Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/81

 "No, I want to go to the wagon," she insisted. "I'll hold to you and hobble along. Shad Brassfield, our teamster, he's down there—he'll know what to do. Fe-e-e-u-u-u! my leg!

"Dang it for lettin' you slip on that ballast!" said Bill.

She appeared to start off pretty well for a cripple, but Dunham didn't notice that. He was watching MacKinnon's door, the light of it still unbroken by the marshal's exit. He noted as well the general desertion of that part of town, taking it as an indication of public indifference of the event set for nine o'clock. He did not know that it was the kind of a show the gun-wise people who lived in and frequented Pawnee Bend avoided. They were quite content to view results.

Dunham construed this lack of interest as a sort of public expression of contempt for him, perhaps magnifying his own importance in that town a little. It had gone around that Kellogg had given him an hour to get out of town, and people had taken it for granted that he had gone. Even Kellogg appeared to believe he had dusted it, or else MacKinnon, in friendly desire to avert the meeting, had not told him the truth.

So Dunham thought, heading off down the road past the side of MacKinnon's hotel with Zora Moore on his arm, a rather lightly tripping crippled person, too, he began to realize. He wanted to take a squint at his watch, but the moon remained persistently covered. It didn't matter; it wasn't over yet. He'd leave her at the wagon and throw a surprise into Kellogg by facing him at the hotel.