He made a gesture with that armed hand, and Sandy winced as though a whiplash had flicked him.

“Steady up, damn your eyes!” bellowed Flanders, “and put them guns away.  Put ’em up; hear me?”

To the mortal astonishment of Nash, Sandy obeyed, keeping the while a fascinated eye upon the little Dutchman.

“Now climb your hoss and beat it, and if I ever find you in reach again, I’ll send my kid out to rope you and give you a hoss-whippin’.”

The gun fighter lost no time.  A single leap carried him into his saddle and he was off over the sand with a sharp rattle of the beating hoofs.

“Well,” breathed Nash, “I’ll be hanged.”

“Sure you will,” suggested Flanders, at once changing his frown for a smile of somewhat professional good nature, as one who greeted an old customer, “sure you will unless you come in an’ have a drink on the house.  I want something myself to forget what I been doin’.  I feel like the dog-catcher.”

Steve, deeply meditative, strode into the room.

“Partner,” he said gravely to Flanders, “I’ve always prided myself on having eyes a little better than the next one, but just now I guess I must of been seein’ double.  Seemed to me that that was Sandy Ferguson that you hot-footed out of that door—­or has Sandy got a double?”

“Nope,” said the bartender, wiping the last of the perspiration from his forehead, “that’s Sandy, all right.”

“Then gimme a big drink.  I need it.”

The bottle spun expertly across the bar, and the glasses tinkled after.

“Funny about him, all right,” nodded Flanders, “but then it’s happened the same way with others I could tell about.  As long as he was winnin’ Sandy was the king of any roost.  The minute he lost a fight he wasn’t worth so many pounds of salt pork.  Take a hoss; a fine hoss is often jest the same.  Long as it wins nothin’ can touch some of them blooded boys.  But let ’em go under the wire second, maybe jest because they’s packing twenty pounds too much weight, and they’re never any good any more.  Any second-rater can lick ’em.  I lost five hundred iron boys on a hoss that laid down like that.”

“All of which means,” suggested Nash, “that Sandy has been licked?”

“Licked?  No, he ain’t been licked, but he’s been plumb annihilated, washed off the map, cleaned out, faded, rubbed into the dirt; if there was some stronger way of puttin’ it, I would.  Only last night, at that, but now look at him.  A girl that never seen a man before could tell that he wasn’t any more dangerous now than if he was made of putty; but if the fool keeps packin’ them guns he’s sure to get into trouble.”

He raised his glass.

“So here’s to the man that Sandy was and ain’t no more.”

They drank solemnly.

“Maybe you took the fall out of him yourself, Flanders?”

“Nope.  I ain’t no fighter, Steve.  You know that.  The feller that downed Sandy was—­a tenderfoot.  Yep, a greenhorn.”