"I said it," he reminded softly, when men had quit shuffling their feet and the room was very still.
"I don't reckon yuh know what yuh said," the Pilgrim retorted, laughing uneasily and shifting his gaze a bit. "What they been doping yuh with, Bill? There ain't any quarrel between you and me no more." His tone was abominably, condescendingly tolerant, and his look was the look which a mastiff turns wearily upon a hysterical toy-terrier yapping foolishly at his knees. For the Pilgrim had changed much in the past year and more during which men had respected him because he was not considered quite safe to trifle with. According to the reputation they gave him, he had killed a man who had tried to kill him, and he could therefore afford to be pacific upon occasion.
Billy stared at him while he drew a long breath; a breath which seemed to press back a tangible weight of hatred and utter contempt for the Pilgrim; a breath while it seemed that he must kill him there and stamp out the very semblance of humanity from his mocking face.
"Yuh don't know of any quarrel between you and me? Yuh say yuh don't?" Billy's voice trembled a little, because of the murder-lust that gripped him. "Well, pretty soon, I'll start in and tell yuh all about it--maybe. Right now, I'm going t' give a new one--one that yuh can easy name and do what yuh damn' please about." Whereupon he did as he had done once before when the offender had been a sheepherder. He stepped quickly to one side of the Pilgrim, emptied a glass down inside his collar, struck him sharply across his grinning mouth, and stepped back--back until there were eight or ten feet between them.
"That's the only way my whisky can go down your neck!" he said.
Men gasped and moved hastily out of range, never doubting what would happen next. Billy himself knew--or thought he knew--and his hand was on his gun, ready to pull it and shoot; hungry--waiting for an excuse to fire.
The Pilgrim had given a bellow that was no word at all, and whirled to come at Billy; met his eyes, wavered and hesitated, his gun in his hand and half-raised to fire.
Billy, bent on giving the Pilgrim a fair chance, waited another second; waited and saw fear creep into the bold eyes of the Pilgrim; waited and saw the inward cringing of the man. It was like striking a dog and waiting for the spring at your throat promised by his snarling defiance, and then seeing the fire go from his eyes as he grovels, cringingly confessing you his master, himself a cur.