Bridger spat out his tobacco chew and steadily raised his rifle. The man opposite him stood steady as a pillar, and did not close his eyes. The silence that fell on those who saw became so intense that it seemed veritably to radiate, reaching out over the valley to the mountains as in a hush of leagues.
For an instant, which to the few observers seemed an hour, these two figures, from which motion seemed to have passed forever, stood frozen. Then there came a spurt of whitish-blue smoke and the thin dry crack of the border rifle.
The hand and eye of Jim Bridger, in spite of advancing years, remained true to their long training. At the rifle crack the tin cup on the head of the statuelike figure opposite him was flung behind as though by the blow of an invisible hand. The spin of the bullet, acting on the liquid contents, ripped apart the seams of the cup and flung the fluid wide. Then and not till then did Jackson move.
He picked up the empty cup, bored center directly through the black spot, and turning walked with it in his hand toward Bridger, who was wiping out his rifle once more.
“I call hit mighty careless shootin’,” said he, irritated. “Now look what ye done to the likker! If ye’d held a leetle higher, above the level o’ the likker, like I told ye, she wouldn’t have busted open thataway. It’s nacherl, thar warn’t room in the cup fer both the likker an’ the ball. That’s wastin’ likker, Jim, an’ my mother told me when I was a boy, ‘Willful waste makes woeful want!’”
“I call hit a plumb-center shot,” grumbled Bridger. “Do-ee look now! Maybe ye think ye kin do better shootin’ yerself than old Jim Bridger!”
“Shore I kin, an’ I’ll show ye! I’ll bet my rifle aginst yourn—ef I wanted so sorry a piece as yourn—I kin shoot that close to the mark an’ not spill no likker a-tall! An’ ye can fill her two-thirds full an’ put yer thumb in fer the balance ef ye like.”
“I’ll just bet ye a new mule agin yer pony ye kain’t do nothin’ o’ the sort!” retorted Bridger.
“All right, I’ll show ye. O’ course, ye got to hold still.”
“Who said I wouldn’t hold still?”