thought I heard a voice cry,
"Macbeth shall sleep no more!"
MACBETH

The sergeant's story evoked a general laugh from his hearers. He arose
and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "Come on, bhoys!" said he.
"Let's beat ut. Morley here's a respectable married man--we've bin
demoralisin' him an' his store long enough, I'm thinkin'."

Pocketing his packet of mail he and his subordinates stepped to the door,
MacDavid casually following them outside. Tethered to the hitching-post,
they noticed, were the team of scare-crow cayuses belonging to Sun Dog
and Many Drunks.

"Poor beggars look as if a turn-out on the range wouldn't do them any
harm," remarked Redmond.

The thud of hoof-beats suddenly fell upon their ears and, turning, they
beheld Gully on his gray horse loping past them, about twenty yards
distant. Apparently in a hurry, he merely waved to them and rode on,
heading in the direction of his ranch. And then occurred a startling,
sinister incident which no man there who witnessed it ever forgot.

Suddenly, with the vicious instinct of Indian curs, three dogs which had
been sprawling in the shade of the dilapidated wagon-box sprang forward
simultaneously in a silent, savage dash at the horse's heels. The
nervous animal gave a violent jump, nearly unseating its rider, who
pitched forward onto the saddlehorn.

They heard his angry, startled oath, and saw him jerk his steed up and
whirl about, then, quick as conjuring, came a darting movement of his
right hand between the lapels of his coat and a pistol-barrel gleamed in
the sun.

The curs, by this time, were flying back to the shelter of the wagon-box,
but ere they reached it--crack! crack! crack! three shots rang out in
quick succession, and three lumps of quivering canine flesh sprawled
grotesquely on the prairie.

The startled spectators stared aghast. Startled--for, though all of them
there were more or less trained shots, such swift, deadly gunmanship as
this was utterly beyond their imaginations. Gully had made no pretence
at aiming. With a snapping action of his wrist he had seemed to
literally fling the shots at the retreating dogs. It was the practised
whirl and flip of the finished gun-man.

No less astounding was the uncanny legerdemain displayed in drawing from
and replacing the weapon in its place of concealment. The Indians,
attracted from the store by the sounds of shooting, began gabbling and
gesticulat