tack that made it terrible, and Strann
cursed and pulled his gun. He could never have used it. He was a whole
half second too late, but before the dog sprang a voice cut in: "Bart!"

It checked the animal in its very leap; it landed on the floor and slid
on stiffly extended legs to the feet of Strann.

"Bart!" rang the voice again.

And the beast, flattening to the floor, crawled backwards, inch by inch;
it was slavering, and there was a ravening madness in its eyes.

"Look at it!" cried Strann. "By God, it's mad!"

And he raised his gun to draw the bead.

"Wait!" called the same voice which had checked the spring of the dog.
Surely it could not have come from the lips of Barry. It held a
resonance of chiming metal; it was not loud, but it carried like a
brazen bell. "Don't do it, Strann!"

And it came to every man in the barroom that it was unhealthy to stand
between the two men at that instant; a sudden path opened from Barry to
Strann.

"Bart!" came the command again. "Heel!"

The dog obeyed with a slinking swiftness; Jerry Strann put up his gun
and smiled.

"I don't take a start on no man," he announced quite pleasantly. "I
don't need to. But--you yaller hearted houn'--get out from between. When
I make my draw I'm goin' to kill that damn wolf."

Now, the fighting face of Jerry Strann was well known in the Three B's,
and it was something for men to remember until they died in a peaceful
bed. Yet there was not a glance, from the bystanders, for Strann. They
stood back against the wall, flattening themselves, and they stared,
fascinated, at the slender stranger. Not that his face had grown ugly by
a sudden metamorphosis. It was more beautiful than ever, for the man was
smiling. It was his eyes which held them. Behind the brown a light was
growing, a yellow and unearthly glimmer which one felt might be seen on
the darkest night.

There was none of the coward in Jerry Strann. He looked full into that
yellow, glimmering, changing light--he looked steadily--and a strange
feeling swept over him. No, it was not fear. Long experience had taught
him that there was not another man in the Three B's, with the exception
of his own terrible brother, who could get a gun out of the leather
faster than he, but now it seemed to Jerry Strann that he was facing
something more than mortal speed and human strength and surety. He could
not tell in what the feeling was based. But it was a giant, dim
foreboding holding dominion