him, some galloping thoughts racing through his head, he covered it all by a calm exterior.
Kellogg jerked his head in a grim order for Dunham to come out. He began to back into the street, holding Dunham with his taunting, mocking, insolent eyes, unbuttoning his coat as he went.
Dunham reached up with his left hand, removed the cigar from his mouth with slow, certain movement, and with the same even, unhurried motion carried it to his side and dropped it. He straightened from his leaning posture in which his right arm had rested on the counter, and stood as if balancing for a leap, left hand out from his side a little, its bent fingers apart, just as he had dropped the cigar; his right elbow forming an angle as true as if it rested in a square.
He stood that way a moment, life intensified in him to the utmost fiber, endowed with the wary craft that had come down to him from a line of men who had fought Indians for a hundred years. He began to move toward the door, walking on his toes as if he feared the intrusion of the faintest noise might give Kellogg an advantage, or precipitate the fight before he was ready. There was nothing in his world that moment but Kellogg and himself. The rest of his surroundings was out of focus, a blur.
Bill Dunham had one thought as he went out of the door, setting his feet down as softly as if he retreated from the chamber of a child he had walked to sleep: that he must remember the law, and keep within his rights. It was Kellogg's fight; he must make the first break for a gun.
