blanks at the longer ranges, fairly offset each other.  The California man took a slightly crouching attitude, his knees a little bent; held his gun at his knee; raising an extended and rigid arm to fire.  The Texan stood erect, almost on tiptoe, bareheaded; he swung his gun ear-high above his shoulder, looking at his mark alone, and fired as the gun flashed down.  The little California man made the cleaner score at the very long shots and in clipping the pips of the playing cards; the Texan had a shade the better at the flying targets, his bullets ranging full-center where the other barely grazed the cans.

“I don’t see but what I’ll have to keep this money.  You’ve shot away all the cartridges in your belts and most of the box, and it hasn’t got you anywheres,” observed Pete Johnson pensively.  “Better let your guns cool off.  You boys can’t beat each other shooting.  You do right well, too, both of you.  If you’d only started at it when you was young, I reckon you’d both have been what you might call plumb good shots now.”

He shook his head sadly and suppressed a sigh.

“Wait!” advised the Texan, and turned to confront his partner.  “You make out quite tol’lable with a gun, Billiam,” he conceded.  “I got to hand it to you.  I judged you was just runnin’ a windy.  But have you now showed all your little box of tricks?”

“Well, I haven’t missed anything—­not to speak of—­no more than you did,” evaded Bill, plainly apprehensive.  “What more do you want?”

Jim chuckled.

“Pausin’ lightly to observe that it ought to be easy enough to best you, if we was on horseback—­just because you peek at your sights when you shoot—­I shall now show you something.”

A chuck box was propped against the juniper trunk.  From this the Texan produced a horseshoe hammer and the lids from two ten-pound lard pails.  He strode over to where, ten yards away, two young cedars grew side by side, and nailed a lid to each tree, shoulder-high.

“There!” he challenged his opponent.  “We ain’t either of us going to miss such a mark as that—­it’s like putting your finger on it.  But suppose the tree was shooting back?  Time is what counts then.  Now, how does this strike you?  You take the lid on the left and I’ll take the other.  When the umpire says Go! we’ll begin foggin’—­and the man that scores six hits quickest gets the money.  That’s fair, isn’t it, Johnson?”

This was a slip—­Johnson had not given his name—­a slip unnoticed by either of the ZK men, but not by Johnson.

“Fair enough, I should say,” he answered.

“Why, Jim, that ain’t practical—­that ain’t!” protested Bill uneasily.  “You was talking about the tree a-shootin’ back—­but one shot will stop most men, let alone six.  What’s the good of shootin’ a man all to pieces?”

“Suppose there was six men?”

“Then they get me, anyway.  Wouldn’t they, Mr. Umpire?” he appealed to Peter Johnson, who sat cross-legged and fanned himself with his big sombrero.