“Nope.  I was right.  Best thing a gent can do after he’s dropped his man is to climb a hoss and feed it leather.”

“He didn’t have a gun,” groaned Jordan heavily.  “But I forgot it.  The red-eye got to working on me.  I was losing.  It was the one rotten yaller thing I ever done, Lew!”

“I know.  And now he’s here.  He’s Red Perris!”

“Red Perris!” breathed Oliver Jordan.  “The man Marianne sent for?  Why—­ why it’s like fate, her bringing him right to the ranch!”

Hervey was discreetly silent.

“But,” cried Jordan suddenly, and there was a ghost of the old ring in his voice, “I dropped him once by a crooked play and now I’ll drop him fair and square, if he’s here looking for trouble!  I don’t want your help, Lew.  Mighty fine of you to offer it, but I ain’t plumb forgot how to shoot.  I don’t want help!”

Hervey waited a moment for that heat of defiance to die away.  Then he said with the quiet of certainty:  “No use, Jordan.  No use at all.  Shorty seen this gent do some shooting on the way up to the ranch.  He pulled on a squirrel that dodged across the trail.  First slug knocked dust into the squirrel’s belly-fur and the second chipped off his tail.  Both of them slugs would have landed dead-center in a target as big as the body of a man!”

He paused again.  He could hear the heavy breathing of Oliver Jordan and the figure of the driver swayed a little back and forth in the seat as a man will do when his mind is swinging from one alternative to another.

“He done that shooting from the hip,” added Hervey, as though by afterthought.

There was a gasp from Jordan.

“Good God, Lew!  You don’t mean that!”

“That’s what he done the shooting for—­to show Shorty how to get off a quick shot.  Shorty says he got his gun out and fired inside the time it’d take a common gun-man to wink twice.  And that’s why you and me have got to face him together, chief.  You know I ain’t particular yaller.  But I’d as soon tackle a machine gun with a pea-shooter as run into this Perris all by myself.  He’s bad medicine, chief!”

“Two to one.  That’d be worse’n murder, Lew.  Neither you nor me could ever hold up a head around these parts again if the two of us jumped one gent.”

“I know it,” said Hervey solemnly.  “But it’s better to be shamed than to be dead.  That’s the way I figure.  And I ain’t so sure that both of us together could win out.”

There was another interval of silence, far more important than many words.  Through the hush Hervey, with a beating heart, strove to peer into the mind of the rancher.

“I’ll go back and face him all by myself,” said Jordan huskily.  “I’ll let him rub out that old score.  If he finishes me—­well, what good am I in the world, anyway?  No good, Lew.  I’m done for just as much as though somebody had plugged me with a gat.  Let Perris finish the job.”  He added hastily:  “But these five years have changed me a lot.  Maybe he won’t know me.”