At the hilltop he carefully searched the plain; a little way down the road, beside a clump of bushes, he saw a riderless horse. He chuckled. “José’s sure hiding out around there somewhere,” was his instant conviction. His head was high, his eyes flashing, and his face set in hard lines as he started the mare forward at a brisk trot. His gaze travelled toward the other horse, studying every bunch of mesquite and questioning every clump of amole and yucca that grew between.
His eye caught the motion of branches in a tall, spreading thicket of mesquite a hundred yards away, not far from the road. They swayed against the wind for a moment, trembled back and forth, and then bent before the breeze like their fellows. The growth was dense, but behind it he could distinguish the outlines of a darker mass, and an instant later he saw a tiny flash of light reflected from some small, bright object. “That must be the sun on his gun-sight,” said Curtis, “and I reckon it’s time to prepare for war.”
Dismounting, he threw the mare’s bridle over her neck. “No; she’ll follow me,” he thought, “and she doesn’t need to mix up in the Delafield affair.”
His eye still on the suspicious clump of bushes, Conrad fastened the mare to an outreaching mesquite limb at the roadside. “This is a better place for you, Brown Betty, nice old girl,” he said, reaching back to pat her neck as she nickered after him.
His pistol in his hand and his vision holding the dark object behind the feathery green plumes of the mesquite, he went on briskly until he had covered half the distance between them. Then he saw the object move cautiously a little to one side, where the leaves were not so thick. Plainly visible now were the straw sombrero, the dusky face below it, the outline of the body, and the revolver held steadily between the branches.
Half a dozen strides more, and he fixed his eyes upon those of Gonzalez, dark and brilliant, gleaming through the scant, fern-like foliage like two coals of brown fire. Conrad’s six-shooter pointed straight between them as he walked slowly toward the bush. He knew that José’s was levelled at his breast. Revolver cocked and finger at trigger he came on, his eyes holding those of the Mexican. José’s pistol hand he disregarded, trusting to his perception of the change, the instant’s flash of decision, that would light Gonzalez’s face when he pulled the trigger. He knew that, should he stumble or miss his footing and so give advantage, or should any hesitation show in face or eye, that second would the Mexican’s bullet fly for his heart.
It was Curtis’s intention not to hurt José unless the need became imperative. Therefore he did not fire, but came silently on, and Gonzalez stood, silent and still, behind the sheltering bush, each with pistol cocked and held at steady aim, the gaze of each holding insistently that of the other. It was a silent duel of eyes, of wills behind the eyes, of purposes behind the wills, and of temperament behind the purposes.
“Will he never shoot?” Conrad asked himself once and again as he approached.
“A brave man! A brave man!” was José’s thought as he watched that steady advance, secure in his own advantage.