n's a fake! He's got you hipped. He thinks he's boss, becoz he's
the only navigator of yore crowd. I ain't overlooked that card, Carlsen.
That ain't the only string he's got on ye. Nor the three shares he
expects to pull down. He made you pore suckers fire off all your shells;
he found out you ain't got a gun left among you that's enny more use
than a club. He's got a gun an' he showed you how he could use it. He's
sittin' back larfin' at the bunch of you!"

The men stirred. Rainey saw Carlsen's grin disappear. He dropped the
paper. His face paled, the veins showed suddenly like purple veins in
dirty marble.

"I've got that gun yet, Lund," he snarled.

Lund laughed, the ring of it so confident that the men glanced from him
to Carlsen nervously.

"Yo're a fake, Carlsen," he said. "And I've got yore number! To hell
with you an' yore popgun. You ain't even a doctor. I saw real doctors
ashore about my eyes. Niphablepsia, they call snow-blindness. I'll bet
you never heard of it. Yo're only a woman-conning dope-shooter! Else
you'd have known that niphablepsia ain't _permanent_! I've bin' gettin'
my sight back ever sence I left Seattle. An' now, damn you for a moldy
hearted, slimy souled fakir, stand up an' say yo're my equal!"

He stood up himself, towering above the rest as they rose from their
chairs, tearing the black glasses from his eyes and flinging them at
Carlsen, who was forced to throw up a hand to ward them off. Rainey got
one glimpse of the giant's eyes. They were gray-blue, the color of
agate-ware, hard as steel, implacable.

Carlsen swept aside the spectacles and they shattered on the floor as he
leaped up and the automatic shone in his hand. Lund had folded his arms
above his great chest. He laughed again, and his arms opened.

In an instant Rainey caught the object of Lund's speech-making. He had
done it to enrage Carlsen beyond endurance, to make him draw his gun.
Giant as he was, he moved with the grace of a panther, with a swiftness
too fast for the eye to register. Something flashed in his right hand, a
gun, that he had drawn from a holster slung over his left breast.

The shots blended. Lund stood there erect, uninjured. A red blotch
showed between Carlsen's eyes. He slumped down into his chair, his arms
clubbing the table, his gun falling from his nerveless hand, his
forehead striking the wood like the sound of an auctioneer's gavel. Lund
had beaten him to the draw.

Lund, no longer a blind Sam