Curiosity no doubt was as dominant in the minds of people who lived in Drumwell, and those who frequented its places of business and diversion, as elsewhere. Only discretion was somewhat farther to the front. Discretion cleared the street when the shooting began, as if a wind had picked all the two-legged creatures up and whisked them away like leaves.
Every door caught as many as could scramble inside before the proprietor slammed and locked it, after the custom of that town, and other places of its kind in the shooting zone of the cow country frontier. It was not the belief that a locked pine door would turn bullets; experience had proved the reverse often enough to Drumwell merchants. But a quickly shut door was outward proof of the owner's neutrality, and kept his standing unimpaired in the good graces of all belligerents.
Those who did not make it into open doors cut for spaces between the buildings which would lead to sufficient shelter behind them, from where they could leg it to back doors if they felt safer under a roof when bullets were humming around, as most people did. It was equal to a trick with cards the way that short street cleared of everything alive but horses. Some of these pranced and pulled back, frightened by that wave of warning which quickened even the senses of the dumb.
