Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/128

 and, swinging his hat from his head, laid it on a sloping rock beside the trail.

“You’d better not do that, Stormy,” said Sinclair. “Seagrue will put a hole through it.”

Gorman laughed jealously. “If he can hit it, let him hit it.”

At the top of the hill Seagrue had dismounted and was making ready to shoot. Whispering Smith, at his side, had halted with the party, and the cowboy knelt to adjust his sights. On his knee he turned to Whispering Smith, whom he seemed to know, with an abrupt question: “How far do you call it?”

The answer was made without hesitation: “Give it seven hundred and fifty yards, Seagrue.”

The cowboy made ready, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired. The slug passed through the crown of the hat, and a shower of splinters flying back from the rock blew the felt into a sieve. Gorman’s curiosity, as well as that of everybody else, seemed satisfied, and, gaining the level ground, the party broke into a helter-skelter race for the revolver-shooting.

In this Sinclair himself had entered, and after the early matches found only one troublesome contestant—Du Sang from the Cache, who was present under Rebstock’s wing. After Sinclair and Du Sang had tied in test after test at shooting out 106