"And keep your words?"
"Yes!" they assented.
But neither moved. The fact that Jack had not yet lowered his revolver made them cautious. They were obviously over-anxious to play safe to the last.
"Then go!" called Jack.
Pete and Ropey slouched away, leaving behind Ropey's gun, which was unimportant as it had only one notch, and Pete's precious companion of many campaigns with its six notches, lying on the sand.
"And, gentlemen," Jack called to the spectators, "our little entertainment is over now. I am afraid that you will be late for breakfast."
Apparently it came as a real inspiration to all at once that they might be, for they began to withdraw with a celerity that was amazingly spontaneous. Their heads disappeared below the skyline and only the actors were left. Pete and Ropey—Bill Lang following—walked away along the bed of the arroyo, instead of going over the bank. Pete paused when he was out of range. The old threat was again in his pose.
"I'm not through with you, yet!" he called.
"Why, I hope you are!" Jack answered.
He let his revolver fall with a convulsion of weakness. Mary wondered if he were going to faint. She wondered if she herself were not going to faint, in a giddy second, while the red spot on the sand shaped itself in revolving grotesquery. But the consciousness that she must not lift her weight from the artery was a centering idea to keep her faculties in some sort of equilibrium.