“For stopping a train at Tower W Saturday night.”
The three men looked at one another and laughed.
Du Sang with an oath spoke again: “The men you want are in Canada by this time. I can’t speak for my friends; I don’t know whether they want to go or not. As far as I am concerned, I haven’t killed anybody that I know of. I suppose you’ll pay my expenses back?”
“Why, yes, Du Sang, if you were coming back I would pay your expenses; but you are not coming back. You are riding down Williams Cache for the last time; you’ve ridden down it too many times already. This round-up is especially for you. Don’t deceive yourself; when you ride with me this time out of the Cache, you won’t come back.”
Du Sang laughed, but his blinking eyes were as 301 steady as a cat’s. It did not escape Whispering Smith’s notice that the mettlesome horses ridden by the outlaws were continually working around to the right of his party. He spoke amiably to Karg: “If you can’t manage that horse, Karg, I can. Play fair. It looks to me as if you and Du Sang were getting ready to run for it, and leave George Seagrue to shoot his way through alone.”
Du Sang, with some annoyance, intervened: “That’s all right; I’ll go with you. I’d rather see your papers, but if you’re Whispering Smith it’s all right. I’m due to shoot out a little game sometime with you at Medicine Bend, anyway.”
“Any time, Du Sang; only don’t let your hand wabble next time. It’s too close to your gun now to pull right.”
“Well, I told you I was going to come, didn’t I? And I’m coming––now!”
With the last word he whipped out his gun. There was a crash of bullets. Questioned once by McCloud and reproached for taking chances, Whispering Smith answered simply. “I have to take chances,” he said. “All I ask is an even break.”
But Kennedy had said there was no such thing as an even break with Whispering Smith. A few men in a generation amuse, baffle, and mystify other men with an art based on the principle that 302 the action of the hand is quicker than the action of the eye. With Whispering Smith the drawing of a revolver and the art of throwing his shots instantly from wherever his hand rested was pure sleight-of-hand. To a dexterity so fatal he added a judgment that had not failed when confronted with deceit. From the moment that Du Sang first spoke, Smith, convinced that he meant to shoot his way through the line, waited only for the moment to come. When Du Sang’s hand moved like a flash of light, Whispering Smith, who was holding his coat lapels in his hands, struck his pistol from the scabbard over his heart and threw a bullet at him before he could fire, as a conjurer throws a vanishing coin into the air. Spurring his horse fearfully as he did so, he dashed at Du Sang and Karg, leaped his horse through their line and, wheeling at arm’s length, shot again. Bill Dancing jumped in his saddle, swayed, and toppled to the ground. Stormy Gorman gave a single whoop at the spectacle and, with his two cowboys at his heels, fled for life.