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 greatly as he would have been pleased to go. He did not want to be discourteous, yet the publicity which Mallon was bent on giving him made him feel that he was playing a braggart's part.

He told Mallon at last that he'd have to be traveling, and they shook hands across the bar, Charley giving him a loud invitation to make his headquarters there when in town, taking up the lemonade glass, which he had left standing, the curl of lemon peel in it proclaiming what it had contained.

That was an advertisement Charley was too shrewd to put away out of sight while it had a drop of virtue in it. This was Bill Dunham, the empty glass had said, the lemonade-drinking gunman, the fear of whom was so great in the breasts of men that he could drive a herd of Texas cattle across the line without ever throwing hand to his gun.

Dunham felt their eyes on him as he went to the door, a lull falling in the noisy diversions of the place as they forgot their pleasures to watch this slow-speaking, bashful young man go his way. A precarious way, and a doubtful one, as the way of all killers, no knowing who might be waiting for him outside to take a shot at him from the dark.

No thought like this crossed Dunham's mind as he stepped out of the door. He had only a feeling of relief at getting out of there; the fresh air was welcome to his nostrils after the fumes of Charley Mallon's hospitable presence. He walked briskly up the street in direction opposite the hotel, thinking he would stretch