for the ability to defend himself against this bunch of
hold-up men and assassins. Because they can't get me, I'm a
'gunman'----"

"No, you're not a 'gunman.'"

"A gunman and nothing else. That's what everybody, friends and
enemies, reckon me--a gunman. You put me here to clean out this
Calabasas gang, not because of my good looks, but because I've been,
so far, a fraction of a second quicker on a trigger than these
double-damned crooks.

"I don't get any fun out of standing for ten minutes at a time with a
sixty-pound safety-valve dragging on my heart, watching a man's eye to
see whether he is going to pull a gun on me and knock me down with a
slug before I can pull one and knock him down. I don't care for that
kind of thing, Jeff. Hell's delight! I'd rather have a little ranch
with a little patch of alfalfa--enough alfalfa to feed a little bunch
of cattle, a hundred miles from every living soul. What I would like
to do is to own a piece of land under a ten-cent ditch, and watch the
wheat sprout out of the desert."

Jeffries, from behind his pipe, regarded de Spain's random talk
calmly.

"I do feel hard over my father's death," he went on moodily. "Who
wouldn't? If God meant me to forget it, why did he put this mark on my
face, Jeff? I did talk pretty strong to Nan about it on Music
Mountain. She accused me then of being a gunman. It made me hot to be
set down for a gunman by her. I guess I did give it back to her too
strong. That's the trouble--my bark is worse than my bite--I'm always
putting things too strong. I didn't know when I was talking to her
then that Sandusky and Logan were dead. Of course, she thought I was a
butcher. But how could I help it?

"I did feel, for a long time, I'd like to kill with my own hands the
man that murdered my father, Jeff. My mother must have realized that
her babe, if a man-child, was doomed to a life of bloodshed. I've been
trying to think most of the night what she'd want me to do now. I
don't know what I _can_ do, or can't do, when I set eyes on that old
scoundrel. He's got to tell the truth--that's all I say now. If he
lies, after what he made my mother suffer, he ought to die like a
dog--no matter who he is.

"I don't want to break Nan's heart. What can I do? Hanging him here in
Sleepy Cat, if I could do it, wouldn't help her feelings a whole lot.
If I could see the fellow--" de Spain's hands, spread before him on
the table, drew up tight, "if I could get my fingers