"You've had your chance; you still have it. Now, fight it out or tuck your tail between your legs and do my bidding! And my bidding to you, so that I needn't expect a bullet in the back when I leave you, is to smash that rifle into flinders against the rock chimney. And step lively!"
The last words came sharp and sudden, and Taggart started. And then, hesitating no longer, he whirled the rifle up by the barrel and brought it with all his might crashing against the fireplace; the fragments fell from his tingling fingers. And again Standing laughed at him and again commanded him, saying:
"There are two more rifles; do the same for each one! And remember, Jim Taggart, every time you touch a gun you've got the even break to fight it out; and every time you smash a gun you are saying out loud: 'I'm a dirty yellow dog!' Only make it snappy, Jim Taggart!"
One after the other, and hastily, Jim Taggart smashed the butts off two rifles and jammed trigger and trigger-guard so that from firearms the weapons were resolved into the estate of so much scrap-iron and splintered wood.
"I'll take your two toy guns, Jim," said Standing. "And remember this; at short range the man with the revolver has the edge! When you drag a gun out you've got your chance to come up shooting! Don't overlook that! And remember along with it, that when you hand me a gun, butt-end first, you are saying aloud for the world to hear: 'I'm a dirty yellow dog!'"
"By God...."
"Yes, Jim Taggart, ... by God, you're a dirty dog!"
Lingeringly Taggart drew forth the heavy side-arms dragging at his holsters; all the while he was tempted almost beyond resistance to avail himself of his opportunity and of that quick sure skill of his; to shoot from the hip, as he could do with the swiftness of a flash of the wrist; he could shoot and kill. And within his heart, knowing Bruce Standing as he did, he knew, too, that though he shot true to a hair line, none the less, Bruce Standing would kill him.... He gave a gun into Standing's left hand and saw it thrust into his belt. Then was Taggart's time to snatch out his other weapon and drill that hole through the big body in front of him which would surely let the life run out; now was his chance, while for an instant one of Standing's hands was busy at his belt!... If it had been any other man in the world there confronting him! Any man but Bruce Standing! Jim Taggart was near weeping. But he drew out his second revolver and saw it bestowed as its fellow had been.
"Four times you've said it, plainer than words!" cried Standing ringingly. "Gallup will never forget; and he'll tell the tale! Shipton will remember and will blab! And, what's worse for the soul of a man, Jim Taggart, you'll remember to the last day you live!... And now you three can consider yourselves as so many mongrel curs whose back-biting teeth I've knocked down your throats for you! I'll leave you to your growlings and whinings!"
He swung about and went out. He knew both Gallup and Shipton, knew them and their habits well, and knew that neither man had the habit of carrying a pistol. Further, their coats were off, and he had seen that neither had a holster at his belt. So he turned his back on them to emphasize his contempt and did not turn his head as he plunged into the outside night and into the thick dark under the trees, going back to his hidden cabin and Lynette and Thor. He realized that he himself, despite a herculean physique, was near the tether's end of his endurance; he realized that Lynette was also heavily borne down by all that she, a girl, had gone through and that he had left her overlong with his wolfish dog.