"He ought to, from his repeated emphasis," answered Jack, in agreeable affirmation.
"He has six notches on his gun-handle—six men that he has killed!"
Mary went on.
"Whew!" said Jack. "And he isn't more than thirty! He seems a hard worker who keeps right on the job."
She pressed her lips together to control her amusement, before she asked categorically, with the precision of a school-mistress:
"Do you know how to shoot?"
He was surprised. He seemed to be wondering if she were not making sport of him.
"Why should I carry a six-shooter if I did not?" he asked.
This convinced her that his revolver was a part of his play cowboy costume. He had come out of the East thinking that desperado etiquette of the Bad Lands was opéra bouffe.
"Leddy is a dead shot. He will give you no chance!" she insisted.
"I should think not," Jack mused. "No, naturally not; otherwise there might have been no sixth notch. The third or the fourth, even the second object of his favor might have blasted his fair young career as a wood-carver. Has he set any limit to his ambition? Is he going to make it an even hundred and then retire?"