“One—two—three!”
The two shots rang out together, like one. And the two men, their faces gone white and tense drawn, stood looking at each other through the slowly lifting smoke. For as he fired, Farley had thrown the muzzle of his gun downward so that the ball plowed through the sand at the feet of Virginia Dalton’s father, and Dalton’s bullet had winged its way high overhead, seeking the far shore of the lake.
“—— you!” cried Farley shrilly, a red flood of blood in his face as he understood. “Why did you do that? Do you want to be killed, man?”
The man who could have killed him had spared him, the man who had murdered Johnny Watson had stood up courting death and had made no attempt to save himself. And the knowledge only maddened the man who had chosen to die himself at the hand of the man he could not kill—no, not even to “square things” for a dead partner.
“I have killed two men in fair fight in my life,” Dalton told him sternly, his own face flushed hotly. “I am not going to kill a third. And I do not choose to be made to look like a fool French dude in a polite duel! Are you going to kill me?”
Farley laughed evilly.
“In fair fight!” he mocked. “To cut the throat out of a man before he had seen you, to sneak up on him in the dark—and you call that fair fight!”
“I gave him his chance! And he took it—not being a fool!”
“A chance!” scoffed Farley, the rising anger within him making him for the second forget that this was her father, his gun raised. “To drive your —— knife through a man’s throat—to come at him in the dark——”
“I used no knife, and I came upon him in broad daylight. And I shot the throat out of him, after I got this!”