terence hollis had gone out of the room and up the stairs like a man stunned or walking in his sleep. not until he stepped into the familiar room did the blood begin to return to his face, and with the warmth there was a growing sensation of uneasiness.
something was wrong. something had to be righted. gradually his mind cleared. the thing that was wrong was that the man who had killed his father was now under the same roof with him, had shaken his hand, had sat in bland complacency and looked in his face and told of the butchery.
butchery it was, according to terry's standards. for the sake of the price on the head of the outlaw, young minter had shoved his rifle across a window sill, taken his aim, and with no risk to himself had shot down the wild rider. his heart stood up in his throat with revulsion at the thought of it. murder, horrible, and cold-blooded, the more horrible because it was legal.
something had to be done. what was it?
and when he turned, what he saw was the gun cabinet with a shimmer of light on the barrels. then he knew. he selected his favorite colt and drew it out. it was loaded, and the action in perfect condition. many and many an hour he had practiced and blazed away hundreds of rounds of ammunition with it. it responded to his touch like a muscular part of his own body.
he shoved it under his coat, and walking down the stairs again the chill of the steel worked through to his flesh. he went back to the kitchen and called out wu chi. the latter came shuffling in his slippers, nodding, grinning in anticipation of compliments.
"wu," came the short demand, "can you keep your mouth shut and do what you're told to do?"
"wu try," said the chinaman, grave as a yellow image instantly.
"then go to the living room and tell mr. gainor and sheriff minter that mr. harkness is waiting for them outside and wishes to see them on business of the most urgent nature. it will only be the matter of a moment. now go. gainor and the sheriff. don't forget."
he received a scared glance, and then went out onto the veranda and sat down to wait.
that was the right way, he felt. his father would have called the sheriff to the door, in a similar situation, and after one brief challenge they would have gone for their guns. but there was another way, and that was the way of the colbys. their way was right. they lived like gentlemen, and, above all, they fought always like gentlemen.
presently the screen door opened, squeaked twice, and then closed with a hum of the screen as it slammed. steps approached him. he got up from the chair and faced them, gainor and the sheriff. the sheriff had instinctively put on his hat, like a man who does not understand the open air with an uncovered head. but gainor was uncovered, and his white hair glimmered.
he was a tall, courtly old fellow. his ceremonious address had won him much political influence. men said that gainor was courteous to a dog, not because he respected the dog, but because he wanted to practice for a man. he had always the correct rejoinder, always did the right thing. he had a thin, stern face and a hawk nose that gave him a cast of ferocity in certain aspects.
it was to him that terry addressed himself.
"mr. gainor," he said, "i'm sorry to have sent in a false message. but my business is very urgent, and i have a very particular reason for not wishing to have it known that i have called you out."
the moment he rose out of the chair and faced them, gainor had stopped short. he was quite capable of fast thinking, and now his glance flickered from terry to the sheriff and back again. it was plain that he had shrewd suspicions as to the purpose behind that call. the sheriff was merely confused. he flushed as much as his tanned-leather skin permitted. as for terry, the moment his glance fell on the sheriff he felt his muscles jump into hard ridges, and an almost uncontrollable desire to go at the throat of the other seized him. he quelled that desire and fought it back with a chill of fear.
"my father's blood working out!" he thought to himself.
and he fastened his attention on mr. gainor and tried to shut the picture of the sheriff out of his brain. but the desire to leap at the tall man was as consuming as the passion for water in the desert. and with a shudder of horror he found himself without a moral scruple. just behind the thin partition of his will power there was a raging fury to get at joe minter. he wanted to kill. he wanted to snuff that life out as the life of black jack hollis had been snuffed.
he excluded the sheriff deliberately from his attention and turned fully upon gainor.
"mr. gainor, will you be kind enough to go over to that grove of spruce where the three of us can talk without any danger of interruption?"
of course, that speech revealed everything. gainor stiffened a little and the tuft of beard which ran down to a point on his chin quivered and jutted out. the sheriff seemed to feel nothing more than a mild surprise and curiosity. and the three went silently, side by side, under the spruce. they were glorious trees, strong of trunk and nobly proportioned. their tops were silver-bright in the sunshine. through the lower branches the light was filtered through layer after layer of shadow, until on the ground there were only a few patches of light here and there, and these were no brighter than silver moonshine, and seemed to be without heat. indeed, in the mild shadow among the trees lay the chill of the mountain air which seems to lurk in covert places waiting for the night.
it might have been this chill that made terry button his coat closer about him and tremble a little as he entered the shadow. the great trunks shut out the world in a scattered wall. there was a narrow opening here among the trees at the very center. the three were in a sort of gorge of which the solemn spruce trees furnished the sides, the cold blue of the mountain skies was just above the lofty tree-tips, and the wind kept the pure fragrance of the evergreens stirring about them. the odor is the soul of the mountains. a great surety had come to terry that this was the last place he would ever see on earth. he was about to die, and he was glad, in a dim sort of way, that he should die in a place so beautiful. he looked at the sheriff, who stood calm but puzzled, and at gainor, who was very grave, indeed, and returned his look with one of infinite pity, as though he knew and understood and acquiesced, but was deeply grieved that it must be so.
"gentlemen," said terry, making his voice light and cheerful as he felt that the voice of a colby should be at such a time, being about to die, "i suppose you understand why i have asked you to come here?"
"yes," nodded gainor.
"but i'm damned if i do," said the sheriff frankly.
terry looked upon him coldly. he felt that he had not the slightest chance of killing this professional manslayer, but at least he would do his best—for the sake of black jack's memory. but to think that his life—his mind—his soul—all that was dear to him and all that he was dear to, should ever lie at the command of the trigger of this hard, crafty, vain, and unimportant fellow! he writhed at the thought. it made him stand stiffer. his chin went up. he grew literally taller before their eyes, and such a look came on his face that the sheriff instinctively fell back a pace.
"mr. gainor," said terry, as though his contempt for the sheriff was too great to permit his speaking directly to minter, "will you explain to the sheriff that my determination to have satisfaction does not come from the fact that he killed my father, but because of the manner of the killing? to the sheriff it seems justifiable. to me it seems a murder. having that thought, there is only one thing to do. one of us must not leave this place!" gainor bowed, but the sheriff gaped.
"by the eternal!" he scoffed. "this sounds like one of them duels of the old days. this was the way they used to talk!"
"gentlemen," said gainor, raising his long-fingered hand, "it is my solemn duty to admonish you to make up your differences amicably."
"whatever that means," sneered the sheriff. "but tell this young fool that's trying to act like he couldn't see me or hear me—tell him that i don't carry no grudge ag'in' him, that i'm sorry he's black jack's son, but that it's something he can live down, maybe. and i'll go so far as to say i'm sorry that i done all that talking right to his face. but farther than that i won't go. and if all this is leading up to a gunplay, by god, gents, the minute a gun comes into my hand i shoot to kill, mark you that, and don't you never forget it!"
mr. gainor had remained with his hand raised during this outbreak. now he turned to terry.
"you have heard?" he said. "i think the sheriff is going quite a way toward you, mr. colby."
"hollis!" gasped terry. "hollis is the name, sir!"
"i beg your pardon," said gainor. "mr. hollis it is! gentlemen, i assure you that i feel for you both. it seems, however, to be one of those unfortunate affairs when the mind must stop its debate and physical action must take up its proper place. i lament the necessity, but i admit it, even though the law does not admit it. but there are unwritten laws, sirs, unwritten laws which i for one consider among the holies of holies."
palpably the old man was enjoying every minute of his own talk. it was not his first affair of this nature. he came out of an early and more courtly generation where men drank together in the evening by firelight and carved one another in the morning with glimmering bowie knives.
"you are both," he protested, "dear to me. i esteem you both as men and as good citizens. and i have done my best to open the way for peaceful negotiations toward an understanding. it seems that i have failed. very well, sirs. then it must be battle. you are both armed? with revolvers?"
"nacher'ly," said the sheriff, and spat accurately at a blaze on the tree trunk beside him. he had grown very quiet.
"i am armed," said terry calmly, "with a revolver."
"very good."
the hand of gainor glided into his bosom and came forth bearing a white handkerchief. his right hand slid into his coat and came forth likewise— bearing a long revolver.
"gentlemen," he said, "the first man to disobey my directions i shall shoot down unquestioningly, like a dog. i give you my solemn word for it!"
and his eye informed them that he would enjoy the job.
he continued smoothly: "this contest shall accord with the only terms by which a duel with guns can be properly fought. you will stand back to back with your guns not displayed, but in your clothes. at my word you will start walking in the opposite directions until my command 'turn!' and at this command you will wheel, draw your guns, and fire until one man falls—or both!"
he sent his revolver through a peculiar, twirling motion and shook back his long white hair.
"ready, gentlemen, and god defend the right!"
