"Waal, I swar!" he exclaimed. "Why, how in thunder did you do it? I wur looking at your hand, and a'most before I saw it move there was the thing pinting at me. Why, I am reckoned pretty slick, and I ain't a spot upon you. Do it again, lad." Hugh repeated the action. "Waal, that beats me; I can't see how you do it. Your hand goes up to your hip, thar's a twinkle, and thar's the pistol cocked and the hammer falling at once; it's like conjuring! Just do it slow." Hugh showed that as his hand fell on the pistol his thumb rested on the hammer and his forefinger on the trigger, while the others closed on the butt, drew the pistol from the belt, and threw the barrel forward.
"It is just practice," he said. "I have been at it for the last six months."
"Waal, young fellow," Broncho Harry said solemnly, "I have been out on the plains for ten years, and I have seen pretty considerable shooting, but I never saw anything that was a circumstance to that. You are all right. You can get into a muss with the worst bad man in Texas just as soon as you like, and you have got him, sure. I wouldn't have b'lieved it if I hadn't seen it; it is a kind of lightning trick. It air useful to be able to back an unbroken broncho, it air useful to throw a rope sartin and sure at full gallop over rough ground, but it air fifty times more useful to be able to draw a pistol like a flash as you do. Waal, let us go back to camp. You don't mind my telling the boys. It would be hardly fair as any of them should get into a muss with you, thinking as they had got a soft thing; and it will keep you out of trouble, for you may be sure as no one is like to be getting up a muss with you when they know it would be sartin death."
"Do as you like, Broncho; but it seems to me that there is no fear of quarrelling, everyone seems to be wonderfully good-tempered, and not to mind a bit what jokes are played upon him."
"That is so, Hugh; people are apt to keep their temper when they know that if they don't someone gets killed; but it won't be always like this. You see we have all been going through the winter, and some of us have been having pretty hard times, and anyhow we are all pleased to be at work again and out on the plains. But you will see that this kind of thing won't last long. When the work gets heavy and men don't get four hours a night in their blankets, and the herds take to stampeding, and one thing and another, men's tempers won't be as they is now; some of them grow sulky, and won't open their lips all day; and others get that crusty that they are ready to jump down the throat of the first man that speaks to them. Then trouble begins, you bet. Besides, when we get further south, we may come upon Mexican villages, and where there is Mexicans there is spirits, and where there is spirits there is trouble. I tell you, lad, you don't begin to know about a cow-puncher's life yet."
That evening, after the rest of the outfit had returned and supper was over, Broncho Harry said, "I have had about the biggest surprise to-day, boys, that I have ever had. I looked upon Hugh here as a tender-foot; a good un, but still new to it, and I found out that when it comes to a six-shooter, there ain't a man in the camp, nor in the ranche, and I doubt whether there is in all Texas, as can shoot as he does."
No one expressed a doubt as to the cow-boy's assertion, for on the plains to doubt a man's word is a grave insult; but there was a murmur of surprise.
"I don't say as he is the straightest shot," Harry went on; "he is a good shot, although maybe there are plenty who can beat him; but when it comes to quickness of drawing, I never see a man who was a spot to him."
"That's so," Bill Royce put in. "Hugh can shoot straight, wonderful straight; but I have seen men shoot better, and he ain't quite sartin in his shooting when he is going at a gallop, although he'll learn that; but as for quickness—well, I don't know how he does it; his pistol is out before I have time to get a grip of mine."
"Let us see you, Hugh," two or three of the cow-boys said simultaneously.