og.

For a moment he looked into the blank faces of the crowd; someone noted
that there was no gun strapped at the side of Donnegan. A voice shouted
a warning.

"Stop, Lewis. The dude ain't got a gun. It's murder!"

It was now that Lewis saw Donnegan sitting the saddle directly behind
him, and he whirled with a moan of fury. It was a twist of his body--in
his eagerness--rather than a turning upon his feet. And he was half
around before the rider moved. Then he conjured a gun from somewhere in
his clothes. There was the flash of the steel, an explosion, and
Scar-faced Lewis was on his knees with a scream of pain holding his
right forearm with his left hand.

The crowd hesitated still for a second, as though it feared to
interfere; but Donnegan had already put up his weapon. A wave of the
curious spectators rushed across the street and gathered around the
injured man. They found that he had been shot through the fleshy part of
the thumb, and the bullet, ranging down the arm, had sliced a furrow to
the bone all the way to the elbow. It was a grisly wound.

Big George Washington Green came running to the door of the dance hall
with a sprig of something green in his hand; one glance assured him that
all was well; and once more that wide, confident grin spread upon his
face. He came to the master and offered the mint; and Donnegan, raising
it to his face, inhaled the scent deeply.

"Good," he said. "And now for a julep, George! Let's go home!"

Across the street a dark-eyed girl had clasped the arm of her companion
in hysterical excitement.

"Did you see?" she asked of her tall companion.

"I saw a murderer shoot down a man; he ought to be hung for it!"

"But the mint! Did you see him smile over it? Oh, what a devil he is;
and what a man!"

Jack Landis flashed a glance of suspicion down at her, but her dancing
eyes had quite forgotten him. They were following the progress of
Donnegan down the street. He rode slowly, and George kept that formal
distance, just a length behind.

18

Before Milligan's the crowd began to buzz like murmuring hornets around
a nest that has been tapped, when they pour out and cannot find the
disturber. It was a rather helpless milling around the wounded man, and
Nelly Lebrun was the one who worked her way through the crowd and came
to Andy Lewis. She did not like Andy. She had been known to refer to him
as a cowardly hawk of a man; but now she bullied the crowd in a shrill
vo