Read "The Hair-Trigger Kid" by Max Brand online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
But the other three cow-punchers did not move to join the two. Two against twenty! Aye, or even five against twenty, considering who the twenty were, seemed sickening odds. Besides, these were not gunmen or professional fighters. They had been hired to ride range, not to shoot it out with such as the Dixon crowd. They milled about a little, uneasily, until one of them said: "I got a wife and two kids that live on what I make. I reckon that I ain't afraid to be ashamed:"
The other two said nothing, but they seemed willing to allow the other's speech to stand as a lead for them.