“I was—­and I’m not!” I replied significantly.

The violent start of this violent outlaw was a rippling jerk of passion.  “What’n hell!” he ejaculated.

“Bill, you’re easy.”

“Who’re you?” he uttered hoarsely.

I watched Snecker with hawk-like keenness.  “United States deputy marshal.  Bill, you’re under arrest!”

He roared a mad curse as his hand clapped down to his gun.  Then I fired through my sombrero.  Snecker’s big horse plunged.  The rustler fell back, and one of his legs pitched high as he slid off the lunging steed.  His other foot caught in the stirrup.  This fact terribly frightened the horse.  He bolted, dragging the rustler for a dozen jumps.  Then Snecker’s foot slipped loose.  He lay limp and still and shapeless in the road.  I did not need to go back to look him over.

But to make assurance doubly sure, I dismounted, and went back to where he lay.  My bullet had gone where it had been aimed.  As I rode up into Sampson’s court-yard and turned in to the porch I heard loud and angry voices.  Sampson and Wright were quarrelling again.  How my lucky star guided me!  I had no plan of action, but my brain was equal to a hundred lightning-swift evolutions.  The voices ceased.  The men had heard the horse.  Both of them came out on the porch.  In an instant I was again the lolling impudent cowboy, half under the influence of liquor.

“It’s only Russ and he’s drunk,” said George Wright contemptuously.

“I heard horses trotting off there,” replied Sampson.  “Maybe the girls are coming.  I bet I teach them not to run off again—­Hello, Russ.”

He looked haggard and thin, but seemed amiable enough.  He was in his shirt-sleeves and he had come out with a gun in his hand.  This he laid on a table near the wall.  He wore no belt.  I rode right up to the porch and, greeting them laconically, made a show of a somewhat tangle-footed cowboy dismounting.  The moment I got off and straightened up, I asked no more.  The game was mine.  It was the great hour of my life and I met it as I had never met another.  I looked and acted what I pretended to be, though a deep and intense passion, an almost ungovernable suspense, an icy sickening nausea abided with me.  All I needed, all I wanted was to get Sampson and Wright together, or failing that, to maneuver into such position that I had any kind of a chance.  Sampson’s gun on the table made three distinct objects for me to watch and two of them could change position.

“What do you want here?” demanded Wright.  He was red, bloated, thick-lipped, all fiery and sweaty from drink, though sober on the moment, and he had the expression of a desperate man in his last stand.  It was his last stand, though he was ignorant of that.

“Me—­Say, Wright, I ain’t fired yet,” I replied, in slow-rising resentment.

“Well, you’re fired now,” he replied insolently.

“Who fires me, I’d like to know?” I walked up on the porch and I had a cigarette in one hand, a match in the other.  I struck the match.