Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/359

 the most tremendous race that Cottonwood ever had seen.

And all the time there hung by the barber's side, under his elbow, near the grasp of his true right hand, his .32 caliber pistol in its patent-leather case.

Three razors lay on the little shelf beneath the mirror in Ollie Noggle's shop, their blades bent backward like the heads of serpents lifted to strike. Smith came up the two steps which raised from the sidewalk to the shop threshold with the back of the seersucker coat still grasped in his defiling hand, at the moment that Noggle, purple, popeyed, panting, whirled round and faced him, a command like a cough in his dry throat.

"Don't y'u come in—don't y'u come in!" he panted.

But Smith was already in, and Noggle backed before him to a corner. There, with his thin back to the wall, his own floor beneath his feet, his chair on one hand, his hot water tank on the other, and no possibility of escape through the door, his soul began to enlarge with the desperate determination to fight.

Old Zeb Smith stood before him, red spines of beard on his dirty face, his red flannel shirt open on his hairy chest, crouching from the knees, his hands fixed to spring and tear.