“When he turns,” Thornton was telling himself, “it’s going to be in the direction of his gun, and he’s going to come up shooting.”

There were many men there who sensed the thing he did.  Not a man in the saloon whose eyes were not keen and expectant as they ran back and forth between the two, Thornton who had shot Bedloe before now, Bedloe who had sworn to “get him.”  A chair leg scraped and many men started as if it had been the first pistol shot; it was only the man across the table from Bedloe moving back a little, ready to leap to his feet to right or left.  Somebody laughed.  At the sound though Bedloe’s big thick body remained steady like a rock his fingers twitched perceptibly.

“Bedloe,” and Thornton’s voice was cool and low toned, with no tremor in it, no fear, no threat, no hint of any kind of expression, “I want a talk with you.”

He was not five short paces behind the brawler’s back.  The Kid turned a little in his chair, slowly, very slowly like a machine.  His eyes came to rest full upon Thornton’s.  And Thornton, looking back steadily into the hard eyes, steely and blue and fearless, low lidded and watchful, knew that the man had fully expected to see straight into the barrel of a revolver.  For a moment it was as though this place had come under such a spell as that in the tale of the Sleeping Beauty, with every man touched by a swift enchantment that had stilled his blood and turned his body to stone.

Thornton saw that Bedloe’s hands were tense with tendons standing out sharply under the brown skin, the fingers rigid, curved inward a little, and not three inches from the grips of his guns.  And Bedloe saw that Thornton carried a burning cigarette in his left hand, that his right, with thumb caught in the band of his chaps, was careless only in the seeming and that it, too, was alert and tense.  And he remembered the lighting quickness of that right hand.

“What do you want?”

No bluster, no threat, no fear, no hint of expression in the voice which was as steady as Thornton’s, with something in it akin to the steely steadiness of the hard eyes.

They spoke slowly, with little pauses, little silences between.  The man whose chair had scraped looked uncomfortable; the muscles of his throat contracted; his hand shut tight upon his cards, cracking the backs; then he pushed back his chair again, swiftly, and got to his feet.  His deep breathing was audible when he stood to one side where, if there was to be shooting, he would no longer be “in line.”  No one noticed him.

“I want a quiet talk,” was Thornton’s reply.  “I’m not here to start anything, Bedloe.  Will you give me a chance to talk with you?”

Bedloe pondered the words, without distrust, without credence, merely searching for what lay back of them.  And finally he answered with a brief question: 

“Where?”

“Anywhere.  In yonder,” and Thornton’s nod indicated the little room partitioned off from the larger for a private poker room while his eyes clung to Bedloe’s.  “Or outside.  Anywhere.”