“Missing every time, of course?”

Galloway nodded.

“You’ll remember I said he was carrying enough of a load to make his aim bad.”

Norton asked half a dozen further questions and then said abruptly: 

“That’s all.  As you go out will you tell the boys to send Antone in?”

Again a hint of color crept slowly, dully, into Galloway’s cheeks.

“You’re going pretty far, Rod Norton,” he said tonelessly.

“You’re damned right I am!” cried Norton ringingly.  “And I am going a lot further, Jim Galloway, before I get through, and you can bet all of your blue chips on it.  I want Antone in here and I want you outside!  Do I get what I want or not?”

Galloway stood motionless, his cigar clamped tight in his big square teeth.  Then he shrugged and went to the door.

“If I am standing a good deal off of you,” he muttered, hanging on his heel just before he passed out, “it’s because I am as strong as any man in the county to see the law brought into San Juan.  And”—­for the first time yielding outwardly to a display of the emotion riding him, he spat out venomously and tauntingly—­“and we’d have had the law here long ago had we had a couple of men in the boots of the Nortons, father and son!”

Rod Norton’s face went a flaming red with anger, his hand grew white upon the butt of the gun at his side.

“Some day, Jim Galloway,” he said steadily, “I’ll get you just as sure as you got Billy Norton!”

Galloway laughed and went out.

To Antone, Norton put the identical questions he had asked of Galloway, receiving virtually the same replies.  Seeking the one opportunity suggesting itself into tricking the bartender, he asked at the end: 

“Just before the shooting, when you and Galloway were talking and he told you that Bisbee was looking for trouble, why weren’t you ready to grab him when he went for his gun?”

Antone was giving his replies as guardedly as Galloway had done.  He took his time now.

“Because,” he began finally, “I do not belief when Senor Galloway speak that . . .”

His eyes had been roving from Norton’s, going here and there about the room.  Suddenly a startled look came into them and he snapped his mouth shut.

“Go on,” prompted the sheriff.

“I don’t remember,” grunted Antone.  “I forget what Senor Galloway say, what I say.  Bisbee say:  ‘Have a drink.’  The Kid say:  ‘Go to hell.’  Bisbee shoot, one, two, three, like that.  I forget what we talk about.”

Norton turned slowly and looked whither Antone had been looking when he cut his own words off so sharply.  The man upon whom his eyes rested longest was a creased-faced Mexican, Vidal Nunez, who now stood, head down, making a cigarette.

“That’s all, Antone,” Norton said.  “Send the Kid in.”

The Kid came, still sullen but swaggering a little, his hat cocked jauntily to one side, the yellow wisp of hair in his faded eyes.  And he in turn questioned, gave such answers as the two had given before him.