Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/287

 fightin' man," said Banjo, "but it don't look to me like it takes much nerve to stand off a mile and do your fightin'."

"Huh!" Angus Valorous snorted, turning from the door where he had been listening.

"There'll be bloodshed if he does come back," Myron said, pursuing his thought as calmly and evenly as if there had been no interruption. "The boys here in town they'll stand behind Laylander for all that's in 'em. They'll never see them cattle taken away from him, by law or personal individuals."

"Do you think so, Mr. Cowgill?" Louise inquired, leaning in her appealing way to look at him, just as she had leaned, on that same bench, to look into Banjo Gibson's face when she came trying to sell the Thousand Ways.

"There'll be bloodshed," Myron repeated, rolling the word out as if he enjoyed the strange feeling of it on his tongue.

"I'm cert'nly glad Bill's out on his run," said Goosie.

"Nobody'd hurt the big stiff," said Pap.

"Hurt him!" Goosie scorned the thought. "He'd clean up the whole gang in about two minutes."

"Which gang? What side'd he be on?" Banjo asked, a laugh in his words, a teasing sort of flattery about him that made his way with the girls an easy one.

"It'd be the right one, whichever one it was," Goosie retorted, rather haughtily.

Goosie left them, carrying the thought of Bill, his valor and his might, into the parlor, where she played