for you, yearnin' to perforate you, it's just a question of who can shoot
the quickest an' the straightest. In the case of Pickett, I happened to
be the one. It might have been Pickett. If he wasn't as fast as me in
slingin' his gun, why, he oughtn't to have taken no chance. He'd have
been plumb safe if he'd have forgot all about his gun. I don't reckon
that I'd have pined away with sorrow if I hadn't shot him."

She was much impressed with his earnestness, and she looked quickly at
him, nearly convinced. But again the memory of the tragic moment became
vivid in her thoughts, and she shuddered.

"It's too horrible to think of!" she declared.

"I reckon it's no picnic," he admitted. "I ain't never been stuck on
shootin' men. I reckon I didn't sleep a heap for three nights after I
shot Pickett. I kept seein' him, an' pityin' him. But I kept tellin'
myself that it had to be either him or me, an' I kind of got over it.
Pickett _would_ have it, ma'am. When I turned my back to him I was hopin'
that he wouldn't try to play dirt on me. Do you reckon he oughtn't to
have been made to tell you that he had been wrong in tacklin' you? Why,
ma'am, I kind of liked Pickett. He wasn't all bad. He was one of them
kind that's easy led, an' he wasn't a heap responsible; he fell in with
the wrong kind of men--men like Chavis. I've took a lot from Pickett."

"You might have shown him in some other way that you liked him," she said
with unsmiling sarcasm. "It seems to me that men who go about thinking of
shooting each other must have a great deal of the brute in them."

"Meanin' that they ain't civilized, I reckon?"

"Yes. Mr. Masten had the right view. He refused to resort to the methods
you used in bringing Pickett to account. He is too much a gentleman to
act the savage."

For an instant Randerson's eyes lighted with a deep fire. And then he
smiled mirthlessly.

"I reckon Mr. Masten ain't never had anybody stir him up right proper,"
he said mildly. "It takes different things to get a man riled so's he'll
fight--or a woman, either. Either of 'em will fight when the right thing
gets them roused. I expect that deep down in everybody is a little of
that brute that you're talkin' about. I reckon you'd fight like a tiger,
ma'am, if the time ever come when you had to."

"I never expect to kill anybody," she declared, coldly.

"You don't know what you'll do when the time comes, ma'am. You've been
livin' in a part of the country where th