ungers, who were his men.

"Yes, by all means," Jack told Galway. "And as I shall want a man with
me, may I rely on you? Four of us will be enough, with a fifth to give
the word."

"Ropey Smith can go with me," said Leddy.

It scarcely occurred to them to give the name of duel to this meeting,
which Jack held was the only fair way when one felt that he must have
satisfaction from an adversary in the form of death. An _arroyo_ a mile
from town was chosen and the time dawn, for a meeting which was to
reverse the ethics of that boasted fair-play in which the man who first
gets a bead is the hero.

"It seems a mediaeval day for me," Jack said, when the details were
concluded. "Good-night, gentlemen," he added, after Bill Lang, with
fingers that bungled from agitation, had filled his arms with
second-class matter.

Jim Galway resumed his position, leaning against the counter watchfully
as the gang filed out to the rear to wet up, and in his right hand, which
was in his pocket, nestled an automatic pistol.

"I'd shot Pete Leddy dead--'twas the first real fair chance within the
law--so help me, God! I would," he thought, "if there had been time to
spare, and save that queer tenderfoot's life. And me a second in a
regular duel! Well, I'll be--but it ain't no regular duel. One of 'em is
going to drop--that is, the tenderfoot is. I don't just know how to line
him up. He beats me!"

VIII

ACCORDING TO CODE

It was the supreme moment of night before dawn. A violet mist shrouded
everything. The clamminess of the dew touched Mary's forehead and her
hand brushed the moisture-laden hedge as she left the Ewold yard. She
remembered that Jack had said that he would camp near the station, so
there was no doubt in which direction she should go. Hastening along the
silent street, it was easy for her to imagine that she and Ignacio were
the only sentient beings, abroad in a world that had stopped breathing.

Softly, impalpably, with both the graciousness of a host and the
determinedness of an intruder who will not be gainsaid, the first rays of
morning light filtered into the mist. The violet went pink. From pale
pink it turned to rose-pink; to the light of life which was as yet as
still as the light of the moon. The occasional giant cactus in the open
beyond the village outskirts ceased to be spectral.

For the first time Mary Ewold was in the presence of the wonder of
daybreak on the desert without watching for the har