Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/147

Rh No one could know what it cost Pete Glass to be genial at that instant, for this night he felt that he had just missed the great moment which he had yearned for since the day when he learned to love the kick of a six-shooter against the heel of his hand. It was the desire to meet face to face one whose metal of will and mind was equal to his own, whose nerves were electric energies perfectly under command, whose muscles were fine spun steel. He had gone half a lifetime on the trail of fighters and always he had known that when the crisis came his hand would be the swifter, his eyes the more steady; the trailing was a delight always, but the actual kill was a matter of slaughter rather than a game of hazard. Only the rider of the black stallion had given him the sense of equal power, and his whole soul had risen for the great chance of All. That chance was gone; he pushed the thought of it away—for the time—and turned back to the business at hand.

“They's only one thing,” he went on. “Sliver! Ronicky! Step along, gents, and we'll have a look at the insides of that house.”

“Steady!” broke in Haines. He barred the path to the front door. “Sheriff, you don't know me, but I'm going to ask you to take my word for what's in that house.”

Glass swept him with a look of a new nature.

“I got an idea your word might do. Well, what's in the house?”