“Mister Black Steve Annister,” he said, without preamble. “I understand you’re some wizard with a canister, ha? A bad hombre! Musta been a little bird done told me, an’ that bird was sure loco, I’ll tell a man! But me—” his tone hardened to a steely rasp—“I’m not thinkin’ you’re such-a-much!”
It was a trap; Annister knew that now, just as behind the gunman he could almost see the dark face of Rook, with its sneering grin; the lawyer had inspired it.
His automatic hung in a sling under his left arm-pit, but even if he could beat Westervelt to the draw, he knew well enough what the result would be: a shot in the back, say, from the men sitting just behind, or—arrest, and the mockery of a trial to follow it. Either way, he was done.
His own eyes held the gunman’s now, glancing neither to the right nor to the left. He was conscious of a movement from the three men at the table; Westervelt’s companion, a short, bowlegged man, with the pale eyes of an Albino, had stepped backward from the bar; Annister felt rather than saw his hand move even as his own hand came up and outward with lightning speed; flame streaked from his pistol with the motion.
Once in a generation, perhaps, a man arises from the ruck who, by an uncanny dexterity of hand and eye, confounds and dazzles the common run of men. As a conjurer throws his glass balls in air, swifter than eye can follow, so Annister, crouching sidewise from the bar, threw his bullets at Westervelt.
The gunman, bending forward at the hips, crashed to the sawdust in a slumping fall, as the Albino, firing from the hip, whirled sidewise as Annister’s second bullet drilled him through the middle. For the tenth of a second, like the sudden stoppage of a cinematograph, the tableau endured; then Annister, whirling, had covered Bristow where he sat; the two men with him, white-faced, hands pressed flat upon the table-top, stared, silent, as Annister spoke:
“You saw, Bristow,” he said, low and even, his eyes upon the cold eyes of the sheriff in a bright, steady, inquiring stare. “Now—what about it?”
For a moment a little silence held; then Bristow, moistening his stiff lips, nodded, his gaze upon Annister in a sudden, dazed, uncomprehending look.
“All right, Mr. Annister,” he said heavily. “They came lookin’ f’r it, I reckon.... Well, you were that quick!”
Annister smiled grimly, pocketing his pistol. Westervelt lay where he had fallen, a dead man even as he had gone for his gun, lips still twisted in a sullen pout. The bowlegged man, stiff fingers clutching his heavy pistol, lay, face downward, in the sawdust. The bartender, with an admiring glance at Annister, leaned forward as Bristow and the two men with him went slowly out.