“Long,” said the latter, “I guess this is about played out.”

“Just about,” answered Long, looking at him steadily without moving. “guess you’d best quit.”

“Very well, come up to the Ti House at noon and we’ll settle up.”  And he turned and strode away.  He was smoking on the porch of the Ti House when Long came up about noon.  He took down his feet from the rail, threw away his cigar and went in with him.  He sat down at a table, and Long took a chair opposite without a word.  Field made a calculation on a scrap of paper, took out a roll of bills’ and counted out the amount.  “There, Long,” he said good-humoredly, “this week won’t be up till Monday, but we’ll call it even time.”

Something unpleasant came into the guide’s eyes when Field said “Long.”  “I’ll trouble you,” he said, “not to mention that there name again, meaning me.”

He put out his long arm and knuckled hand and drew the bills across the board.  He counted out part and pushed the rest back.  “This is mine,” he said:  “I’d ha’ made about that on the lake, average luck.  I don’t want to be beholden to you, nor you to me.”

“As you please,” answered Field, folding up the bills.  He wrote on a slip of paper, wrapped it round the roll and tied all with a bit of string:  “I’ll keep this for you if you say so.  When you want it, just let me know.  There is my number.”

He twirled a card across the table, and it fell face down before Long.  He took it up without turning it over, tore it across and dropped it on the floor.

“Stranger,” he said, “you and me’s quits.  I don’t know you and you don’t know me.  But if I was a friend of yours, and advisin’ you what was best for you, I’d say to you, ‘Go home.’” His skull-cap drawn forward, and his face set and threatening, he leaned forward with his powerful arms on the table and spoke in his usual low, unemphatic way, and with his deliberate, huskily-musical voice.  Field laughed:  his right arm was back upon the arm of his chair, and his fingers under his coat played with something that clicked.

“Just so,” Long went on, as if Field had spoken, perhaps a shade darker in the face, but with the same even manner and voice.  “Our bears don’t carry no coward’s devil-fingers that kill by p’inting at twenty foot, but they hev got teeth and claws.”

Field started up and flushed like fire.  “Did you say coward?” he said.  “By ——! that’s more than I’ll take from you!” And his voice and his hand on the back of his chair shook a little as he spoke.

Long lay back in his chair, folded his arms and nodded:  “You heard what I said.  Maybe it ain’t York English, but it’s such as we hev in these parts.”

Field stood a minute looking at him.  Then he drew out a silver-mounted revolver from his pocket and laid it on the table.

“There,” he said, “I make you a present of it.  Be careful:  it is loaded and cocked.”

Long looked up with something like admiration in his face.  He took the pistol in his hand, went to the window and fired the six barrels, one after the other.  The landlord came in to see what it was.