suggested Compton, moving his head slightly toward one of the saloons.
"Not none," said the gunfighter. "I'm keepin' a clear head."
Compton's eyes gleamed. "That's right; don't take any chances."
The town was shaking off its lethargy. Sounds began to smite the flatness of the still morning air — doors were opening; somewhere a woman laughed; the sound of men's voices filtered through the wall of the building behind Compton and Kinney, and there came to the ears of both men a heavy clumping upon the board floors within. Ocate was awakening.
"If you think you're needing any help," began Compton. He paused when he saw Kinney's lips curl.
"If you was thinkin' I was needin' help you wouldn't have hired me for this job," shallowly grinned the gunman. "I reckon I'll play her a lone hand."
He took leave of Compton presently and entered a restaurant, where he ate heartily.
There was not the slightest nervousness in Kinney's manner — he was cool, composed, saturnine. Complacently, coldly, confidently, he regarded the faces of men he saw in the restaurant near him. He grinned broadly at the waitress who served him — so significantly that a crimson stain appeared in the girl's cheeks, inured though she was to the brazenness of men; he joked with the proprietor when he nonchalantly paid his bill at the desk; and he stepped out into the street unconcerned over the prospect of murder, calmly picking his teeth as he glanced down the street.
For though Kinney had looked upon fear, he had never experienced the sensation. He had seen it in men's eyes when he had drawn his guns to kill them — they had exhibited it nakedly in those moments — and he had gloated over them. But he had never known what it was to fear a gun in another man's hand.
Knowing his own ability with the six-shooter — having practised the slippery, snakelike motion that enabled him to get his weapons into action in a shorter space of time than any man he ever had met — he felt the dead certainty of victory in every encounter. He had begun to believe himself invincible, unconquerable. He had become a hardened, calloused, and egotistical disciple of self, answerable only to the malevolent passions that gripped him — the passions that were now gripping him.
He had thrown the toothpick from him, and was wiping his mouth with a big red bandanna handkerchief, when he heard a voice behind him — a hoarse, low whisper:
"He is coming!"
He turned swiftly, to see Compton standing in a doorway at his back. He grinned evilly, deliberately restoring the handkerchief to its pocket as he stepped out toward the hitching rail that skirted the sidewalk.
He observed that Ocate had completely shaken off its lethargy; that many men were on the street, and that several horses were standing at the various hitching rails in front of the buildings.
And then, with seeming carelessness, he dropped his hands to his sides, sweeping the butts of his pistols with his long, sensitive fingers — and faced to the eastern edge of town. At a little distance out on the big grass level he saw a horseman who rode loosely in the saddle — a tall, lithe man on a big black horse.
The black horse was coming steadily—not fast, but seeming to cover the ground easily and without effort. And yet, despite his lack of visible exertion, it was not many minutes before Kinney saw the black horse at the edge of town. And then a voice floating to Kinney from a point near where the black horse had halted, greeted the rider hilariously:
"Hello, Rand — you ol' son-of-a-gun!"
Kinney grinned sneeringly at the greeting. But the rider of the black horse came on again, heading the animal to the hitching rail in front of the Gilt Edge — where he dismounted, trailing the reins over the head of the beast. For an instant he stood, looking down the street. Then he walked toward Kinney.
Chapter XI. Fire and Ice
RAND had not conquered the terrible passions that had gripped him when he had sat on Midnight at the edge of the big plain gazing down into the mighty basin where Redfern stood. They still ruled him, paling his face with their intensity.
Outwardly he was coldly deliberate, and no man, watching him as he walked toward Kinney—noting the faint, mirthless smile on his face — would have divined that he had come to town to kill a man. Nor did Kinney, watching him with the furtive alertness of a carrion bird in the clutch of the hunger-lust, see anything in Rand's manner to warn him that the man was aware of the plot to kill him. For there was in Rand's eyes as he reached Kinney nothing but a gleam of casual inquiry. At least, so it seemed to the gunfighter.
Rand seemed about to pass Kinney—and the gun-fighter did not intend to molest Rand yet— for he was in no hurry — when he halted within a step of Kinney and said, slowly, his gaze meeting the gunfighter's, and holding it:
"Seen Webster around?"
Kinney's lips curved into a cold sneer. He had meant to delay, in order to watch Rand — to note the peculiarities of his movements; to acquaint himself with any eccentricity of muscular development he might have — a thing that would show in the way he handled himself; in the way he walked or moved his arms — anything that would indicate the probable speed with which he could get his guns out. For Kinney had not failed to see that Rand wore two guns, and that it seemed, from their positions — low on his hips, with the bottoms of the holsters tied down — that Rand knew how to use them.
Kinney had meant to delay, but Rand's question had provided him with an opportunity he sought, and he could see no reason why he should not get the thing over with as quickly as possible.
Therefore, as he sneered, his eyes glowing with a savage truculence, he backed away slightly, to give himself room to draw his guns.
His hands went to his hips as he edged slightly sidewise in the backward movement; and into his eyes came the merciless, sardonic glitter that told, more eloquently than words, of the bitter lust in his heart.
Rand had not failed to note the movement and the flame in the man's eyes. Therefore he divined that this man was Slim Kinney; and he knew that Kinney had decided to draw his guns upon the slightest pretext.
But nothing in Rand's manner betrayed his knowledge of what threatened. He was going to kill Kinney, he knew; in his veins still surged the violent yearning, the eagerness to take the life of the man who stood before him. And yet about him was no sign of the inward fire that was searing him; and as he looked at Kinney over the short space that separated them, he seemed unperturbed, unsuspicious, and serenely calm.
Watching him closely, however, Kinney had detected a quickening of Rand's eyes, and he knew that despite Rand's unsuspicious manner, he had not failed to suspect what impended.
But the gunfighter delayed. He saw that several men had halted and were watching from various points; he saw that Rand's hands were hanging loosely at his sides, as though he had no thought of his guns. And with witnesses present, Kinney did not care to make the first aggressive movement. So he stood, the fingers of his hands hooked in his cartridge belt, watching Rand, confident that when he had goaded Rand into reaching for his weapons, he would beat him by the infinitesimal fraction of a second which would be necessary for victory.
But a silence came between them, during
