"'You gents get through with this or else tie up my finger,' he kept sayin'.""Helm wasn't the whole show.There was some others bein' hung that day and when one of them dropped off his box, Boone says: 'There's one gone to hell.' Pretty soon another went, and hung there wiggling, and six times he went through all the motions of pullin' his six-shooter and firin' it.Icounted.'Kick away, old fellow,' says Boone Helm, 'I'll be with you soon.'

Then it came his turn and he hollered: 'Hurrah for Jeff Davis; let her rip!' That was how Boone Helm--"The rest of the story was blotted from the mind of Vic Gregg by the thud of a heavy heel on the veranda, and then the broad shoulders of Blondy Hansen darkened the doorway, Blondy Hansen dressed for the dance, with the knot of his black silk handkerchief turned to the front and above that the gleam of his celluloid collar.It was dim in the saloon, compared with the brightness of the outdoors, and perhaps Blondy did not see Vic.At any rate he took his place at the other end of the bar.Three pictures tangled in the mind of Gregg like three bodies in a whirlpool--Betty, Blondy, Pete Glass.That strange clearness of perception increased and the whole affair lay plainly before him.Betty had sent Hansen, dressed manifestly for the festival, to gloat over Vic in Lorrimer's place.He was at it already.

"All turned out for the dance, Blondy, eh? Takin' a girl?""Betty Neal," answered Blondy.

"The hell you are!" inquired Lorrimer, mildly astonished."I thought--why, Vic's back in town, don't you know that?""He ain't got a mortgage on what she does."Then, guided by the side-glance of Lorrimer, Hansen saw Gregg, and he stiffened.As for Vic, he perceived the last link in his chain of evidence.

Hansen was going to a dance, and yet he wore a gun, and there could be only one meaning in that: Betty had sent him down there to wind up the affair.

"Didn't see you, Vic," Blondy was saying, his flushed face seeming doubly red against the paleness of his hair."Have something?""I ain't drinkin'," answered Gregg, and slowly, to make sure that no one could miss his meaning, he poured out a glass of liquor, and drank it with his face towards Hansen.When he put his glass down his mind was clearer than ever; and with omniscient precision, with nerveless calm, he knew that he was going to kill Blondy Hansen; knew exactly where the bullet would strike.It was something put behind him; his mind had already seen Hansen fall, and he smiled.

Dead silence had fallen over the room, and in the silence Gregg heard a muffled, ticking sound, the beating of his heart; heard old Lew Perkins as the latter softly, slowly, glided back out of the straight line of danger;heard the quick breathing of Captain Lorrimer who stood pasty pale, gaping behind the bar; heard the gritted teeth of Blondy Hansen, who would not take water.

"Vic," said Blondy, "it looks like you mean trouble.Anyway, you just now done something that needs explaining."He stood straight as a soldier, rigid, but the fingers of his right hand twitched, twitched, twitched; the hand itself stole higher.Very calmly, Vic hunted for his words, found them.

"A cattle rustler is bad," he pronounced, "a hoss thief is worse, but you're the lowest sneak of the lot, Blondy."Again that silence with the pulse in it, and Vic Gregg could feel the chill which numbed every one except himself.

The lower jaw of Captain Lorrimer sagged, and his whisper came out in jerking syllables: "God Almighty!" Then Blondy went for his gun, and Vic waited with his hand on the butt of his own, waited with a perfect, cold foreknowledge, heard Blondy moan as his Colt hung in the holster, saw the flash of the barrel as it whipped out, and then jerked his own weapon and fired from the hip.Blondy staggered but kept himself from falling by gripping the edge of the bar with his left hand; the right, still holding the gun, raised and rubbed across his forehead; he looked like a sleeper awakening.

Not a sound from any one else, while Vic watched the tiny wraith of smoke jerk up from the muzzle of his revolver.Then Blondy's gun flashed down and clanked on the floor.A red spot grew on the breast of Hansen's shirt; now he leaned as if to pick up something, but instead, slid forward on his face.Vic stepped to him and stirred the body with his toe; it wobbled, limp.