He won't have much time afterwards." With a swifter movement than he had yet made, the speaker slid from his place to the floor, involuntarily cast a glance into the street without. "I ain't perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and I ain't lookin' fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it ain't at all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound to peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better scatter and let it blow over."
"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if you want to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying here as long as I see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."
"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning with his deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well, maybe I've got something to say about that." He came out from behind the counter, faced the lanky figure before him, with deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty stiff-backed boy in the daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the dark—" He halted and his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if you're so anxious for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you take the job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth curled again.
Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went white. Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered dog, and until it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.
"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I might ask you the same question. I ain't no property interest here being destroyed like you have. Why don't you do the trick yourself, dad?"