Riggs could not draw nor move nor speak. He seemed turned to stone, except his jaw, which slowly fell.
"Harve Riggs, gunman from down Missouri way," continued the voice of incalculable intent, "reckon you've looked into a heap of gun-barrels in your day. Shore! Wal, look in this heah one!"
Wilson deliberately leveled the gun on a line with Riggs's starting eyes.
"Wasn't you heard to brag in Turner's saloon--thet you could see lead comin'--an' dodge it? Shore you must be swift!... DODGE THIS HEAH BULLET!"
The gun spouted flame and boomed. One of Riggs's starting, popping eyes--the right one--went out, like a lamp. The other rolled horribly, then set in blank dead fixedness. Riggs swayed in slow motion until a lost balance felled him heavily, an inert mass.
Wilson bent over the prostrate form. Strange, violent contrast to the cool scorn of the preceding moment! Hissing, spitting, as if poisoned by passion, he burst with the hate that his character had forbidden him to express on a living counterfeit. Wilson was shaken, as if by a palsy. He choked over passionate, incoherent invective. It was class hate first, then the hate of real manhood for a craven, then the hate of disgrace for a murder. No man so fair as a gun-fighter in the Western creed of an "even break"!
Wilson's terrible cataclysm of passion passed. Straightening up, he sheathed his weapon and began a slow pace before the fire. Not many moments afterward he jerked his head high and listened. Horses were softly thudding through the forest. Soon Anson rode into sight with his men and one of the strayed horses. It chanced, too, that young Burt appeared on the other side of the glade. He walked quickly, as one who anticipated news.
Snake Anson as he dismounted espied the dead man.
"Jim--I thought I heard a shot."
The others exclaimed and leaped off their horses to view the prostrate form with that curiosity and strange fear common to all men confronted by sight of sudden death.
That emotion was only momentary.
"Shot his lamp out!" ejaculated Moze.
"Wonder how Gunman Riggs liked thet plumb center peg!" exclaimed Shady Jones, with a hard laugh.
"Back of his head all gone!" gasped young Burt. Not improbably he had not seen a great many bullet-marked men.
"Jim!--the long-haired fool didn't try to draw on you!" exclaimed Snake Anson, astounded.
Wilson neither spoke nor ceased his pacing.
"What was it over?" added Anson, curiously.
"He hit the gurl," replied Wilson.