Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/39

 scowling as he pushed his own forward to grit his teeth not so very far from Bill's ear.

"I don't see how I can help you on that," Bill told him, watching him as closely as he would have watched a rattlesnake coiled in the road.

"You got to rag, you one-eared granger!" the cowboy announced, suddenly as if the thought had just taken him. "Rag, you one-eared granger, rag!"

Bill had heard stories, a good while back, from men who had been in Santa Fé and Raton, of greenhorns getting their toes shot off for refusing to dance before a crowd. But that was a number belonging so far back on the program Bill had concluded it was not being done any longer. At least he had not read about it being pulled on anybody in Dodge in the past four or five years.

There the fool fellow stood, gun lifted, wrist limbered, ready to pull off the time-worn trick; and there stood Bill facing him, feet too close together for comfort, hoping the bartender would interfere to save his floor. But Mallon made no move; nobody raised a hand.

The cowboy waited a few seconds, as long as his dignity would permit, Bill feeling a sensation creeping down him from neck to legs as if he had melted and was turning cold, but determined to die before he'd crack a heel for the edification of that crowd. His prompter jerked his gun on the hinge of his limber wrist, in a movement like a player makes when throwing a knife in a game of mumble peg.

The bullet came very close to Bill's left toe, and