“You won’t go, dear Jack?”

Now, Jack knew perfectly well that the girl was only half sincere.  It is the peculiar fate of men that they always know when a woman is playing with them, but, from Samson down, they always go to the slaughter with open eyes, hoping each moment that the girl has been seriously impressed at last.  As for Jack Landis, his slow mind did not readily get under the surface of the arts of Nelly, but he knew that there was at least a tinge of real concern in the girl’s desire to keep him from the posse which Milligan was raising.

“But they’s something about him that I don’t like, Nelly.  Something sort of familiar that I don’t like.”  For naturally enough he did not recognize the transformed Donnegan, and the name he had never heard before.  “A gunfighter, that’s what he is!”

“Why, Jack, sometimes they call you the same thing; say that you hunt for trouble now and then!”

“Do they say that?” asked the young chap quickly, flushing with vanity.  “Oh, I aim to take care of myself.  And I’d like to take a hand with this murdering Donnegan.”

“Jack, listen!  Don’t go; keep away from him!”

“Why do you look like that?  As if I was a dead one already.”

“I tell you, Jack, he’d kill you!”

Something in her terrible assurance whitened the cheeks of Landis, but he was also angered.  When a very young man becomes both afraid and angry he is apt to be dangerous.  “What do you know of him?” he asked suspiciously.

“You silly!  But I saw his face when he lifted that mint.  He’d already forgotten about the man he had just shot down.  He was thinking of nothing but the scent of the mint.  And did you notice his giant servant?  He never had a moment’s doubt of Donnegan’s ability to handle the entire crowd.  I tell you, it gave me a chill of ghosts to see the big black fellow’s eyes.  He knew that Donnegan would win.  And Donnegan won!  Jack, you’re a big man and a strong man and a brave man, and we all know it.  But don’t be foolish.  Stay away from Donnegan!”

He wavered just an instant.  If she could have sustained her pleading gaze a moment longer she would have won him, but at the critical instant her gaze became distant.  She was seeing the calm face of Donnegan as he raised the mint.  And as though he understood, Jack Landis hardened.

“I’m glad you don’t want me shot up, Nelly,” he said coldly.  “Mighty good of you to watch out for me.  But—­I’m going to run this Donnegan out of town!”

“He’s never harmed you; why—­”

“I don’t like his looks.  For a man like me that’s enough!”

And he strode away toward Milligan.  He was greeted by a cheer just as the girl reached the side of her father.

“Jack is going,” she said.  “Make him come back!”

But the old man was still rubbing his hands; there seemed to be a perpetual chill in the tips of the fingers.

“He is a jackass.  The moment I first saw his face I knew that he was meant for gun fodder—­buzzard food!  Let him go.  Bah!”