Stover, stricken dumb, paused, knife in hand; Willie stared as if bereft of motion. Then the former spoke slowly. "Looks like we'd ought to smoke up this fat party, Will."
Willie nodded, and Glass realized that the little man's steel- blue eyes were riveted balefully upon him.
"I've had a hunch it would come to that," the near-sighted one replied. "Every time I look at him I see a bleedin' bullet-hole in his abominable regions, about here." He laid a finger upon his stomach, and Glass felt a darting pain at precisely the same spot. It was as agonizing as if Willie's spectacles were huge burning-glasses focussing the rays of a tropic sun upon his bare flesh. He folded protecting hands over the threatened region and backed toward the prayer-rug, mumbling "Allah! Allah!" No matter whither he shifted, the eyes bored into him.
"That's where you hit the gambler at Ogden," he heard Stover say —it might have been from a great distance—"but I aim for the bridge of the nose."
"The belly ain't so sudden as the eye-socket, but it's more lingerin', and a heap painfuller," explained the gun man, and Speed was moved to sympathy.
"Larry only wanted to please you—eh, Larry?" he said, nervously, but Glass made no reply. His distended orbs were frozen upon Willie. It was doubtful if he even heard.
"Our honor ain't for sale," Still Bill declared.
Here Berkeley Fresno spoke. "Of course not. And you mustn't think that Speed is trying to get out of the race. He wants to run! And if anything happened to prevent his running he'd be broken-hearted, I know he would!"
Willie's hypnotic eye left the trainer's abdomen and travelled slowly to Speed.
"What could happen?" questioned he.