t Hap Smith's dragging revolver, levelled it and
steadied it across the bar, the muzzle seeking the young giant who had
come a step forward.

"Hands up!" clacked the old man in tremulous triumph. "I got you, dad
burn you!" And at the same instant Hap Smith cried out wonderingly:

"Buck Thornton! You!"

The big man stood very still, only his head turning quickly so that his
eyes were upon the feverish eyes of old man Adams.

"Yes," he returned coolly. "I'm Thornton." And, "Got me, have you?" he
added just as coolly.

Winifred Waverly stiffened in her chair; already tonight had she heard
gunshots and smelled powder and seen spurting red blood. A little surge
of sick horror brought its tinge of vertigo and left her clear thoughted
and afraid.

"Hands up, I say," repeated the old man sharply. "I got you."

"You go to hell," returned Thornton, and his coolness had grown into
curt insolence. "I never saw the man yet that I'm going to do that for."
He came on two more quick, long strides, thrust his face forward and
cried in a voice that rang out commandingly above the crash of the wind,
"_Drop that gun! Drop it!_"

Old man Adams had no intention of obeying; he had played poker himself
for some fifty odd years and knew what bluff meant. But for just one
brief instant he was taken aback, fairly shocked into a fluttering
indecision by the thunderous voice. Then, before he could recover
himself the big man had flung a heavy wet coat into Adams's face, a gun
had been fired wildly, the bullet ripping into the ceiling, and Buck
Thornton had sprung forward and whipped the smoking weapon from an
uncertain grasp. Winifred Waverly, without breathing and without
stirring, saw Buck Thornton's strong white teeth in a wide, good
humoured smile.

"I know you were just joking but..."

He whirled and fired, never lifting the gun from his side. And a man
across the room from him cried out and dropped his own gun and grasped
his shoulder with a hand which slowly went red.

Now again she saw Buck Thornton's teeth. But no longer in a smile. He
had seemed to condone the act of old Adams as a bit of senility; the
look in his eyes was one of blazing rage as this other man drew back and
back from him, muttering.

"I'd have killed you then," said Thornton coldly, his rage the cold
wrath that begets murder in men's souls. "But I shot just a shade too
quick. Try it again, or any other man here draw, and by God, I'll show
you a dead man in