Last of all he lingered—­and longest—­over his revolvers.  Six in all, he set them in a row along the bed and without delay threw out two to begin with.  Then he fingered the others, tried their weight and balance, slipped cartridges into the cylinders and extracted them again, whirled the cylinders, examined the minutest parts of the actions.

They were all such guns as an expert would have turned over with shining eyes, but finally he threw one aside into the discard; the cylinder revolved just a little too hard.  Another was abandoned after much handling of the remaining three because to the delicate touch of Nash it seemed that the weight of the barrel was a gram more than in the other two; but after this selection it seemed that there was no possible choice between the final two.

So he stood in the centre of the room and went through a series of odd gymnastics.  Each gun in turn he placed in the holster and then jerked it out, spinning it on the trigger guard around his second finger, while his left hand shot diagonally across his body and “fanned” the hammer.  Still he could not make his choice, but he would not abandon the effort.  It was an old maxim with him that there is in all the world one gun which is the best of all and with which even a novice can become a “killer.”

He tried walking away, whirling as he made his draw, and levelling the gun on the door-knob.  Then without moving his hand, he lowered his head and squinted down the sights.  In each case the bead was drawn to a centre shot.  Last of all he weighed each gun; one seemed a trifle lighter—­the merest shade lighter than the other.  This he slipped into the holster and carried the rest of his apparatus back to the closet from which he had taken it.

Still the preparation had not ended.  Filling his cartridge belt, every cartridge was subject to a rigid inspection.  A full half hour was wasted in this manner.  Wasted, because he rejected not one of the many he examined.  Yet he seemed happier after having made his selection, and went down the stairs, humming softly.

Out to the barn he went, lantern in hand.  This time he made no comparison of horses but went directly to an ugly-headed roan, long of leg, vicious of eye, thin-shouldered, and with hips that slanted sharply down.  No one with a knowledge of fine horse-flesh could have looked on this brute without aversion.  It did not have even size in its favour.  A wild, free spirit, perhaps, might be the reason; but the animal stood with hanging head and pendant lower lip.  One eye was closed and the other only half opened.  A blind affection, then, made him go to this horse first of all.

No, his greeting was to jerk his knee sharply into the ribs of the roan, which answered with a grunt and swung its head around with bared teeth, like an angry dog.  “Damn your eyes!” roared the hoarse voice of Steve Nash, “stand still or I’ll knock you for a goal!”