"Then you are a liar!" and the man's hand went to his hip. To his astonishment, before his finger had closed on the butt of his pistol, he was looking down the barrel of Hugh's revolver.
"Drop that," Hugh exclaimed, "or I fire!" Flash Bill threw up his hand.
"Now you will take that back," Hugh said.
"I take it back," Flash Bill said sullenly. "You've got the drop on me, though how you did it I don't know. There ain't nothing more to be said. I take it back."
"There is an end of it, then," Hugh said, replacing his pistol in his belt. "You thought you had got a soft thing. You see you've made a mistake."
"You had better git, Flash Bill," Broncho Harry said. "You ain't wanted here. You came over to make a muss, and only I knowed as Hugh could hold his own with you I would have put a bullet into you myself when I saw your hand go to your pistol. You git, and if you will take my advice, you will git altogether. You can't play the bad man in this camp any longer, after weakening before a young chap as is little more than a tender-foot."
With a muttered execration Flash Bill got up, and, followed by the men of his own ranche, walked off.
"You did mighty well, considering that it is the first trouble you've been in, Hugh; but you did wrong in not shooting. The rule on the plains is, if one man calls another either a liar or a coward, that fellow has a right to shoot him down if he can get his gun out first. That's the rule, ain't it, boys?"
There was a chorus of assent.
"You may call a man pretty nigh everything else, and it don't go for much. We ain't chice as to our words here; but them two words, liar and coward, is death, and you would have done well to have shot him. You bet, you'll have trouble with that fellow some day. You'll see he will go now, but you'll hear of him again."