True, Texas had flashed
around in his tracks when he had felt the gun leaving its holster, and
had made a lightning movement with his hand to prevent such a
disgraceful occurrence. But he might just as well have reached for a
rainbow. As he had faced about, rage-flushed and impotent, he saw his
gun swinging loosely in Webster's left hand, while in Webster's right
hand another big six-shooter had reached a foreboding level.

The distance between the two men approximated ten feet; for Webster had
wisely stepped back, knowing Rankin's reluctance toward submission.

And now, over the ten feet of space, captive and captor surveyed one
another with that narrowing of the eyes which denotes tension and warns
of danger.

"I reckon I was too quick for you, Texas," said Webster, with a
gentleness that fell too softly to be genuine.

Rankin gazed dolefully at his empty holster. The skin tensed over his
teeth in a grinning sneer.

"I ain't sayin' that you took a mean advantage," he said, raising his
eyes and allowing them an expression of mild innocence that contrasted
strangely with his drawn lips, "but you might have given me a chance to
fight it out square. I wouldn't have took your gun, Jim."

Knowing Texas less intimately, the sheriff might have been misled by
this crude sentiment; but the sheriff's fingers only drew more closely
around the ivory handle of his .45. And there came a glint of humor into
his eyes.

"I ain't sayin' you would, Texas. But as sheriff of Socorro County I
ain't takin' any chances. I wanted to talk to you, an' I knew if I had
your gun I'd feel easier."

"Which means that you didn't want me to have a chance," complained Texas
glumly. "Socorro's always been meaner'n ----"

"'T ain't Socorro's fault," interrupted the sheriff with a sudden
coldness; "you've been cuttin' didoes in Socorro for so long a time that
you've disgraced yourself. You've gambled an' shot yourself into
disfavor with the _elite_. You've been as ornery an' as compromisin' as
it's possible for any human maverick to get without havin' to
requisition the unwillin' mourners."

"Not that I'm sayin' you're naturally bad, Texas. It's that you've got
an overdose of what them modern brain specialists call exaggerated ego;
which us common critters would call plain swell head. That there
disease is listed an' catalogued in the text books of the New York
Medical Institoot as bearin' a close relationship to the geni Loco;
which is a sci