The crowd hesitated still for a second, as though it feared to interfere; but Donnegan had already put up his weapon.  A wave of the curious spectators rushed across the street and gathered around the injured man.  They found that he had been shot through the fleshy part of the thumb, and the bullet, ranging down the arm, had sliced a furrow to the bone all the way to the elbow.  It was a grisly wound.

Big George Washington Green came running to the door of the dance hall with a sprig of something green in his hand; one glance assured him that all was well; and once more that wide, confident grin spread upon his face.  He came to the master and offered the mint; and Donnegan, raising it to his face, inhaled the scent deeply.

“Good,” he said.  “And now for a julep, George!  Let’s go home!”

Across the street a dark-eyed girl had clasped the arm of her companion in hysterical excitement.

“Did you see?” she asked of her tall companion.

“I saw a murderer shoot down a man; he ought to be hung for it!”

“But the mint!  Did you see him smile over it?  Oh, what a devil he is; and what a man!”

Jack Landis flashed a glance of suspicion down at her, but her dancing eyes had quite forgotten him.  They were following the progress of Donnegan down the street.  He rode slowly, and George kept that formal distance, just a length behind.

18

Before Milligan’s the crowd began to buzz like murmuring hornets around a nest that has been tapped, when they pour out and cannot find the disturber.  It was a rather helpless milling around the wounded man, and Nelly Lebrun was the one who worked her way through the crowd and came to Andy Lewis.  She did not like Andy.  She had been known to refer to him as a cowardly hawk of a man; but now she bullied the crowd in a shrill voice and made them bring water and cloth.  Then she cleansed and bandaged the wound in Andy Lewis’ arm and had some of them take him away.

By this time the outskirts of the crowd had melted away; but those who had really seen all parts of the little drama remained to talk.  The subject was a real one.  Had Donnegan aimed at the hand of Andy and risked his own life on his ability to disable the other without killing him?  Or had he fired at Lewis’ body and struck the hand and arm only by a random lucky chance?

If the second were the case, he was only a fair shot with plenty of nerve and a great deal of luck.  If the first were true, then this was a nerve of ice-tempered steel, an eye vulture-sharp, and a hand, miraculous, fast, and certain.  To strike that swinging hand with a snap shot, when a miss meant a bullet fired at his own body at deadly short range—­truly it would take a credulous man to believe that Donnegan had coldly planned to disable his man without killing him.