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
