"Come on, Mr. Keith," called some one.
The name caught the young bully, and he faced Keith more directly.
"Keith?--Keith!" he repeated, fastening his eyes on him with a cold glitter in them. "So you're Mr. Keith, are you?"
"That is my name," said Keith, feeling his blood tingling.
"Well, you're the man I'm a-lookin' for. No, you won't drink with me, 'cause I won't let you, you ---- ---- ----! You are the ---- ---- that comes here insultin' a lady?"
"No; I am not," said Keith, keeping his eyes on him.
"You're a liar!" said Mr. Bluffy, adding his usual expletives. "And you're the man I've come back here a-huntin' for. I promised to drive you out of town to-night if I had to go to hell a-doin' it."
His white-handled pistol was out of his waistband with a movement so quick that he had it cocked and Keith was looking down the barrel before he took in what had been done. Quickness was Mr. Bluffy's strongest card, and he had played it often.
Keith's face paled slightly. He looked steadily over the pistol, not three feet from him, at the drunken creature beyond it. His nerves grew tense, and every muscle in his frame tightened. He saw the beginning of the grooves in the barrel of the pistol and the gray cones of the bullets at the side in the cylinder; he saw the cruel, black, drunken eyes of the young desperado. It was all in a flash. He had not a chance for his life. Yes, he had.
"Let up, Bill," said a voice, coaxingly, as one might to soothe a wild beast. "Don't--"