‘And I’m warning you, Buck!’ Lincoln’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘Oh, I know you, I reckon. You’re a real hard-barked Kentucky boy, own brother to the small-pox, weaned on snake juice and grizzly hide, aren’t you? You’ve killed more niggers than the dysentery, and your grandmother can lick any white man in Tennessee. You talk big, step high, and do what you please, and if any “legal beanpole” in a store suit gets in your way you’ll cut him right down to size, won’t you just? He’s not a practical man, is he? But you are, Buck – when you’ve got your gang at your back! Yes, sir, you’re a practical man, all right’
Buck was mouthing at him, red-faced and furious, but Lincoln went on in the same hard voice.
‘So am I, Buck. And more – for the benefit of any shirt-tail chewbacon with a big mouth, I’m a who’s-yar boy from Indiana myself, and I’ve put down better men than you just by spittingteeth at them. If you doubt it, come ahead! You want these people – you’re going to take them?’ He gestured towards Cassy. ‘All right, Buck – you try it. Just – try it.
The rest of the world decided that Abraham Lincoln was a great orator after his speech at Gettysburg. I realized it much earlier, when I heard him laying it over that gun-carrying bearded ruffian who was breathing brimstone at him.
Flash For Freedom!, p.239, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.
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