A silence fell. Singularly, the circle parted right and left in a jostle and a scramble.
Montoyo surveyed him.
“Why?”
“For her, o’ course.”
The gambler smiled—a slow, contemptuous smile while his gray eyes focused watchfully.
“It’s a case where I have nothing to gain,” said he. “And you’ve nothing to lose. I never bet in the teeth of a pat hand. Sabe? Besides, my young Mormon cub, when did you enter this game? Where’s your ante? For the sport of it, now, what do you think of putting up, to make it interesting? One of your mammies? Tut, tut!”
Daniel’s freckled bovine face flushed muddy red; in the midst of it his faulty eyes were more pronounced than ever—beady, twinkling, and so at cross purposes that they apparently did not center upon the gambler at all. But his right hand had stiffened at his side—extended there flat and tremulous like the vibrant tail of a rattlesnake. He blurted harshly: 187
“I ’laow to kill yu for that. Draw, yu——!”
We caught breath. Montoyo’s hand had darted down, and up, with motion too smooth and elusive for the eye, particularly when our eyes had to be upon both. His revolver poised half-way out of the scabbard, held there rigidly, frozen in mid course; for Daniel had laughed loudly over leveled barrel.
How he had achieved so quickly no man of us knew. Yet there it was—his Colt’s, out, cocked, wicked and yearning and ready.