and an eye.  All your nerves are down there in that hand.  They’re all piled down there.  That hand is full of electricity.  Don’t let your eyes wander.  Keep on concentrating.  You’re stocking the electricity in that hand.  When your hand moves, it’ll be as fast as the jump of a spark!  And when that hand moves, the gun is going to come out clean in it.  It’s got to come out with it!  You hear?  It’s got to!  Your fingertips catch under the butt; they flick up.  They don’t draw the gun; they throw it out of the holster; they pitch the muzzle up, and the butt comes smack back against the palm of your hand.  And in the same part of a second you pull the trigger.  You hear?”

He leaned forward, trembling from head to foot.  The eyes of the big man were beginning to narrow.

“I hear; I understand!” he said through his teeth.

“You don’t pull the gun.  You think it out of the leather.  And then the bullet hits the doorknob.  You don’t move your arm.  Your arm doesn’t exist.  You’re just a hand and a brain—­thinking!  And that thought sends a bullet at the mark!” He leaped back.  “Draw!”

There was a wink of light at the hip of Bull Hunter, and the gun roared.

Instantly he cried out, alarmed, confused, ashamed.

“I didn’t mean to shoot, Pete.  I’m a fool!  I didn’t mean to!  It—­I sort of couldn’t help it.  The—­the trigger was just pulled without my wanting it to!  Lord, what’ll people think!”

But Pete Reeve had flung his arms around the big man as far as they would go, and he hugged him in a hysteria of joy.  Then he leaped back, dancing, throwing up his hands.

“You done it!” he cried, his voice squeaking, hysterical.

“I made a fool of myself, all right,” said Bull, bewildered by this exhibition of joy where he had expected anger.

“Fool nothing!  Look at that knob!”

The doorknob was a smashed wreck, driven into the thick wood of the door by the heavy slug of the revolver.  Footsteps were running up the stairs of the hotel.  Pete Reeve ran to the door and flung it open.

“It’s all right, boys,” he called.  “Cleaning a gun and it went off.  No harm done!”

CHAPTER 12

“And now,” said Pete Reeve, looking almost ruefully at his pupil, “with a little practice on that, they ain’t a man in the world that could safely take a chance with you.  I couldn’t myself.”

“Pete!”

“I mean it, son.  Not a man in the world.  I was afraid all the time.  I was afraid you didn’t have that there electricity in you or whatever they call it.  I was afraid you had too much beef and not enough nerves.  But you haven’t.  And now that you have the knack, keep practicing every day—­thinking the gun out of the leather—­that’s the trick!”

Bull Hunter looked down to the gun with great, staring eyes, as though it was the first time in his life that he had seen the weapon.  Pete Reeve noted his expression and abruptly became silent, grinning happily, for there was the dawn of a great discovery in the eyes of the big man.