ten seconds."

He drew back and put the bar just behind him. Then with a sudden
gesture, he flung down the revolver which had come from Hap Smith's
holster and more recently from old man Adams's fingers, and his hand
flashed to his arm pit and back into plain sight, his own weapon in it.

"I don't savvy your game, sports," he said with the same cool insolence.
"But if you want me to play just go ahead and deal me a hand."

To the last man of them they looked at him and hesitated. It was written
in large bold script upon the faces of them that the girl's thought was
their thought. And yet, though there were upward a dozen of them and
though Poke Drury's firelight flickered on several gun barrels and
though here were men who were not cowards and who did not lack
initiative, to the last man of them they hesitated. As his glance sped
here and there it seemed to stab at them like a knife blade. He
challenged them and stood quietly waiting for the first move. And the
girl by the fire knew almost from the first that no hostile move was
forthcoming. And she knew further that had a man there lifted his hand
Buck Thornton's promise would have been kept and he'd show them a dead
man in ten seconds.

"Suppose," said Thornton suddenly, "you explain. Poke Drury, this being
your shack.... What's the play?"

Drury moistened his lips. But it was Hap Smith who spoke up.

"I've knowed you some time, Buck," he said bluntly. "An' I never knowed
you to go wrong. But ... Well, not an hour ago a man your build an' size
an' with a bandana across his face stuck this place up."

"Well?" said Thornton coolly.

"At first," went on the stage driver heavily and a bit defiantly, "we
thought it was him come back when you come in." His eye met Thornton's
in a long unwavering look. "We ain't certain yet," he ended briefly.

Thornton pondered the matter, his thumb softly caressing the hammer of
his revolver.

"So that's it, is it?" he said finally.

"That's it," returned Hap Smith.

"And what have you decided to do in the matter?"

Smith shrugged. "We acted like a pack of kids," he said. "Lettin' you
get the drop on us like this. Oh, you're twice as quick on the draw as
the best two of us an' we know it. An' ... an' we ain't dead sure as we
ain't made a mistake."

His candidly honest face was troubled. He was not sure that Thornton was
the same man who so short a time ago had shot Bert Stone. It did not
seem reasonable to Hap Smith that