Now a dark trickle was seen to come from the broken lips of Donnegan, yet he was smiling faintly.
Jack Landis muttered a curse and said sneeringly: "Are you afraid?"
There were sick faces in that room; men turned their heads, for nothing is so ghastly as the sight of a man who is taking water.
"Hush," said Donnegan. "I'm going to kill you, Jack. But I want to kill you fairly and squarely. There's no pleasure, you see, in beating a youngster like you to the draw. I want to give you a fighting chance. Besides"—he removed one hand from behind his head and waved it carelessly to where the men of The Corner crouched in the shadow—"you people have seen me drill one chap already, and I'd like to shoot you in a new way. Is that agreeable?"
Two terrible, known figures detached themselves from the gloom near the door.
"Hark to this gent sing," said one, and his name was the Pedlar. "Hark to him sing, Jack, and we'll see that you get fair play."
"Good," said his friend, Joe Rix. "Let him take his try, Jack."
As a matter of fact, had Donnegan reached for a gun, he would have been shot before even Landis could bring out a weapon, for the steady eye of Joe Rix, hidden behind the Pedlar, had been looking down a revolver barrel at the forehead of Donnegan, waiting for that first move. But something about the coolness of Donnegan fascinated them.
"Don't shoot, Joe," the Pedlar had said. "That bird is the chief over again. Don't plug him!"
And that was why Donnegan lived.