Then Douglass did a generous thing.
"I think," said he quietly to the young stranger, "that Blount over there wants to speak to you."
The youngster looked him squarely in the eyes. "I don't know Blount—and if I did it can wait." He was going to see it out side by side with this man, come what might.
Matlock was no fool. As he halted with a swagger beside his men, one of them spoke quickly in an undertone and he looked calculatingly about the room. Something in the unfriendly silence warned him that this time his metal would be fairly put to the test and the sheer cowardice of the man shrank from the ordeal. He would wait for more propitious conditions and with a well-simulated nonchalance he ordered drinks for the house. The scant acceptance of his hospitality flooded his bloodshot eyes with impotent rage, but he made no comment thereon. He merely remarked that it was time to hit the trail, ignoring the titter of contemptuous surprise and disgust which greeted the announcement. Was this the thing he had foresworn so rabidly a scant four hours before! Someone laughed jeeringly and he whirled like a kicked cur, the fires of hell in his eyes.
"If anyone here's got any objections—!" he began furiously but he had been weighed and found wanting and the strain had been relaxed. The whole room was broadly smiling. Douglass's vis-a-vis had returned to his seat, and even the tenderfoot was laughing in pure relief.
Matlock's undoing was so complete that he did not even resent Blount's deep-toned "Buffaloed, by God!" He groped unseeingly for the door, followed by the scowling trio whose faces were flushed with the awful shame of his cowardice. At the threshold they stopped as one man, these three; they were brave men, if evil ones, and their sense of ethics had been outraged unpardonably.
"I'll take my time right now!" said one of them thickly. "I don't work for no d—d coward!" And the others acquiesced: "Same here!"
Matlock glared at them fiendishly for an eternal moment, one hand fumbling at his throat, the other fiercely gripping his gun; but they stared at him with somber contempt and deliberately turned their backs. It was the last straw, and mumbling insanely through frothed lips, the now thoroughly discredited and wholly disgraced wretch stumbled pitiably out into the night of an ostracism more terrible than death.
Never again would man of these ranges take order from him. Never again would women—even the sordid trollops of the slums—give him aught but a pitying glance. And even the little children, awed by his shame, would shrink wide-eyed from his contamination. For the one sin unpardonable, the one foul specter against which range mothers invoke the intercession of their gods, is Cowardice.