"Wal, considerin' you-all seem so damn friendly an' oncurious down
here in this Big Bend country, I don't mind sayin' yes--I am in on the
dodge," he replied, with deliberate sarcasm.

"From west of Ord--out El Paso way, mebbe?"

"Sure."

"A-huh! Thet so?" Knell's words cut the air, stilled the room. "You're
from way down the river. Thet's what they say down there--'on the
dodge.'... Stranger, you're a liar!"

With swift clink of spur and thump of boot the crowd split, leaving
Knell and the stranger in the center.

Wild breed of that ilk never made a mistake in judging a man's nerve.
Knell had cut out with the trenchant call, and stood ready. The stranger
suddenly lost his every semblance to the rough and easy character before
manifest in him. He became bronze. That situation seemed familiar
to him. His eyes held a singular piercing light that danced like a
compass-needle.

"Sure I lied," he said; "so I ain't takin' offense at the way you called
me. I'm lookin' to make friends, not enemies. You don't strike me as one
of them four-flushes, achin' to kill somebody. But if you are--go ahead
an' open the ball.... You see, I never throw a gun on them fellers till
they go fer theirs."

Knell coolly eyed his antagonist, his strange face not changing in the
least. Yet somehow it was evident in his look that here was metal which
rang differently from what he had expected. Invited to start a fight
or withdraw, as he chose, Knell proved himself big in the manner
characteristic of only the genuine gunman.

"Stranger, I pass," he said, and, turning to the bar, he ordered liquor.

The tension relaxed, the silence broke, the men filled up the gap; the
incident seemed closed. Jim Fletcher attached himself to the stranger,
and now both respect and friendliness tempered his asperity.

"Wal, fer want of a better handle I'll call you Dodge," he said.

"Dodge's as good as any.... Gents, line up again--an' if you can't be
friendly, be careful!"

Such was Buck Duane's debut in the little outlaw hamlet of Ord.

Duane had been three months out of the Nueces country. At El Paso
he bought the finest horse he could find, and, armed and otherwise
outfitted to suit him, he had taken to unknown trails. Leisurely he rode
from town to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, fitting his talk
and his occupation to the impression he wanted to make upon different
people whom he met. He was in turn a cowboy, a rancher, a cattleman,
a stoc