"Now, you roosters, you see I've two revolvers, and I'm a dead shot with either hand. I'm good for 12 of you at the first jump and my partner kin 'tend to the rest. Now, if I see a man so much as make a motion toward the side o' the road I'll drop him. Give the command. Sergeant Klegg."
MRS. G.: We talked it over. I mean the group I belong to, you know. On Wednesday. Because all of us had heard something about it, you see, and so we brought it up and discussed it. And it's absolutely true."Go for 'em, Deacon; I'm with you. We kin lick both of 'em," shouted Shorty, who had been awakened by the noise of the dispute, and came tottering out, trying to raise a stick of wood for a club.The wheels of the Sheriff's buggy rattled over the graveled road, and a minute later there was a knock at the outside door. Si opened it and saw there a young man with a smoothly-shaven face, a shock of rumpled hair and wearing a silk hat, a black frockcoat and seedy vest and pantaloons. Si at once recognized him as a lawyer of the place.
ONE:"In this time there is the work, and the work makes us always more like the masters. We live in the buildings like masters. We work with machines like masters. We do what the masters say. Soon we are all the same.
ONE:"Very well," she went on. "The Confederation is acting just as it has always been obvious they would act: with idealism, stupidity and a gross lack of what is called common sense." She paused for comment: there was none. "Disregarding the fact that they need our shipments, and need them badly, they have begun to turn against us. Against what they are pleased to call slavery."
TWO:Cadnan understood some of the speech, and ignored the rest: it wasn't important. Only one thing was important: "She can not die."That fact sent a wave of relief through him, a wave so strong that for a second he could barely stand.
TWO:CHARGE:Drunkenness on duty.A shot rang out from the post on which he had stationed Jim Humphreys. He was on his feet in an instant, with his gun in hand, and in the next Si was beside him.
THREE:"But the less you bother your heads with Captains and Curnels and Generals the better you'll git along. The feller that's right over youin arm's length o' you all the timeis the feller that you've got to look out for sharply. I'm him. Now I want you to form in two ranks quicker'n scat, and 'tend to business. I'm goin' to drill you. Gid Mackall, take your place there. Harry Joslyn, stand behind him."
THREE:Cadnan, without brutality, brushed her aside. "I do not know. The masters know. Wait and they tell you." He did not consider whether the statement were true, or false, or perhaps (under these new circumstances) entirely meaningless: it was a noise he had to make in order to get Hortat out of his way. She stood against the corridor wall as he passed, watching him.
