up to see that dude tenderfoot, still smiling, going straight toward the
muzzle pointed at his head, his hands at his side in no attempt to draw.
The thing was incredible and supernatural.

"Pete is letting him come close first," they thought.

But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver and
the tenderfoot's hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatory
position. Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his trigger
finger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expect
to lose his nerve. Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whose
vision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let us
have his version.

"He just walked over to Pete--that's all I can say--walked over to him,
simple and calm, like he was going to ask for a match. All I could think
of and see was his smile right into that muzzle and the glint in his
eyes, which were looking into Pete's. Someway you couldn't shoot into
that smile and that glint, which was sort of saying, 'Go ahead! I'm
leaving it to you and I don't care!'--just as if a flash of powder was
all the same to him as a flash of lightning."

The desert had given Jack life; and it would seem as if what the desert
had given, it might take away. He was not going to humble himself by
throwing up his arms or standing still for execution. He was on his way
into the store and he continued on his way. If something stopped him,
then he would not have to take the train East in the morning.

"Now if you want to kill me, Pete Leddy," the astonished group heard this
stranger say, "why, I'm not going to deny you the chance. But I don't
want you to do it just out of impulse, and I know that is not your own
reasoned way. You certainly would want sporting rules to prevail and that
I should have an equal chance of killing you. So we will go outside,
stand off any number of paces you say, let our gun-barrels hang down even
with the seams of our trousers, and wait for somebody to say 'one, two,
three--fire!'"

Not once had that peculiar smile faded from Jack's lips or the glint in
his eyes diverted from its probe of Leddy's eyes. His voice went well
with the smile and with an undercurrent of high voltage which seemed the
audible corollary of the glint. Every man knew that, despite his gay
adornment, he was not bluffing. He had made his proposition in deadly
earnest and was ready to carry it out. Pete Leddy shuffled and bit the
ends of his moust