It seemed to Hervey a wonderful thing that the red-headed man could be so quiet about it, and most wonderful of all that Perris could look at anything in the world rather than the big Colt which hung in the hand of the victor.  And then, realizing that it was his own comparative cowardice that made this seem strange, the foreman gritted his teeth.  Shame softens the heart sometimes, but more often it hardens the spirit.  It hardened the conqueror against his victim, now, and made it possible for him to look down on Red Jim with a cruel satisfaction.

“Well?” he said, and the volume of his voice added to this determination.

“Well?” said Perris, as calm as ever.  “Waiting for me to whine?”

Hervey blinked.

“Who licked you?” he asked, forced to change his thoughts.  “Who licked you—­before I got at you?”

Perris smiled, and there was something about the smile that made Hervey flush to the roots of his grey hair.

“Alcatraz had the first innings,” said Perris.  “He cleaned me up.  And that, Hervey, was tolerably lucky for you.”

“Was it?” sneered the victor.  “You’d of done me up quick, maybe, if Alcatraz hadn’t wore you out?”

He waited hungrily for a reply that might give him some basis on which to act, for after all, it was not going to be easy to fire pointblank into those steady, steady eyes.  And more than all, he hungered to see some wavering of courage, some blenching from the thing to come.

“Done you up?” echoed Red Jim.  And he ran his glance slowly, thoughtfully over the body of the foreman.  “I’d of busted you in two, Hervey.”

A little chilly shiver ran through Hervey but he managed to shrug the feeling away—­the feeling that someone was standing behind him, listening, and looking into his shameful soul.  But no one could be near.  It would be simple, perfectly simple.  What person in the world could doubt his story of how he met Perris at the shack and warned him again to leave the Valley of the Eagles and of how Perris went for the gun but was beaten in fair fight?  Who could doubt it?  An immense sense of security settled around him.

“Well,” he said, “second guessing is easy, even for a fool.”

“Right,” nodded Red Jim.  “I should of knifed you when I had you down.”

“If you’d had a knife,” said Hervey.

“Look at my belt, Lew.”

There it was, the stout handle of a hunting knife.  The same chill swept through Hervey a second time and, for a moment, he wavered in his determination.  Then, with all his heart, he envied that indefinable thing in the eyes of Perris, the thing which he had hated all his life.  Some horses had it, creatures with high heads, and always he had made it a point to take that proud gleam out.

“A hoss is made for work, not foolishness,” he used to say.

Here it was, looking out at him from the eyes of his victim.  He hated it, he feared and envied it, and from the very bottom of his heart he yearned to destroy it before he destroyed Perris.