"I'll let you off one way," said Jack Hood. "Stand up here, and face the crowd and tell 'em you're a liar, that you're sorry for what you done!"
Bull faced the crowd. A shudder of expectancy went through them, and then they saw that his face was working, not with shame or fear but with a mental struggle, and then he spoke.
"Gents, it seems like I may be wrong. I may have tripped him which I didn't mean to. But not knowing that I tripped him, I got to say that I can't call myself a liar. I can't apologize."
They were shocked into a new attention; they saw him turn and face the frown of Jack Hood.
"You're forcing this fight, stranger. And, if you keep on, you'll drop, sir. I promise you that!"
The sudden change in affairs had astonished Jack Hood; now his astonishment gave way to a sort of hungry joy.
"I never was strong on words. I got two ways of talking and here's the one I like best!" As he uttered the last word he reached for his gun.
The little man glided out of the shadow, crouched, intense. It seemed to him that the hand of Bull Hunter hung motionless at his side while the gun flashed out from Hood's holster. He groaned at the thought, but in the last second, there was a move of Hunter's hand that no eye could follow, that singular convulsive twitch which Pete Reeve had taught him so long before. Only one gun spoke. Jack Hood spun sidewise and crashed to the floor, and his gun rattled far away.
By the time the first man had rushed to the fallen figure, the gun was back in Bull's holster.
The little man in the shadow heard him saying, "Pardners, he's not dead. He's shot through the right shoulder, low, beneath the joint. That bullet won't kill him, but get him bandaged quick!"