They both stood in the doorway, fascinated and awe-stricken.
"Hear it pound! This is the worst I've seen anywhur. You're licked, Gentle Annie."
"Yes," said Wallie with a white face. "This finishes me."
"You'll have to kiss your wheat good-bye. It'll be beat into the ground too hard ever to straighten." He laid an arm about Wallie's shoulder and there was a sympathy in his voice few had heard there:
"You've put up a good fight, old pardner, and even if you are counted out, it's no shame to you. You've done good fer a Scissor-bill, Gentle Annie."
Wallie clenched his hands and shook himself free of Pinkey's arm while his tense voice rang out above the clatter and crash of the storm:
"I'm not licked! I _won't_ be licked! _I'm going to stick, somehow!_ And what's more," he turned to Pinkey fiercely, "if you don't stop calling me 'Gentle Annie,' I'll knock your block off!"
Pinkey looked at him with his pale, humorous eyes and beamed approvingly.
The Prouty barber lathering the face of a customer, after the manner of a man whitewashing a chicken coop, paused on an upward stroke to listen. Then he stepped to the door, looked down the street, and nodded in confirmation. After which he returned, laid down his brush, and pinned on a nickel badge, which act transformed him into the town constable.
The patron in the chair, a travelling salesman, watched the pantomime with interest.
"One moment, please." The barber-officer excused himself and stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, where he awaited the approach of a pair on horseback who were making the welkin ring with a time-honoured ballad of the country:
I'm a howler from the prairies of the West. If you want to die with terror, look at me. I'm chain-lightnin'----
As they came abreast the constable held out his hand and the pair automatically laid six-shooters in it and went on without stopping in their song:
--if I ain't, may I be blessed. I'm a snorter of the boundless, lone prairee.
Other citizens than the barber recognized the voices, and frowned or smiled as happened, among whom was Mr. Tucker repairing a sofa in the rear of his "Second-Hand Store."
Returning, the constable laid the six-shooters on the shelf among the shaving mugs and removed his badge.