Dan Barry smiled his gentle, apologetic smile.

“I don’t no ways see how I can, Buck.”

“Then,” said Buck through his teeth, “of all the lyin’ hounds in the world you’re the lyin’est and meanest and lowest.  Which they ain’t words to tell you what I think of you.  Take this instead!”

And the hand which rested on the table darted up and smote Dan Barry on the cheek, a tingling blow.  With the same motion which started his hand for the blow, Buck Daniels turned on his heel and stepped a pace or two towards the centre of the room.

There was not a man in the room who had not heard the last words of Buck Daniels, and not a man who had not seen the blow.  Everyone of them had seen, or heard accurately described, how the slender stranger beat Jerry Strann to the draw and shot him down in that same place.  Such a moan came from them as when many men catch their breath with pain, and with a simultaneous movement those who were in line with Buck Daniels and Barry leaped back against the bar on one side and against the wall on the other.  Their eyes, fascinated, held on the face of Barry, and they saw the pale outline which the fingers of Daniels had left on the cheek of the other.  But if horror was the first thing they felt, amazement was the next.  For Dan Barry sat bolt erect in his chair, staring in an astonishment too great for words.  His right hand hung poised and moveless just above the butt of his gun; his whole posture was that of one in the midst of an action, suspended there, frozen to stone.  They waited for that poised hand to drop, for the slender fingers to clutch the butt of the gun, for the convulsive jerk that would bring out the gleaming barrel, the explosion, the spurt of smoke, and Buck Daniels lurching forward to his face on the floor.

But that hand did not move; and Buck Daniels?  Standing there with his back to the suspended death behind him, he drew out Durham and brown papers, without haste, rolled a cigarette, and reached to a hip pocket.

At that move Dan Barry started.  His hand darted down and fastened on his gun, and he leaned forward in his chair with the yellow glimmering light flaring up in his eyes.  But the hand of Buck Daniels came out from his hip bearing a match.  He raised his leg, scratched the match, there was a blue spurt of flame, and Buck calmly lighted his cigarette and started towards the door, sauntering.

The instant the swinging doors closed Barry started from his chair with a strange cry—­none of them had ever heard the like from human lips—­for there was grief in it, and above all there was a deadly eagerness.  So a hungry man might cry out at the sight of food.  Down the length of the barroom he darted and was drawing his gun as he whipped through the doors.  A common rush followed him, and those who reached the open first saw Buck Daniels leaning far forward in his saddle and spurring desperately into the gloom of the night.  Instantly he was only a twinkling figure in the shadows, and the beat of the hoofs rattled back at them.  Dan Barry stood with his gun poised high for a second or more.  Then he turned, dropped the gun into the holster, and with the same strange, unearthly cry of eagerness, he raced off in the direction of the barns.