Mary recalled Leddy’s leer at her on the pass, with its intent of something more horrible than murder.  Savagery rose in her heart.  It was right that he should be killed.  He deserved his fate.  But no sooner was the savagery born—­born, she felt, of the very hypnosis of that carved face—­than she cast it out shudderingly in the realization that she had wished the death of a fellow human being!  She looked away from Jack; and then it occurred to her that he must be bleeding.  He was again a companion of the trail, his strength ebbing away.  Her impulse was retarded by no fear of the gallery now.  It brought her to her feet.

“But first drop your revolver!” she heard Jack call, as she ran.

She saw it fall from Leddy’s trembling hand, as a dead leaf goes free of a breeze-shaken limb.  All the fight was out of him.  The courage of six notches was not the courage to accept in stoicism the penalty of foul play.  And that black rim was burning his forehead.

“Galway, you have a gun?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Galway answered, mechanically.  His presence of mind, which had been so sure in the store, was somewhat shaken.  He had seen men killed, but never in such deliberate fashion.

“Take it out’”

There was a quality in the command like frosty madness, which one instinctively obeyed.  The half-prostrate figure of the tenderfoot seemed to dominate everything—­men, earth, and air.

Mary had a glimpse of Galway drawing an automatic pistol from his pocket when she dropped at Jack’s side.  She knew that Jack had not heard or seen her approach.  All his will was flowing out along a pistol’s sight, even as his blood was flowing out on the sand in a broadening circle of red.

It was well that she had come.  Her fingers were splashed as she felt for the artery, which she closed by leaning her whole weight on the thumb.

Ignacio had followed her and immediately after him came Firio, who had been startled in his breakfast preparations by the sound of a shot and had set out to investigate its cause.  He was as changed as his master; a twitching, fierce being, glaring at her and at the wound and then prolongedly and watchfully at Pete Leddy.

“Can you shoot to kill?” Jack asked Galway, in a piercing summons.

“Yes,” drawled Galway.

“Then up with your gun—­quick!  There!  A bead on Ropey Smith!”

Galway had the bead before Ropey could protest.

“Give Ropey ten seconds to drop his gun or we will care for him at the same time as Pete’” Jack concluded.

Ropey did not wait the ten seconds.  He was over-prompt for the same reasons of temperament that made Pete Leddy prefer his own way of fighting.

“I take it that we can count on the neutrality of our spectators.  They cannot be interested in the success of either side,” Jack observed, with dry humor, but still methodically.  “All they ask is a spectacle.”