Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/125

 Dunham designed to put as much space between himself and Kellogg as he could before the thing broke loose, thirty feet or so if he could stretch it that far, from no reason that he could have explained. He just wanted to edge off, and edge off, and get over there by the corner of the building before it started, if he could. Kellogg seemed to be willing to give him all the rope he wanted, and Bill worked on craftily, as he thought, watching Kellogg with such unbroken intensity that his eyeballs burned.

There was a hitching-rack about twenty feet long in front of the hotel, back about four feet from the edge of the sidewalk, merely a horizontal pole bolted to upright posts. Kellogg had backed around until he was standing behind this rack, which was too low to offer either obstacle or protection. Dunham reached the corner of the hotel, where he stopped.

That simple act appeared to constitute defiance in Kellogg's eyes, and give him the slender justification which he perhaps felt his easy-going constituency would demand. Dunham stood there, set and watchful, his left hand thrown out in the exact manner he had held it when he dropped his cigar, his right arm in that rigid angle that seemed hopeless of any chance to those who watched him. He stood that way until Kellogg, his hand darting like a beam from a mirror, moved to sling his gun.

Kellogg sagged at the knees as his gun cleared the leather. He threw out his right hand, blindly, to catch the hitching-rack, his head lopping sickly, chin on his breast. He clung there a second and sank to the