Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/244

 little note of meanness in her voice, a little squint of meanness in her eyes.

If she expected to hurt him that way, or urge him by such nagging to abandon the calm attitude of indifference toward the quarrel which he held to be contemptuous and of small account, it was proof that she had not plumbed him any deeper than the rind. He grinned, untouched by her innuendo, bending the toes of his polished shoes as if he tried the flexibility of their soles for a race he was about to enter, lifting his heels slightly from the floor, legs spread a little, his whole attitude benignant, patronizing, tolerant.

"As long as I'm not in debt to you for it, I don't give a damn," he replied, so unexpectedly, so surprisingly out of his character, as to make her start, much as if somebody had sneaked up behind her and shot off a gun.

Whatever Elizabeth had in mind to say, and it was certain from her bridling look that she had plenty, was cut off by the arrival in the square of the young men who had ridden out on the Simrall road a little while before. They had gone a little sheepishly, like men who expected to be sold, making a joke of it, with light words and humorous quips; they had come back with the humor wrung out of them, feeling more like going on than stopping, if there had been any place to go.

Simrall was coming, every able-bodied man in the place, it seemed, approaching deliberately, the riders holding back to keep with the wagons. They were not more than three miles away.

Major Cottrell had been laying his plan of defense before the men gathered around him at the court house steps. The fervor that had seemed to animate this crowd