Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/58

 spankin' here in Pawnee Bend, you're so innercent and cute. Hand me over that gun!"

Lanky made the demand sternly, reaching out his hand to receive the gun. Bill didn't know what to do, or how far they would go with it, that being a situation entirely new to him. He knew it was a joke, but he wasn't able to figure a way to get out of it and keep in their good graces. As he had told MacKinnon, he hated a fuss.

Bill stood with downcast eyes, his upward limit of vision being the cowboy's extended arm and the lowswinging holster on his thigh. Bill's resentment was rising, not alone against these foolish men and their stupid joke, but against what seemed to be a foreordained conspiracy against him among all men.

Why was he always picked as the victim? What was there about him that gave people the deceptive belief that here comes a soft-shelled weakling whom we can have our fun with, expend our combative desires upon, rob and roll and mistreat generally, with perfect safety to ourselves? Why was it so? Why was he to be called on always to defend his person from indignities, when so many despicable people walked through life in serenity?

It seemed to Bill Dunham, standing there those few seconds reviewing the past humiliations and impositions of his life, in those moments of pause before his decision, that his prearranged program had him cast for a fighting man, when there was nothing in the world so precious to him as peace.

Many a good man has been turned into a bad one