Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/38

 der, opened a way through those who pressed up to see the show like a breast-stroke swimmer making a mighty pull for the finish, and started for the door.

The cowboy wasn't going to have it that way. He hopped nimbly in front of Bill, slung out his gun and ordered him to go back and throw it down his neck.

Bill stopped at sight of the bare gun, the heat that had been over him so intense that it made his vision watery giving away to a sudden coldness, out of which everything stood as sharply and separately as if light had been brought to him in a dark place. He hadn't come to Pawnee Bend to submit to insult and public scorn; the days of his oppression were gone with the days of his poverty; gone with his sense of cowed inferiority among the boys from whose fathers his dad used to buy corn-meal and bacon on credit to carry them through the winter, the family to work the debt out next summer like horses. He hadn't come to Pawnee Bend to let anybody straddle his chest and wallow his hair in the mud.

"This ain't my day to drink, pardner," he said, his voice calm and steady, even though it was a little way down in his throat. "I guess you've heard of the horse any fool can lead to water. I'm not that kind of a horse."

"I don't like your shoes!" the cowboy said, with such expression of loathing his soul seemed to be in revolt at the sight.

"I reckon I could change 'em if it would save your feelin's," Bill said good-naturedly.

"I don't like your damn face!" the cowboy sneered,