“That’s what this gun means,” cried Pete.  “This gun, and the fact that I can get it out of the leather faster’n you do.  Not very much faster.  But by just as much quicker as it takes for an eyelid to wink.  That ain’t much time, but it’s enough time to mean life or death!  That’s all!  I’m not the only man that’s faster’n you are.  They’s others.  I’ve never been beat to the draw, but they’s some that’s shot so close to me that it sounded like one gun going off—­with a sort of a stammer.  And any one of those men would of shot you dead, Bull, if you’d fought ’em.  Now, knowing that, tell me, are you going to keep practicing?”

“I’ll keep tryin’, Pete.  But I’ll never get much faster.  You see, my arm—­it’s too big, too heavy.  It gets in my way, handling a little thing like a revolver!”

Pete spun the big Colt and shoved it back into the holster so incredibly fast that the steel hissed against the leather.

“There you go running yourself down,” he muttered.

He began to pace the room again, biting his nether lip, and now and then shooting side glances at Bull, glances partly guilty and partly scornful.  Presently he came to a halt.  He had also come to a new resolution, one that cost him so much that beads of perspiration came out on his forehead.

“Bull,” he said gravely, “I’m going to tell you the secret.”

“You’ve told me a dozen already,” Bull sighed.  “You’ve taught me how to swing the muzzle up, and not too far up, and how to lean back instead of forward, and how to harden the arm muscles just as I pull the trigger, and how to squeeze with the whole hand and keep my wrist stiff, and how—­”

“None of them things counts,” said Pete gravely, almost sadly, “compared to what I’m going to tell you.  Stand up!”

It was plain that he was going to give something from the depths of his mind.  The cost and importance of it made his eyes like steel and drew his mouth to a thin, straight line.

Bull Hunter arose; and as the great body unfolded and the legs straightened, it seemed that he would never reach his full height.  At length he stood, enormous, wide, towering.  He was not a freak, but simply a perfectly proportioned man increased to a huge scale.

Pete Reeve canted his head back and looked into the face of the giant.  There was a momentary affectionate appreciation in his eye.  Then he hardened his expression.

“Let your arm hang loose.”

Bull Hunter obeyed.  The hand came just above the holster that was strapped on his thigh.  All these weeks Pete Reeve had kept him from going an instant without that gun except when he slept.  And even when he slept the gun had to be under his pillow.

“Because it helps to have it near all the time,” Pete had explained.  “It sort of soaks into your dreams.  It’s never out of your mind.  It haunts you, like the face of the girl you love.  You see!”

Bull Hunter did not see, but he had nodded humbly, after his fashion, and obeyed.  Now, with his arm fallen loose at his side he peered studiously into the face of his master gunman and waited for the next order.