The gunslinger turned and fired a single shot, dropping the gun to his hip, aware that he might miss with the first shot because of his unfamiliarity with the weapon, but unwilling to injure any of the customers standing frozen behind the would-be hero [....] The shot was a good one, chopping through the man's knife at the base of the blade, leaving him holding nothing but the hilt.
He had progressed through the khef over many years, and had reached the fifth level [... ]He was not seventh or eighth. He was fifth. So he was thirsty, although he had no particular urge to drink. In a vague way, this all pleased him.
He was tired; he had been going between sixteen and sometimes eighteen hours a day between here and the horror that had occurred in Tull, the last village. And he had been afoot the last twelve days; the mule was at the end of its endurance.
Sheb was making a noise, an inarticulate blabbering. He sounded like a man being drowned in a bucket of mud. Spittle flew. He brought the knife down with both hands, and the gunslinger caught his wrists and turned them. The knife went flying. Sheb made a high screeching noise, like a rust screen door. His hands fluttered in marionette movements, both wrists broken.
No answer. He drew back and kicked in the door with one hard shot of his right boot. A small bolt on the inside ripped free. The door banged against a haphazardly planked wall
"Sure." But Kennerly did not turn away, merely stood as if searching for something further to say, grinning his groveling, hate-filled grin, and his eyes flicked up and over the gunslinger's shoulder.
The gunslinger sidestepped and turned at the same time, and the heavy stick of stovewodd that the girl Soobie held swished through the air, grazing his elbow only. She lost hold of it with the force of her swing...
Forms lunged. The trap was sprung, then [...] And in every hand there was a chunk of wood or a knife.
His reaction was automatic, instantaneous, inbred. He whirled on his heels while his hands pulled the guns from their holsters, the hafts heavy and sure in his hands.
She was his shield and sacrifice. He saw it all, clear and shadowless in the frozen deathless light of the sterile calm, and heard her:
'He's got me O Jesus don't shoot don't don't don't-'
But the hands were trained. He was the last of his breed and it was not only his mouth that knew the High Speech. The guns beat their heavy, atonal music into the air. Her mouth flapped and she sagged and the guns fired again. Sheb's head snapped back. They both fell into the dust.
[...]
A man with a beard stubble and sweat-stained armpits lunged flying at him with a dull kitchen knife held in one paw.
He blasted his way through the middle of them, running as the bodies fell, his hands picking the targets with dreadful accuracy. Two men and a woman went down, and he ran through the hole they left.
[...]
They never hesitated or faltered, although every shot he fired found a vital spot and although they had probably never even seen a gun except for pictures in old magazines.
He retreated, moving his body like a dancer to avoid the flying missiles.