t it, it would most likely hit me."

"How could I practise to learn to shoot the way you do?"

He looked at her inquiringly; "What do you know about the way I shoot?"

"Nothing, of course. I mean the way that men who carry guns like this
shoot."

He thought a moment. "Get down into a dark cellar with just one window.
Block out all the light from that window except one small circle. Shoot,
off-hand, till you can put five bullets through the circle without
mussing up the general surroundings."

"That sounds like hard work."

"It's certainly----" He just hesitated and then continued: "hard on the
ammunition."

She found by this time she could tolerate the dry smile that lighted his
face now and again, and the drawl of words that went with the expression.
At times he seemed simple, yet there was shrewdness behind his humor.

"I didn't see you stop back there on the bench to pick anything up," she
remarked abruptly, thinking of her own pistol again.

"I circled back to get it."

"Without dismounting?'"

"You wouldn't hardly want to get off to pick up anything as light as
that."

"I wish I'd seen you do it."

"If you'd been looking I might've been trying to get hold of it yet."

She examined the Colt's gun curiously. She asked him how to handle it.
He obligingly broke it, emptied the cylinders and explained how it was
fired. But she was not equal to handling the big thing, and told him so.

"Though if I should want to kill you now it would be easy, wouldn't it?"
she reflected, after he had reloaded the gun and laid it in her hand, the
muzzle pointing toward himself and her finger resting on the trigger.

"Not without cocking the gun."

"No, but I mean suppose I really _should_ want to kill you----"

"I'll show you." He cocked the revolver and placed it again in her hand
and it lay once more with her finger on the trigger.

"Now," he explained, "I'm covered."

"And to kill you all I have to do is to pull the trigger."

"Pulling the trigger, the way things are now, would certainly be a big
start in that direction. But"--the dry suspicion of a laugh crossed his
eyes--"to point a gun at a man and pull the trigger doesn't always kill
him--not, anyways, in this country. If it did, the population would fall
off pretty strong in some of these northern counties. And you might be
surprised if I told you you couldn't pull the trigger right now, anyway."

"How do you know that?"

"Try it."

"But I