Jim Galloway was not a coward and Rod Norton knew it.  He was essentially a gambler whose business in life was to take chances.  But he was of that type of gambler who plays not for the love of the game but to win; who sets a cool brain to study each hand before he lays his bet; who gauges the strength of that hand not alone upon its intrinsic value but upon a shrewd guess at the value of the cards out against it.

At that moment he wanted, more than he wanted anything else in the wide scope of his unleashed desires, to kill Rod Norton; he balanced that fact with the other fact that less than anything in the world did he want to be killed himself.  The issue was clear cut.

While a watch might have ticked ten times neither man moved.  During that brief time Galloway’s jaw muscles corded, his face went a little white with the strain put upon him.  The restive horses, tossing their heads, making merry music with jingling bridle chains, might have galloped a moment ago from an old book of fairy-tales, each carrying a man bewitched, turned to stone.

“If you’ve got the sand!” Norton taunted him, his blood running hot with the fierce wish to have done with sidestepping and procrastination.  “If you’ve got the sand, Jim Galloway!”

“It’s better than an even break that I could get you,” said Galloway at last.  “And, at that, it’s an even break or nearly so, that as you slipped out of the saddle you’d get me, too. . . .  You take the pot this time, Norton; I’m not betting.”  Shifting his hand he laid it loosely upon the horn of his saddle.  As he did so his chest inflated deeply to a long breath.

Norton’s uplifted hand came down swiftly, his thumb catching in his belt.  There was a contemptuous glitter in his eyes.

“After this,” he said bluntly, “you’ll always know and I’ll always know that you are afraid.  I make it a part of my business not to under-estimate the man I go out to get; I think I have overestimated you.”

For a moment Galloway seemed not to have heard as he stared away through the gray distances.  When he brought his eyes back to Norton’s they were speculative.

“Men like you and me ought to understand each other and not make any mistakes,” he said, speaking slowly.  “I have just begun to imagine lately that I have been doping you up wrong all the time.  Now I’ve got two propositions to make you; you can take either or neither.”

“It will probably be neither; what are they?  I’ve got a day’s ride ahead of me.”

“Maybe you have; maybe you haven’t.  That depends on what you say to my proposition.  You’re looking for Vidal Nunez, they tell me?”

“And I’m going to get him; as much as anything for the sake of swatting the devil around the stump.”

“Meaning me?” Galloway shrugged.  “Well, here’s my song and dance:  This county isn’t quite big enough; you drop your little job and clear out and leave me alone and I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars now and another ten thousand six months from now.”