"And Nick knows all about you?"
For a moment the agate, catlike eyes of the colonel clouded and cleared again in their unfathomable manner.
"At moments, Donnegan," he said, "you have rare perceptions. That is exactly it—Nick knows just about everything concerning me. And so—roll your pack and climb on your horse and get away. I think you may have another five minutes before he comes."
Donnegan turned on his heel. He went to the door of the hut and threw it open. Lou sat beside Landis holding his hand, and the murmur of her voice was still pleasant as an echo through the room when she looked and saw Donnegan. At that she rose and her face hardened as she looked at him. Landis, also, lifted his head, and his face was convulsed with hatred. So Donnegan closed the door and went softly away to his own shack.
She hated him even as Landis hated him, it seemed. He should have known that he would not be thanked for bringing back her lover to her with a bullet through his shoulder. Sitting in his cabin, he took his head between his hands and thought of life and death, and made up his mind. He was afraid. If Lord Nick had been the devil himself Donnegan could not have been more afraid. But if the big stranger had been ten devils instead of one Donnegan would not have found it in his soul to run away.
Nothing remained for him in The Corner, it seemed, except his position as a man of power—a dangerous fighter. It was a less than worthless position, and yet, once having taken it up, he could not abandon it. More than one gunfighter has been in the same place, forced to act as a public menace long after he has ceased to feel any desire to fight. Of selfish motives there remained not a scruple to him, but there was still the happiness of Lou Macon. If the boy were taken back to Lebrun's, it would be fatal to her. For even if Nelly wished, she could not teach her eyes new habits, and she would ceaselessly play on the heart of the wounded man.
It was the cessation of all talk from the gathering crowd outside that made Donnegan lift his head at length, and know that Lord Nick had come. But before he had time to prepare himself, the door was cast open and into it, filling it from side to side, stepped Lord Nick.
There was no need of an introduction. Donnegan knew him by the aptness with which the name fitted that glorious figure of a man and by the calm, confident eye which now was looking him slowly over, from head to foot. Lord Nick closed the door carefully behind him.
"The colonel told me," he said in his deep, smooth voice, "that you were waiting for me here."
And Donnegan recognized the snakelike malice of the fat man in drawing him into the fight. But he dismissed that quickly from his mind. He was staring, fascinated, into the face of the other. He was a reader of men, was Donnegan; he was a reader of mind, too. In his life of battle he had learned to judge the prowess of others at a glance, just as a musician can tell the quality of a violin by the first note he hears played upon it. So Donnegan judged the quality of fighting men, and, looking into the face of Lord Nick, he knew that he had met his equal at last.