lroad circle. When the shooting matches were
announced a brown-eyed railroad man was asked to enter. He had been
out of the mountains for some time and was a comparative stranger in
the gathering, but the Williams Cache men had not forgotten him;
Rebstock, especially, wanted to see him shoot. While much of the time
out of the mountains on railroad business, he was known to be closely
in Bucks's counsels, and as to the mountains themselves, he was
reputed to know them better than Bucks or Glover himself knew them.
This was Whispering Smith; but, beyond a low-voiced greeting or an
expression of surprise at meeting an old acquaintance, he avoided
talk. When urged to shoot he resisted all persuasion and backed up his
refusal by showing a bruise on his trigger finger. He declined even to
act as judge in the contest, suggesting the sheriff, Ed Banks, for
that office.

The rifle matches were held in the hills above the ranch-house, and in
the contest between the ranches, for which a sweepstakes had been
arranged, Sinclair entered Seagrue, who was then working for him.
Seagrue shot all the morning and steadily held up the credit of the
Frenchman Valley Ranch against the field. Neither continued shooting
nor severe tests availed to upset Sinclair's entry, and riding back
after the matches with the prize purse in his pocket, Seagrue, who was
tall, light-haired, and perfectly built, made a new honor for himself
on a dare from Stormy Gorman, the foreman of the Dunning ranch.
Gorman, who had ridden a race back with Sinclair, was at the foot of
the long hill, down which the crowd was riding, when he stopped,
yelled back at Seagrue, and, swinging his hat from his head, laid it
on a sloping rock beside the trail.

"You'd better not do that, Stormy," said Sinclair. "Seagrue will put a
hole through it."

Gorman laughed jealously. "If he can hit it, let him hit it."

At the top of the hill Seagrue had dismounted and was making ready to
shoot. Whispering Smith, at his side, had halted with the party, and
the cowboy knelt to adjust his sights. On his knee he turned to
Whispering Smith, whom he seemed to know, with an abrupt question:
"How far do you call it?"

The answer was made without hesitation: "Give it seven hundred and
fifty yards, Seagrue."

The cowboy made ready, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired.
The slug passed through the crown of the hat, and a shower of
splinters flying back from the rock blew the felt into