ng's
saloon.

"Pete," he said, "I'm going home after my six-shooter and I'm coming
back to fight it out with you. Get ready while I'm gone."

And Gabriel answered quietly, "All right, Joe. I'll be here when you
come back."

The swinging doors closed behind Phy's back and the sheriff turned to
the man behind the bar.

"Call 'em up," he said. "This is on me." He ordered whisky and those
who lined up beside him kept looking toward the street entrance; but
he remained with his back to the swinging doors. The minutes passed;
the doors flew open. Within the threshold Joe Phy halted.

"Commence!" he shouted and flung an oath after the word. "Commence!"

Pete Gabriel turned, and his revolver flew from its holster spitting
fire. Phy's forty-five ejected a thin stream of orange flame. The
voices of the weapons mingled in one loud explosion. The two men took
a pace toward each other and the smoke grew thicker as they shot again
in unison. They came on slowly, pulling the triggers until the room
was filled with the black powder fumes.

Then Pete Gabriel stood swaying within arm's length of Joe Phy's
prostrate form. And as he struggled against the mortal weakness which
was now creeping through his lead-riddled body the man on the floor
whispered,

"I cain't get up. Get down. We'll finish it with knives."

"I guess we've both of us got enough," the sheriff muttered, and
staggered out through the door, to lie all night in a near-by corral
and live for two years afterward with a bullet through his kidneys.

Joe Phy died hard on the saloon floor. Those in the room gathered
about him, and Johnny Murphy strove to lift his head that they might
give him a sip of water. A year before he and two others had slain Joe
Levy, a faro-dealer in Tucson, and they had done it foully from
behind. Since that time men had avoided him, speaking to him only when
it was absolutely necessary, and his hair had turned snow-white. Joe
Phy opened his eyes and recognized his would-be helper.

"Don't you dare lay a hand on me," he cried, "you murderer," and
struck Murphy full in the face. His hand fell limply back. The breath
had departed from his body with that blow.

The long procession is waning. Now those are coming whose headboards
were erected in the early eighties. A company of swarthy black-eyed
riders in the flaring trousers and steep-crowned sombreros of Mexico
jog along elbow to elbow with hard-eyed horsemen from the valleys of
the San S