suggestion to the entire nervous crowd, but while the
glasses spun across the bar Buck Daniels walked slowly down the length
of the barroom towards Barry. His face was a study which few men could
have solved; unless there had been someone present who had seen a man
walk to his execution. Beside Dan Barry he stopped and watched the agile
hands at work. There was a change in the position of Barry now, for he
had taken the chair facing the door and the entire crowd; Buck Daniels
stood opposite. The horsehair plied back and forth. And Daniels noted
the hands, lean, tapering like the fingers of a girl of sixteen. They
were perfectly steady; they were the hands of one who had struggled, in
life, with no greater foe than ennui.

"Dan," said Buck, and there was a quiver of excitement in his voice,
like the tremor of a piano string long after it has been struck. "Dan, I
been thinking about something and now I'm ready to tell you what it is."

Barry looked up in slow surprise.

Now the face of Buck Daniels held what men have called a "deadly
pallor," that pallor which comes over one who is cornered and about to
fight for his life. He leaned closer, resting one hand upon the edge of
the table, so that his face was close to Dan Barry.

"Barry," he said, "I'm askin' you for the last time: Will you get your
hoss and ride back to Kate Cumberland with me?"

Dan Barry smiled his gentle, apologetic smile.

"I don't no ways see how I can, Buck."

"Then," said Buck through his teeth, "of all the lyin' hounds in the
world you're the lyin'est and meanest and lowest. Which they ain't words
to tell you what I think of you. Take this instead!"

And the hand which rested on the table darted up and smote Dan Barry on
the cheek, a tingling blow. With the same motion which started his hand
for the blow, Buck Daniels turned on his heel and stepped a pace or two
towards the centre of the room.

There was not a man in the room who had not heard the last words of Buck
Daniels, and not a man who had not seen the blow. Everyone of them had
seen, or heard accurately described, how the slender stranger beat Jerry
Strann to the draw and shot him down in that same place. Such a moan
came from them as when many men catch their breath with pain, and with a
simultaneous movement those who were in line with Buck Daniels and Barry
leaped back against the bar on one side and against the wall on the
other. Their eyes, fascinated, held on the face of Barry