ache, and his face was drawn and white and his shoulder
burning under the easy grip of Jack's hand. From the bore of the
unremitting glance that had confounded him he shifted his gaze
sheepishly.

"Oh, h--l!" he said, and the tone, in its disgust and its attempt to
laugh off the incident, gave the simplicity of an exclamation from his
limited vocabulary its character. "Oh, h--l! I was just trying you out as
a tenderfoot--a little joke!"

At this, all the crowd laughed in an explosive breath of relief. The
inflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from face
to face, with the result that all became piously sober.

"Then it is all right? I meant in no way to wound your feelings or even
your susceptibilities," said Jack; and, accepting the incident as closed,
he turned to the counter and asked for the Ewold mail.

Free from that smile and the glint of the eyes, Pete came to in a torrent
of reaction. He, with six notches on his gun-handle, had been trifled
with by a grinning tenderfoot. Rage mounted red to his brow. No man who
had humiliated him should live. He would have shot Jack in the back if it
had not been for Jim Galway, lean as a lath, lantern-jawed, with deep-set
blue eyes, his bearing different from that of the other loungers. Jim had
not joined in the laugh over Pete's explanation; he had remained
impassive through the whole scene; but the readiness with which he
knocked Leddy's revolver down showed that this immovability had let
nothing escape his quiet observation.

When Jack looked around and understood what had passed, his face
was without the smile. It was set and his body had stiffened free
of the counter.

"I'll take the gun away from him. It's high time somebody did,"
said Galway.

"I think you had better, if that is the only way that he knows how to
fight," said Jack. "I have wondered how he got the six. Presumably he
murdered them."

"To their faces, as I'll get you!" Leddy answered. "I'll play your way
now, one, two, three--fire!"

Galway, convinced that this stranger did not know how to shoot,
turned to Jack:

"It's not worth your being a target for a dead shot," he said.

"In the morning, yes," answered Jack; and he was smiling again in a way
that swept the audience with uncanniness. "But to-night I am engaged.
Make it early to-morrow, as I have to take the first train East."

"Well, are you going to let me go?" Leddy asked Jim, while he looked in
appeal to the lo