“Ready!” called Bill Lang.

The ruling passion that had carved six notches on his gun-handle overwhelmed Pete Leddy.  At least, let us give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this and not calculation was responsible for his action.  Before the word for preparation was free of Lang’s lips, and without waiting for the word to fire, his revolver came up in a swift quarter-circle.  He was sure of his aim at that range with a ready draw.  Again and again he had thus hit his target in practice and six times he had winged his man by such agile promptness.

With the flash from the muzzle all the members of the gallery rose on hands and knees.  They were as sure that there was to be a seventh notch as of their identity.  There was no question in their minds but Pete had played a smart trick.  They had known from the first that he would win.  And the proof of it was in the sudden, uncontrollable movement of the adversary.

Jack whirled half round.  He was falling.  But even as he fell he was still facing his adversary.  He plunged forward unsteadily and came to rest on his left elbow.  A trickle of blood showed on the chap of his left leg, which had tightened as his knee twisted under him.  Leddy’s rage had been so hot that for once his trigger finger had been too quick.  He had aimed too low.  But he was sure that he had done for his man and he looked triumphantly toward the gallery gods whose hero he was.  They had now risen to their feet.  In answer to their congratulations he waved his left hand, palm out, in salutation.  His gun-hand had dropped back to his trousers seam.

Even as it dropped, Jack’s revolver had risen, his own gun-hand steadied in the palm of his left hand, which had an elbow in the sand for a rest.  Victor and spectators, in their preoccupation with the relief and elation of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had heard it, but of another man.  And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his forehead, while he turned cold.

“Now, Pete Leddy, do not move a muscle!” Jack told him.  “Pete Leddy, you did not play my way.  I still have a shot due, and I am going to kill you!”

Jack’s face seemed never to have worn a smile.  It was all chin, and thin, tightly-pressed lips, and solid, straight nose, bronze and unyielding.

“And I am going to kill you!”

This was surely the devil of Ignacio’s imagery speaking in him—­a cold, passionless, gray-eyed devil.  Though they had never seen him shoot, everybody felt now that he could shoot with deadly accuracy and that there was no play cowboy in his present mood.  He had the bead of death on Leddy and he would fire with the first flicker of resistance.  His call seemed to have sunk the feet of everyone beneath the sand to bed-rock and riveted them there.  Lang and the two seconds were as motionless as statues.