o ready. Something in him will make his arm shake when the
moment to shoot comes and something in Senor Don't Care--his devil--will
make his arm steady."

Could Ignacio be right? Did Jack really know how to shoot? Was he
confident of the outcome? Were his smiles the mask of a conviction that
he was to kill and not to be killed? After all, had his attitude toward
her been merely acting? Had she undergone this humiliation as the fish on
the line of the mischievous play of one who had stopped over a train in
order to do murder? No! If he were capable of such guile he knew that
Leddy could shoot well and that twenty yards was a deadly range for a
good shot. He was taking a chance and the devil in him was laughing at
the chance, while it laughed at her for thinking that he was an innocent
going to slaughter in expression of a capricious sense of chivalry.

"He will win--he will win if Leddy plays fair!" Ignacio repeated.

Now she was telling herself that it was solely for the sake of her
conscience that she wanted to see Senor Don't Care survive; solely for
the sake of her conscience that she wanted to see him go aboard the train
safe. After that, she could forget ever having owed this trifler the
feeling of gratitude for a favor done. Literally, he must live in order
to be a dead and unremembered incident of her existence.

And Jack was back at his station, with the bright sunlight heightening
the colors of his play cowboy attire, his weight on the ball of his right
foot thrown well ahead of the other, his head up, but the whole effect
languid, even deferential. He seemed about to take off his hat to the
joyous sky of a fair day in May. His shadow expressed the same feeling as
his pose, that of tranquil youth with its eyes on the horizon. Leddy had
the peculiar slouch of the desperado, which is associated with the spread
of pioneering civilization by the raucous criers of red-blooded
individualism. If Jack's bearing was amateurish, then Pete's was
professional in its threatening pose; and his shadow, like himself, had
an unrelieved hardness of outline.

Both drew their guns from their holsters and lowered them till the
barrels lay even with the trousers seams. They awaited the word to fire
which Bill Lang, who stood at an angle equidistant from the two men,
was to give.

"Wait!" Jack called, in a tone which indicated that something had
recurred to him. Then a half laugh from him fell on the brilliant,
shining, hard si