And Gabriel answered quietly, “All right, Joe. I’ll be here when you come back.”
The swinging doors closed behind Phy’s back and the sheriff turned to the man behind the bar.
“Call ’em up,” he said. “This is on me.” He ordered whisky and those who lined up beside him kept looking toward the street entrance; but he remained with his back to the swinging doors. The minutes passed; the doors flew open. Within the threshold Joe Phy halted.
“Commence!” he shouted and flung an oath after the word. “Commence!”
Pete Gabriel turned, and his revolver flew from its holster spitting fire. Phy’s forty-five ejected a thin stream of orange flame. The voices of the weapons mingled in one loud explosion. The two men took a pace toward each other and the smoke grew thicker as they shot again in unison. They came on slowly, pulling the triggers until the room was filled with the black powder fumes.
Then Pete Gabriel stood swaying within arm’s length of Joe Phy’s prostrate form. And as he struggled 299 against the mortal weakness which was now creeping through his lead-riddled body the man on the floor whispered,
“I cain’t get up. Get down. We’ll finish it with knives.”
“I guess we’ve both of us got enough,” the sheriff muttered, and staggered out through the door, to lie all night in a near-by corral and live for two years afterward with a bullet through his kidneys.
Joe Phy died hard on the saloon floor. Those in the room gathered about him, and Johnny Murphy strove to lift his head that they might give him a sip of water. A year before he and two others had slain Joe Levy, a faro-dealer in Tucson, and they had done it foully from behind. Since that time men had avoided him, speaking to him only when it was absolutely necessary, and his hair had turned snow-white. Joe Phy opened his eyes and recognized his would-be helper.
“Don’t you dare lay a hand on me,” he cried, “you murderer,” and struck Murphy full in the face. His hand fell limply back. The breath had departed from his body with that blow.