as slow an' couldn't help seein' what happened. Butch
was fast, but the young feller was faster. He had Butch by the wrist
before the gun came clear--just gave a little twist--and there he stood
with the gun in his hand pointin' into Butch's face, and Butch sittin'
there like a feller in a trance or wakin' up out of a bad dream.

"Then he gets up, slow and dignified, though he had enough liquor in him
to float a ship.

"'I been mobbed,' he says, 'it's easy to see that. I come here peaceful
and quiet, and here I been mobbed. But I'm comin' back, boys, and I
ain't comin' alone.'

"There was our chance to get him, while he was walking out of that place
without a gun, but somehow nobody moved for him. He didn't look none too
easy, even without his shootin' irons. Out he goes into the night, and
we stood around starin' at each other. Everybody was upset, except Sally
and Bard.

"He says: 'Miss Fortune, this is our dance, I think.'

"'Excuse me,' says Sally, 'I almost forgot about it.'

"And they started to dance to the piano, waltzin' around among the
tables; the rest of us lit out for home because we knew that Butch would
be on his way with his gang before we got very far under cover. But hey,
Steve, where you goin'?"

"I'm going to get in on that dance," called Nash, and was gone at a
racing gallop down the street.

CHAPTER XVI

BLUFF

He found no dance in progress, however, but in the otherwise empty
eating place, which Sally owned and ran with her two capable hands and
the assistance of a cook, sat Sally herself dining at the same table
with the tenderfoot, the flirt, the horse-breaker, the tamer of
gun-fighters.

Nash stood in the shadow of the doorway watching that lean, handsome
face with the suggestion of mockery in the eyes and the trace of
sternness around the thin lips. Not a formidable figure by any means,
but since his experiences of the past few days, Nash was grown extremely
thoughtful.

What he finally thought he caught in this most unusual tenderfoot was a
certain alertness of a more or less hair-trigger variety. Even now as he
sat at ease at the table, one elbow resting lightly upon it, apparently
enwrapped in the converse of Sally Fortune, Nash had a consciousness
that the other might be on his feet and in the most distant part of the
room within a second.

What he noted in the second instant of his observation was that Sally
was not at all loath to waste her time on the stranger.