“Who’s bothering Jerry?” asked Mac Strann.  “And where is he?”

He went to the wall without waiting for an answer and took down the saddle.  Now the cowpuncher’s saddle is a heavy mass of leather and steel, and the saddle of Mac Strann was far larger than the ordinary.  Yet he took down the saddle as one might remove a card from a rack.  Haw-Haw Langley moved towards the door, to give himself a free space for exit.

“Jerry’s hurt,” he said, and he watched.

There was a ripple of pain on the face of Mac Strann.

“Hoss kicked him—­fall on him?” he asked.

“It weren’t a hoss.”

“Huh?  A cow?”

“It weren’t no cow.  It weren’t no animal.”

Mac Strann faced full upon Langley.  When he spoke it seemed as if it were difficult for him to manage his lips.  They lifted an appreciable space before there was any sound.

“What was it?”

“A man.”

Langley edged back towards the door.

“What with?”

“A gun.”

And Langley saw the danger that was coming even before Mac Strann moved.  He gave a shrill yelp of terror and whirled and sprang for the open.  But Mac Strann sprang after him and reached.  His whole body seemed to stretch like an elastic thing, and his arm grew longer.  The hand fastened on the back of Langley, plucked him up, and jammed him against the wall.  Haw-Haw crumpled to the floor.

He gasped:  “It weren’t me, Mac.  For Gawd’s sake, it weren’t me!”

His face was a study.  There was abject terror in it, and yet there was also a sort of grisly joy, and his eyes feasted on the silent agony of Mac Strann.

“Where?” asked Mac Strann.

“Mac,” pleaded the vulture who cringed on the floor, “gimme your word you ain’t goin’ to hold it agin me.”

“Tell me,” said the other, and he framed the face of the vulture between his large hands.  If he pressed the heels of those hands together bones would snap, and Haw-Haw Langley knew it.  And yet nothing but a wild delight could have set that glitter in his little eyes, just as nothing but a palsy of terror could have set his limbs twitching so.

“Who shot him from behind?” demanded the giant.

“It wasn’t from behind,” croaked the bearer of ill-tidings.  “It was from the front.”

“While he wasn’t looking?”

“No.  He was beat to the draw.”

“You’re lyin’ to me,” said Mac Strann slowly.

“So help me God!” cried Langley.

“Who done it?”

“A little feller.  He ain’t half as big as me.  He’s got a voice like Kitty Jackson, the school-marm; and he’s got eyes like a starved pup.  It was him that done it.”

The eyes of Mac Strann grew vaguely meditative.

“Nope,” he mused, in answer to his own thoughts, “I won’t use no rope.  I’ll use my hands.  Where’d the bullet land?”

A fresh agony of trembling shook Langley, and a fresh sparkle came in his glance.