han the
gold medal and a horse up on this lariat game. I've heard some say you
two have put your necks in the jack-pot. On the quiet, what do you
reckon you're going to do to the greaser?"

Jack shifted his glance to Dade's face, tense with anxiety while he
waited. He looked out over the slope dotted thickly with people, laughed
briefly and mirthlessly, and then looked full at Bill.

"I reckon I'm going to kill him," he said very quietly.

Big Bill stared. "Say! I'm glad I ain't the greaser," he said dryly,
answering a certain something in Jack's eyes and around his lips. Bill
had heard men threaten death, before now; but he did not think of this
as a threat. To him it seemed a sentence of death.

"Jack, you'll be sorry for it," warned Dade under his breath. "Don't go
and--"

"I don't want to hear any remarks on the subject." Never in all the
years of their friendship had Jack spoken to him in so harsh a tone.
"God Almighty couldn't talk me out of it. I'm going to kill him. Let it
go at that." He turned abruptly and walked away to the stable, and the
two stood perfectly still and watched him out of sight.

"He'll do it, too," said Dade distressfully. "There's something in this
I don't understand--but he'll do it."

CHAPTER XXII

THE BATTLE OF BEASTS

Sweating, impatient humans wedged tight upon the seats around the rim of
the great adobe corral, waited for the bulls to dash in through the gate
and be goaded into the frenzy that would thrill the spectators
pleasurably. Meantime, those spectators munched sweets and gossiped,
smoked cigarettes and gossiped; sweltered under the glare of the sun and
gossiped; and always they talked of the gringos, who had come one
hundred strong and never a woman among them; one hundred strong, and
every man of them dangling pistols at his hips--pistols that could shoot
six times before they must be reloaded, and shoot with marvelous
exactness of aim at that; one hundred strong, and every one of the
hundred making bets that the gringo with the red-brown hair would win
the medalla oro from Don Jose, who three times had fought and kept it
flashing on his breast, so that now no vaquero dared lift eyes to it!

Truly, those gringos were a mad people, said the gossips. They would
see the blue-eyed one flung dead upon the ground, and then--would the
gringos want to fight? Knives were instinctively loosened under sashes
when the owners talked of the possibility. Knives are swift