Shane: Chapters 7–11

They would go by slowly, looking everything over with insolent interest and passing remarks for our benefit.

They were impartial with attentions like that. They would hand them out anywhere along the line an opportunity offered.

Father, while it galled him, could keep it from getting him. The other homesteaders, though, could not help being irritated and showing they felt insulted.

You could sense the contempt building up in town, in people who used to be neutral, not taking sides.

His mouth was a thin line in the bleakness of his face and his eyes were deep and dark.

He would be standing there, one arm on the smooth arch of the horse’s neck, the fingers gently rubbing around the ears, and he would be looking out over our land where the last light of the sun, now out of sight, would be flaring up the far side of the mountains, capping them with a deep glow and leaving a mystic gloaming in the valley.

“You’re a discerning woman, Marian.”
“You’ve been worrying about something else too.”
“You’re a mighty discerning woman, Marian.”

Morgan nodded curtly, not taking his eyes from Shane.

He would burst out of the mêlée and whirl and plunge back, the one man actually pressing the three.

Curly, slow and clumsy, grunting in exasperation, grabbed at Shane to grapple with him and hold down his arms.

He stomped one heavy work shoe, heel edged and with all the strength he could get in quick leverage, on Curly’s near foot.

He hurtled into Morgan with ruthless force, sending that huge man reeling across the room.

His flight was frantic, headlong. He tore through the swinging doors without slowing to push them.

The lithe power in him, so different from father’s sheer strength, was singing in every fiber of him.

Breathing heavily, Morgan stopped, grasping the futility of straight fighting.

Morgan’s face was puffy and red-mottled.

Now that he was still and the fire in him banked and subsided, you saw, and in the seeing remembered, that he had taken bitter punishment.

His shirt collar was dark and sodden. Blood was soaking into it, and this came only in part from the cut on his cheek.

For a man strict about bills and keen for a bargain, Mr. Grafton surprised me.

She was tender as could be, crooning like to herself under her breath the while.

“He knows better,” Shane said, “because he knows it won’t work. If he’s the man I think he is, he’s known that since the first time he sicced Chris on me. I doubt that was his move the other night. That was Morgan’s. Fletcher’ll be watching for some way that has more finesse—and will be more final.”

Lew Johnson was worried and went into Grafton’s to find Will Atkey, who always knew more than anyone else about people apt to be coming along the road because he was constantly picking up information from the talk of men drifting in to the bar.

Which one has the hottest head? Which one’s the easiest to prod into being a fool?

He and Ernie Wright, he told us, had been to the stage office asking for a parcel Ernie was expecting.

Then he said what showed Fletcher had coaxed him to it.

“So-o-o-o,” said Wilson, satisfied now and stretching out the word with ominous softness.

Wilson badgered Ernie into getting himself in a spot where he had to go for his gun. Wilson can claim he shot in self-defense.

“You seem to know a lot about that kind of dirty business,” Ed Howells said, with maybe an edge of malice to his voice.

When he came back to his chair, he walked slowly and he seemed haggard and worn.

He nodded assent and turned to mother, who was hurrying to argue with him.