And Kate Cumberland stepped back, out of line of the two.  She knew that in what followed she could not play the part of the protector or the delayer.  Here they stood, hungry, for battle, and there was no power in her weak hands to separate them.  She stood far back and fumbled with her hands at the wall for support.  She tried to close her eyes, but the fascination of the horror forced her to watch against her strongest will.  And the chief part of that dreadful suspense lay in the even, calm voice of Buck Daniels as he went on:  “I’ll turn around and fight soon enough.  But Kate asked me to smoke another cigarette.  I know what she means.  She wants me to leave you the way I done in the saloon that day.  I ain’t goin’ to leave, Dan.  But I’m glad she asked me to turn away, because it gives me a chance to tell you some things you got to know before you go west.

“Dan, you been like a fire that burns every hand that touches you.”  He inhaled a long breath of smoke and blew it up towards the ceiling.  “You’ve busted the heart of the friend that follered you; you’ve busted the heart of the girl that loves you.”

He paused again, for another long inhalation, and Kate Cumberland, staring in fearful suspense, waiting for the instant when Buck should at last turn and when the shots should explode, saw that the yellow glow was now somewhat misted in the eyes of Barry.  He frowned, as one bewildered.

“Think of her, Dan!” went on Buck Daniels.  “Think of her wasting herself on a no-good houn’ dog like you—­a no-good wild wolf!  My God A’mighty, she might of made some good man happy—­some man with a soul and a heart—­but instead of that God sent you like a blast across her—­you with your damned soul of wind and your heart of stone!  Think of it!  When you see what you been, Barry, I wonder you don’t go out and take your own gun and blow off your head.”

“Buck,” called Dan Barry, “so help me God, if you don’t turn your face to me—­I’ll shoot you through the back!”

“I knew,” said the imperturbable Daniels, “that you’d come to that in the end.  You used to fight like a man, but now you’re followin’ your instincts, and you fight like a huntin’ wolf.  Look at the brute that’s slinkin’ up to me there!  That’s what you are.  You kill for the sake of killin’—­like the beasts.

“If you was a man, could you treat me like you’ve done?  Your damned cold heart and your yaller eyes and all would of burned up in the barn the other night—­you and your wolf and your damned hoss.  Why didn’t I let you burn?  Because I was a fool.  Because I still thought they was something of the man in you.  But I seen afterwards what you was, and I rode off to get out of your way—­to keep your hands from gettin’ red with my blood.  And then you plan on follerin’ me—­damn you!—­on follerin’ me!

“So that, Dan, is why I’ve come to put you out of the world—­as I’m goin’ to do now!  Once you hated to give pain, and if you hurt people it was because you couldn’t help it.  But now you live on torturin’ others.  Barry, pull your gun!”