The gang had often discussed when and how Pete would get his seventh victim, and here they were about to be witnesses of the deed.  Instinct taught them the proper conduct on such occasions.  The tenderfoot was as good as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and prone to excitement, he might draw and fire wild.  They ducked with the avidity of woodchucks into their holes—­all except Jim Galway, who remained leaning against the counter.

“I gin ye warning!” they heard Pete say, and closed their eyes involuntarily—­all except Jim Galway—­with their last impression the tenderfoot’s ingenuous smile and the gleam on Pete’s gun-barrel.  They waited for the report, as Mary had, and then they heard steps and looked up to see that dude tenderfoot, still smiling, going straight toward the muzzle pointed at his head, his hands at his side in no attempt to draw.  The thing was incredible and supernatural.

“Pete is letting him come close first,” they thought.

But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver and the tenderfoot’s hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatory position.  Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his trigger finger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expect to lose his nerve.  Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whose vision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let us have his version.

“He just walked over to Pete—­that’s all I can say—­walked over to him, simple and calm, like he was going to ask for a match.  All I could think of and see was his smile right into that muzzle and the glint in his eyes, which were looking into Pete’s.  Someway you couldn’t shoot into that smile and that glint, which was sort of saying, ’Go ahead!  I’m leaving it to you and I don’t care!’—­just as if a flash of powder was all the same to him as a flash of lightning.”

The desert had given Jack life; and it would seem as if what the desert had given, it might take away.  He was not going to humble himself by throwing up his arms or standing still for execution.  He was on his way into the store and he continued on his way.  If something stopped him, then he would not have to take the train East in the morning.

“Now if you want to kill me, Pete Leddy,” the astonished group heard this stranger say, “why, I’m not going to deny you the chance.  But I don’t want you to do it just out of impulse, and I know that is not your own reasoned way.  You certainly would want sporting rules to prevail and that I should have an equal chance of killing you.  So we will go outside, stand off any number of paces you say, let our gun-barrels hang down even with the seams of our trousers, and wait for somebody to say ’one, two, three—­fire!’”