Hughie jumped up, filled the cup that was handed him and set the coffee pot back on fire.As he handed the tin cup with the coffee to the outlaw the lad's foot slipped on a piece wet wood, and the hot liquid splashed over his chief's leg.The man jumped to his feet in a rage and struck the boy across the face with his whip once, and then again.
"By God, that'll do for you!" cried Chalkeye from the other side of the fire, springing revolver in hand."Draw, you coyote! I come a-shooting."The "King" wheeled, finding his weapon he turned.Two shots rang out almost simultaneously, and Chalkeye pitched forward.The outlaw chief sank to his knees, and, with one hand resting on the ground to steady himself fired two more shots into the twitching body on the other side of the fire.Then he, too, lurched forward and rolled over.
It had come to climax so swiftly that not one of them had moved except the combatants.Bannister rose and walked over to the place where the body of his cousin lay.He knelt down and examined him.When he rose it was with a very grave face.
"He is dead," he said quietly.
McWilliams, who had been bending over Chalkeye, looked up."Here, too.Any one of the shots would have finished him."Bannister nodded."Yes.That first exchange killed them both." He looked down at the limp body of his cousin, but a minute before so full of supple, virile life."But his hate had to reach out and make sure, even though he was as good as dead himself.He was game." Then sharply to the young braggart, who had risen and was edging away with a face of chalk: "Sit down, y'u! What do y'u take us for? Think this is to be a massacre?"The man came back with palpable hesitancy."I was aiming to go and get the boys to bury them.My God, did you ever see anything so quick? They drilled through each other like lightning."Mac looked him over with dry contempt."My friend, y'u're too tender for a genuwine A1 bad man.If I was handing y'u a bunch of advice it would be to get back to the prosaic paths of peace right prompt.And while we're on the subject I'll borrow your guns.Y'u're scared stiff and it might get into your fool coconut to plug one of us and light out.I'd hate to see y'u commit suicide right before us, so I'll just natcherally unload y'u."He was talking to lift the strain, and it was for the same purpose that Bannister moved over to Hughie, who sat with his face in his hands, trying to shut out the horror of what he had seen.
The sheepman dropped a hand on his shoulder gently."Brace up, boy! Don't you see that the very best thing that could have happened is this.It's best for y'u, best for the rest of the gang and best for the whole cattle country.We'll have peace here at last.Now he's gone, honest men are going to breathe easy.I'll take y'u in hand and set y'u at work on one of my stations, if y'u like.Anyhow, you'll have a chance to begin life again in a better way.""That's right," agreed the blatant youth."I'm sick of rustling the mails and other folks' calves.I'm glad he got what was coming to him," he concluded vindictively, with a glance at his dead chief and a sudden raucous oath.
McWilliams's cold blue eye transfixed him "Hadn't you better be a little careful how your mouth goes off? For one thing, he's daid now; and for another, he happens to be Mr.Bannister's cousin.""But--weren't they enemies?"
"That's how I understand it.But this man's passed over the range.A MAN doesn't unload his hatred on dead folks--and I expect if y'u'll study him, even y'u will be able to figure out that my friend measures up to the size of a real man.""I don't see why if--"
"No, I don't suppose y'u do," interrupted the foreman, turning on his heel.Then to Bannister, who was looking down at his cousin with a stonyface: "I reckon, Bann, we better make arrangements to have the bodies buried right here in the valley," he said gently.
Bannister was thinking of early days, of the time when this miscreant, whose light had just been put out so instantaneously, had played with him day in and day out.They had attended their first school together, had played marbles and prisoners' base a hundred times against each other.He could remember how they used to get up early in the morning to go fishing with each other.And later, when each began, unconsciously, to choose the path he would follow in already beginning to settle into an established fact.He could see now, by looking back on trifles of their childhood, that his cousin had been badly handicapped in his fight with himself against the evil in him.He had inherited depraved instincts and tastes, and with them somewhere in him a strand of weakness that prevented him from slaying the giants he had to oppose in the making of a good character.From bad to worse he had gone, and here he lay with the drizzling rain on his white face, a warning and a lesson to wayward youths just setting their feet in the wrong direction.Surely it was kismet.
Ned Bannister untied the handkerchief from his neck and laid it across the face of his kinsman.A moment longer he looked down, then passed his hands across his eyes and seemed to brush away the memories that thronged him.He stepped forward to the fire and warmed his hands.
"We'll go on, Mac, to the rendezvous he had appointed with his outfit.We ought to reach there by noon, and the boys can send a wagon back to get the bodies."
