Louise and Lucy stood at one side, where the Sheriff and Judge Banks joined them, leaving Bancroft and Conrad to begin their match. Beneath her calm exterior Miss Dent’s thoughts were in a tumult, and fierce resentment against the cattleman was rising in her heart. Had not Aleck suffered enough already? Why should he be hunted down like this when he was willing to make restitution, even after all these years? Oh, cruel! to beat him down again, when he had won success and respect once more! This man was a savage in his implacable desire for revenge.
Curtis raised his revolver. With both eyes open and without pausing to take aim, he sent a bullet through the bull’s-eye. “Delafield won’t have much chance against a man who can do that!” he exclaimed in a triumphant undertone to Bancroft.
As the test of skill went on, it developed that the banker excelled if he took time to aim accurately, while he of Socorro Springs was the superior at quick shooting.
“It’s my specialty in the shooting line,” said Curtis. “You’d better practise it, Aleck. It’s the thing that counts most if you get into a scrimmage.”
He handed his hat, a wide-brimmed, gray felt, to Judge Banks, asking him to throw it up, adding, “I’d do it myself if my left arm wasn’t in dry dock.” He raised his revolver as the hat left the judge’s hand; there were three quick reports, and he sprang forward and caught the descending sombrero on the muzzle of his pistol. The three perforations in the crown of the hat were so close together that a silver dollar covered them.
“Bravo!” exclaimed the judge. “I don’t know but two other men who can do that. Little Jack Wilder never misses the trick, and Emerson Mead, over at Las Plumas, does it as if he were a machine and couldn’t miss. If you ever get a grudge against me, Mr. Conrad, I’ll engage the undertaker and order my tombstone at once!”
Bancroft turned away quickly. He swung his arm upward, fired, and found that his bullet had hardly nicked the outer rim of the target.
“Don’t pay any attention to your gun,” Curtis admonished him. “Keep both eyes open, look at the bull’s-eye, and unconsciously you’ll aim right at it. If you get into a gun play, where it’s a choice between giving up the ghost yourself or getting the other fellow’s, you want to fasten your eyes on his most accessible part, point your gun that way, and shoot on the wink. Between the eyes is a good place, for then you can hold him with your own. That’s the way I shall fix Delafield,” he added, dropping his voice.
Cold anger seized upon Bancroft as the picture of that gun muzzle close to his own forehead came vividly into his imagination. Until now Conrad had not mentioned the subject of Delafield to him since the day of his return to town, and the banker’s friendly feelings had renewed themselves with the growth of his own confidence and with his desire to compass what he wished without violence. But Curtis had only to speak of his purpose in this cold-blooded manner for the banker to know that he, too, was rapidly becoming as implacable as his pursuer.