If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
hundred times over and over that second.

Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
better--

But we anticipate.

"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.

But he heard nothing:--yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe, catlike figure
straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw this same figure look
at him fully, squarely; as though for the first time really conscious of
his presence. He saw two unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek
bones, out of a copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them;
hold them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
owner of those eyes move--he did not hear, there was no sound, not even
a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw--and move toward him. He
saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to pass a prostrate body on
the floor; always silent, but always coming, always drawing nearer. He
saw this thing, he, Pete Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was
terror. He knew what it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had
sworn to do; t