“You’ll fight me, then?”
“Yes!”
“I’m heartily glad of it. I don’t know how you escaped death that night—enough that I behold you alive. If I held no enmity against you, I would call you to account for the brutality you have just flung upon yon fair girl.”
“Ha! ha! ’Van Harris,” laughed Rafe Todd. “So you still appear ’Reesa South’s champion.”
“I do. Had I possessed a weapon when you flung her against the wall, your life would have paid the penalty of that act.”
“No more!” cried the deserter. “If you open your lips again, I’ll shoot you before you have time to shut them. I’m going to give you a show for life. Now drop your arm, as I have dropped mine. Hooker Jim will count three, and when he has uttered the third numeral, we fire.”
With the revolver griped firmly at his side, Rafe Todd retreated three paces and paused.
“Begin,” he commanded, glancing at the savage, whose name he had just mentioned.
In his guttural, the chief began:
“One—two—th—”