Galway, convinced that this stranger did not know how to shoot, turned to Jack:
"It's not worth your being a target for a dead shot," he said.
"In the morning, yes," answered Jack; and he was smiling again in a way that swept the audience with uncanniness. "But to-night I am engaged. Make it early to-morrow, as I have to take the first train East."
"Well, are you going to let me go?" Leddy asked Jim, while he looked in appeal to the loungers, who were his men.
"Yes, by all means," Jack told Galway. "And as I shall want a man with me, may I rely on you? Four of us will be enough, with a fifth to give the word."
"Ropey Smith can go with me," said Leddy.
It scarcely occurred to them to give the name of duel to this meeting, which Jack held was the only fair way when one felt that he must have satisfaction from an adversary in the form of death. An arroyo a mile from town was chosen and the time dawn, for a meeting which was to reverse the ethics of that boasted fair-play in which the man who first gets a bead is the hero.
"It seems a mediaeval day for me," Jack said, when the details were concluded. "Good-night, gentlemen," he added, after Bill Lang, with fingers that bungled from agitation, had filled his arms with second-class matter.
Jim Galway resumed his position, leaning against the counter watchfully as the gang filed out to the rear to wet up, and in his right hand, which was in his pocket, nestled an automatic pistol.
"I'd shot Pete Leddy dead—'twas the first real fair chance within the law—so help me, God! I would," he thought, "if there had been time to spare, and save that queer tenderfoot's life. And me a second in a regular duel! Well, I'll be—but it ain't no regular duel. One of 'em is going to drop—that is, the tenderfoot is. I don't just know how to line him up. He beats me!"