A red film seemed to his gaze to come over the face of things.
He slipped his revolver back into the scabbard and paused again to
think. A quiet footstep sounded on the walk behind him, and he
wheeled, still puzzled with the red film and the mental problem.

The sheriff stood quietly facing him, with his thumbs resting lightly
in his belt. He had not drawn his own revolver. He was chewing a
splinter. "Ike," said he, "throw up your hands!"

The nerves of some men act more quickly than those of others, and such
men make the most dangerous pistol shots, when they have good digestion
and long practice at the rapid drawing of the revolver, an art at that
time much cultivated. Ike Anderson's mind and nerves and muscles were
always lightning-like in the instantaneous rapidity of their action.
The eye could scarce have followed the movement by which the revolver
leaped to a level from his right-hand scabbard. He had forgotten, in
his moment of study, that with this six-shooter he had fired once at
the whisky barrel, once at the glass of straws, once at the negro's
heel, twice at the floor, and once at the broomstick. The click on the
empty shell was heard clearly at the hotel bar, distinctly ahead of the
double report that followed. For, such was the sharpness of this man's
mental and muscular action, he had dropped the empty revolver from his
right hand and drawn the other with his left hand in time to meet the
fire of the sheriff.

The left arm of the sheriff dropped. The whole body of Ike Anderson,
shot low through the trunk, as was the sheriff's invariable custom,
melted down and sank into a sitting posture, leaning against the edge
of the stoop. The sheriff with a leap sprang behind the fallen man,
not firing again. Ike Anderson, with a black film now come upon his
eyes, raised his revolver and fired once, twice, three times, four
times, five times, tapping the space in front of him regularly and
carefully with his fire. Then he sank back wearily into the sheriff's
arms.

"All right, mammy!" remarked Ike Anderson, somewhat irrelevantly.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BODY OF THE CRIME

Hour after hour, in the heat of the day or the cool of the evening, the
giant Mexican strode on by the side of the two horsemen, sometimes
trotting like a dog, more often walking with a shambling, wide-reaching
step, tireless as any wild animal. His feet, seamed and parched into
the semblance rather of horn than of flesh and