“Because I can set down to shoot,” Wilkins told him, without any change of expression of tone. “If I was to lick you it would be a lot of work, and most likely we’d bust some furniture.”
“Bah!” Trumbull barked a laugh. “You don’t think you can kill a man and get away with it, do you? You’re a bluff!”
“This here is my house,” replied Wilkins heavily, “and if you was to make a move I didn’t like, and I was to shoot you, it ain’t likely they could prove anything except self-defense. Doris wouldn’t swear her own brother into jail. A man has got an awful strong holt on the law when he’s in his own house.”
Maybe he would shoot. Johnny Trumbull did not like the cloudiness of that large face. He glanced at Doris and saw that she had gone pale; her little fingers were white against the edge of the table. She ought to know her brother better than anybody else.
“You won’t have to shoot me in self-defense,” returned Trumbull, and he began deliberately to fill his pipe.
“Ain’t you going to get out?” asked Wilkins.
“No!” thundered Trumbull suddenly. “Shoot a helpless man if you want to!”
There was dead silence for a while after that; broken at last by a faint gasp of relief from Doris that nothing had happened. Wilkins sat motionless and expressionless, and Trumbull puffed calmly at his pipe.
“The first time you make a motion toward me or my sister that gives me an excuse,” announced Wilkins at length, “I’ll blow a hole in you that a dog could jump through!”
“The first time I catch you without that gun you’ll have to fight,” Trumbull replied. “I don’t care whether it tires you all out or not.”