Doret was but a few seconds behind the man, but those few seconds were fateful.  As the pilot stepped into the saloon he beheld a sight that was enough to freeze him motionless.  The big kerosene lamps, swung from the rafter braces above, shed over the interior a peculiar sickly radiance, yellowed now by reason of the pale morning light outside.  Beneath one of the lamps a tableau was set.  Sam Kirby and the man he had struck the night before were facing each other in the center of the room, and Doret heard the gambler cry: 

“I’ve been laying for you!”

Kirby’s usually impassive face was a sight; it was fearfully contorted; it was the countenance of a maniac.  His words were loud and uncannily distinct, and the sound of them had brought a breathless hush over the place.  At the moment of Doret’s entrance the occupants of the saloon seemed petrified; they stood rooted in their tracks as if the anger in that menacing voice had halted them in mid-action.  ’Poleon, too, turned cold, for it seemed to him that he had opened the door upon a roomful of wax figures posed in theatric postures.  Then in the flash of an eye the scene dissolved into action, swift and terrifying.

What happened was so unexpected, it came with such a lack of warning, that few of the witnesses, even though they beheld every move, were able later to agree fully upon details.  Whether Kirby actually fired the first shot, or whether his attempt to do so spurred his antagonist to lightning quickness, was long a matter of dispute.  In a flash the room became a place of deafening echoes.  Shouts of protest, yells of fright, the crash of overturning furniture, the stamp of fleeing feet mingled with the loud explosion of gunshots—­pandemonium.

Fortunately the troupe of women who had been here earlier were gone and the tent was by no means crowded.  Even so, there were enough men present to raise a mighty turmoil.  Some of them took shelter behind the bar, others behind the stove and the tables; some bolted headlong for the door; still others hurled themselves bodily against the canvas walls and ripped their way out.

The duel was over almost as quickly as it had begun.  Sam Kirby’s opponent reeled backward and fetched up against the bar; above the din his hoarse voice rose: 

“He started it!  You saw him!  Tried to kill me!”

He waved a smoking pistol-barrel at the gambler, who had sunk to his knees.  Even while he was shouting out his plea for justification Kirby slid forward upon his face and the fingers of his outstretched hand slowly unloosed themselves from his gun.

It had been a shocking, a sickening affair; the effect of it had been intensified by reason of its unexpectedness, and now, although it was over, excitement gathered fury.  Men burst forth from their places of concealment and made for the open air; the structure vomited its occupants out into the snow.