“Come on, then,” blustered Wambush.  “I’m either yore meat or you are mine.”  He turned to the door and pushed the crowd before him as he stamped out of the hall into the street.

Harriet ran between Westerfelt and the door.  She put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him beseechingly.  “Don’t go out there,” she pleaded; “stay here and let him cool off; he is drinking!  He’s a dangerous man.”

He took her hands and held them for an instant and then dropped them.  “I’m afraid he’s been humored too much,” he smiled.  “I’d never have any respect for myself if I was to back down now.  I’ve known his kind to be cured by a good, sound thrashing, when nothing else would do any good.”

She raised her hands again, but he avoided her gently and went out into the street.  Wambush stood on the sidewalk a few yards from the door, one booted foot on the curbstone, the other on the ground.  He had thrown his broad-brimmed hat on the ground, and tossed his long hair back over his shoulders.  His left hand rested on his raised knee, his right was in the pocket of his short coat.

“Come on, if you ain’t too weak-kneed,” he jeered, as Westerfelt appeared on the veranda.

Westerfelt advanced towards Wambush, but when he was within a few feet of him, Wambush suddenly drew a revolver, cocked it, and deliberately raised it.  Westerfelt stopped and looked straight into Wambush’s eyes.

“I’m unarmed,” said he; “I never carry a pistol; is that the way you do your fighting?”

“That’s yore lookout, not mine, d——­n you!”

Just then Luke Bradley ran up the sidewalk and out on the veranda near Westerfelt.  He had a warning on his lips, but seeing the critical situation he said nothing.  A white, tigerish look came into the face of Westerfelt.  The cords of his neck tightened as he leaned slowly towards Wambush.  He was about to spring.

“Don’t be a fool, John,” cautioned Bradley.  “Be ashamed o’ yorese’f, Toot!  Drap that gun, an’ fight like a man ur not at all!”

Wambush’s eye ran along the revolver, following every movement of Westerfelt’s with the caution of a panther watching dangerous prey.

“One more inch and you are a dead man!” he said, slowly.

Mrs. Floyd, who was on the veranda, cried out and threw her arms round Harriet, who seemed ready to run between the two men.  No one quite saw how it happened, but Westerfelt suddenly bent near the earth and sprang forward.  Wambush’s revolver went off over his head, and before he could cock it again, Westerfelt, with a swift sweep of his arm, had sent it spinning through a window-pane in the hotel.

“Ah!” escaped somebody’s lips in the silent crowd, and the two men, closely on the alert, faced each other.

“Part ’em, men; what are you about?” cried Mrs. Floyd.

“Yes, part ’em,” laughed a man on the edge of the crowd; “somebody ’ll get his beauty spiled; Toot kin claw like a pant’er; I don’t know what t’other man kin do, but he looks game.”