hich
had invoked the silence in the barroom. Norton merely shrugged; there
had been a chance of taking Vidal alone, intercepting him. But that
chance had not been one to wait for; now it was past, negligible, not
to be regretted. At last he knew where Vidal Nunez was and it was his
business to make an arrest and not to wait upon further chance. The
man who is not ready to go into a crowd to get his law-breaker is not
the man to stand for sheriff in the southwest country.

"Coming, Galloway!" Norton's ringing shout came back in answer.
Suddenly the steady pulse of his blood had been stirred, the hot hope
stood high in his heart again that he and Jim Galloway were going to
look into each other's eyes with guns talking and an end of a long
devious trail in sight. For the moment he half forgot Vidal Nunez whom
he could fancy cowering in a corner.

Then when he knew that every man in the Casa Blanca had turned sharply
at his voice he ran from the window to the street, turned the corner of
the building and in at the wide front doorway. A short hall, a closed
door confronting him . . . then that had been flung open and on its
threshold, a gun in each hand, his hat far back on his head, his eyes
on fire, he stood looking in on a half dozen men and three glinting
steel barrels which, describing quick arcs, were whipped from the
window toward him. A gun in Galloway's hand, one in the hand of Vidal
Nunez, the third already spitting fire as Kid Rickard's narrowed eyes
shone above it. The other men had fallen back precipitately to right
and left; Norton noted that Elmer Page was among them, a pace or two
from Rickard's side.

The Kid, being young, had something of youth's impatience, perhaps the
only reminiscence of youth left in a calloused soul. So it was that he
had shot a second too soon. Norton, as both hands rose in front of
him, answered Kid Rickard with the smaller-caliber gun while the Colt
in his right hand was concerned impartially with Galloway and Vidal
Nunez, standing close together. The Kid cursed, his voice rose in a
shriek of anger rather than pain, and he spun about and fell backward,
tripping over an overturned chair.

"Shoot, Galloway!" cried Norton. "Shoot, damn you, shoot!"

Now, as for the second time that day the two men confronted each other,
naked, hot hatred glaring out of their eyes, each man knew that he
stood balancing a crucial second, midway between death and triumph.
Jim Galloway, w