miles to fall dead in his best girl’s arms.  He claims he made that ride day before yesterday, and done some pitiful weaving around in the saddle, out there in the hills, and that he died in that blond lady’s arms first thing this morning, and I hadn’t no right to kill him twicet afterwards in the saloon fight.  Now I leave it to you, boss.  How about this here killin’ Pink off every oncet in a while?”

Deep in his throat Luck chuckled.  “Well, Pink certainly does die pathetic,” he soothed the perturbed murderer, dropping his professional brusqueness for frank comradeship.  “He’s about the best little close-up dier I ever worked with.  He can get a sob anytime he rolls his eyes and gasps and falls backward.”  He clapped his hand down on Pink’s shoulder and gave it a little shake.

“That’s all right,” drawled the Native Son, taking off his sombrero to deepen the crease and the dents, because three girls were coming across the lot.  “But I’ve got a complaint of my own to make.  When you holler for Bud to start the rough stuff, he just goes powder crazy.  He shot me up four times in that scene!  Twice he held the gun so close my scalp’s all powder-marked, and by rights he should have blowed the top of my head plumb into the street.  He gets so taken up with this slaughter-house business that he’ll wind up by shooting himself a few times if you don’t watch him.”

“One thing,” Weary put in mildly, “I want to speak about, Luck.  We need more blood for those murders.  I didn’t have half enough for all the mortal wounds Bud gave me.  By rights that saloon should be plumb reeking with gore when we’re all killed off—­the way Bud flies at it with those two six-shooters.  No bullets hit the walls anywhere, so it stands to reason they all land in a soft spot on our persons.  I needed a large bucket of blood—­and I had about a half teacupful.”  He grinned.  “Mamma!  That was sure some slaughter, though!”

“Where’s Tracy Gray Joyce?” Luck inquired irrelevantly, with a hasty glance around them.  “To-morrow, he’ll have to come into that same slaughter pen and seize the murderer and subdue him by the steely glint of his eye and by his unflinching demeanor.”  He pulled the corners of his mouth down expressively.  “That’s the way the scenario reads,” he added defensively.

“Well, say, by cripes, he better amble down to the city and buy him some more glint!” Big Medicine bawled, and laughed afterwards with his big haw-haw-haw.  “And I’ll gamble there ain’t enough unflinchin’ demeanor on the Coast to put that boy through the scene.  Honest-to-gran’-ma, Luck, that there Tracy Gray Joyce gits pale, and his Adam’s apple pumps up and down when I come up and smile at him!  What color do yuh reckon he’ll turn to when he stands up to me right after me slaying all these innocent boys—­and me a-foamin’ at the mouth and gloatin’ over the foul deed I’ve just did?  Say?  How’s he going to keep that there Adam’s apple from shootin’ clean up through his hair, and his knees from wobblin’?  How—­”