"I've been laying for you!"
Kirby's usually impassive face was a sight; it was fearfully contorted; it was the countenance of a maniac. His words were loud and uncannily distinct, and the sound of them had brought a breathless hush over the place. At the moment of Doret's entrance the occupants of the saloon seemed petrified; they stood rooted in their tracks as if the anger in that menacing voice had halted them in mid-action. 'Poleon, too, turned cold, for it seemed to him that he had opened the door upon a roomful of wax figures posed in theatric postures. Then in the flash of an eye the scene dissolved into action, swift and terrifying.
What happened was so unexpected, it came with such a lack of warning, that few of the witnesses, even though they beheld every move, were able later to agree fully upon details. Whether Kirby actually fired the first shot, or whether his attempt to do so spurred his antagonist to lightning quickness, was long a matter of dispute. In a flash the room became a place of deafening echoes. Shouts of protest, yells of fright, the crash of overturning furniture, the stamp of fleeing feet mingled with the loud explosion of gunshots—pandemonium.
Fortunately the troupe of women who had been here earlier were gone and the tent was by no means crowded. Even so, there were enough men present to raise a mighty turmoil. Some of them took shelter behind the bar, others behind the stove and the tables; some bolted headlong for the door; still others hurled themselves bodily against the canvas walls and ripped their way out.
The duel was over almost as quickly as it had begun. Sam Kirby's opponent reeled backward and fetched up against the bar; above the din his hoarse voice rose:
"He started it! You saw him! Tried to kill me!"
He waved a smoking pistol-barrel at the gambler, who had sunk to his knees. Even while he was shouting out his plea for justification Kirby slid forward upon his face and the fingers of his outstretched hand slowly unloosed themselves from his gun.
It had been a shocking, a sickening affair; the effect of it had been intensified by reason of its unexpectedness, and now, although it was over, excitement gathered fury. Men burst forth from their places of concealment and made for the open air; the structure vomited its occupants out into the snow.
'Poleon Doret had been swept aside, then borne backward ahead of that stampede, and at length found himself wedged into a corner. He heard the victor repeating: "You saw him. Tried to kill me!" The speaker turned a blanched face and glaring eyes upon those witnesses who still remained. "He's Sam Kirby. I had to get him or he'd have got me." He pressed a hand to his side, then raised it; it was smeared with blood. In blank stupefaction the man stared at this phenomenon.
Doret was the first to reach that motionless figure sprawled face down upon the floor; it was he who lifted the gray head and spoke Kirby's name. A swift examination was enough to make quite sure that the old man was beyond all help. Outside, curiosity had done its work and the human tide was setting back into the wrecked saloon. When 'Poleon rose with the body in his arms he was surrounded by a clamorous crowd. Through it he bore the limp figure to the cloth-covered card-table, and there, among the scattered emblems of Sam Kirby's calling, 'Poleon deposited his burden. By those cards and those celluloid disks the old gambler had made his living; grim fitness was in the fact that they should carpet his bier.