“I know you were just joking but...”

He whirled and fired, never lifting the gun from his side.  And a man across the room from him cried out and dropped his own gun and grasped his shoulder with a hand which slowly went red.

Now again she saw Buck Thornton’s teeth.  But no longer in a smile.  He had seemed to condone the act of old Adams as a bit of senility; the look in his eyes was one of blazing rage as this other man drew back and back from him, muttering.

“I’d have killed you then,” said Thornton coldly, his rage the cold wrath that begets murder in men’s souls.  “But I shot just a shade too quick.  Try it again, or any other man here draw, and by God, I’ll show you a dead man in ten seconds.”

He drew back and put the bar just behind him.  Then with a sudden gesture, he flung down the revolver which had come from Hap Smith’s holster and more recently from old man Adams’s fingers, and his hand flashed to his arm pit and back into plain sight, his own weapon in it.

“I don’t savvy your game, sports,” he said with the same cool insolence.  “But if you want me to play just go ahead and deal me a hand.”

To the last man of them they looked at him and hesitated.  It was written in large bold script upon the faces of them that the girl’s thought was their thought.  And yet, though there were upward a dozen of them and though Poke Drury’s firelight flickered on several gun barrels and though here were men who were not cowards and who did not lack initiative, to the last man of them they hesitated.  As his glance sped here and there it seemed to stab at them like a knife blade.  He challenged them and stood quietly waiting for the first move.  And the girl by the fire knew almost from the first that no hostile move was forthcoming.  And she knew further that had a man there lifted his hand Buck Thornton’s promise would have been kept and he’d show them a dead man in ten seconds.

“Suppose,” said Thornton suddenly, “you explain.  Poke Drury, this being your shack....  What’s the play?”

Drury moistened his lips.  But it was Hap Smith who spoke up.

“I’ve knowed you some time, Buck,” he said bluntly.  “An’ I never knowed you to go wrong.  But ...  Well, not an hour ago a man your build an’ size an’ with a bandana across his face stuck this place up.”

“Well?” said Thornton coolly.

“At first,” went on the stage driver heavily and a bit defiantly, “we thought it was him come back when you come in.”  His eye met Thornton’s in a long unwavering look.  “We ain’t certain yet,” he ended briefly.

Thornton pondered the matter, his thumb softly caressing the hammer of his revolver.

“So that’s it, is it?” he said finally.

“That’s it,” returned Hap Smith.

“And what have you decided to do in the matter?”

Smith shrugged.  “We acted like a pack of kids,” he said.  “Lettin’ you get the drop on us like this.  Oh, you’re twice as quick on the draw as the best two of us an’ we know it.  An’ ... an’ we ain’t dead sure as we ain’t made a mistake.”