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 man stopped. The three of them stood waiting for the next move.

Who was to make it? That was the big question in Dunham's mind. They were not there to let him get away; he might as well force them to show their hands soon as late. With this intention he made a feint of breaking for the door. The pale man with his back to the wall jerked out a quick:

"Look out!"

There was not more than five yards between Dunham and either man, and about an equal distance separating the partners in this double-cinched scheme to have his life. Dunham saw both of them go after their guns at that signal, as he knew it to be. He was standing with right foot thrown back toward the door, desperately alert, hand ready to drop to his gun, a gun, as he remembered with a terrible surge of apprehension, that he never had fired.

This realization gave Dunham a tremendous jolt. It made him feel as if his last hope was gone, that he had bungled the start of that desperate race and never could regain his chance. The long man was throwing down on him when Dunham jerked his gun and fired.

The other man had put his confidence in his partner's hitherto infallible hand, a misguided trust, as he realized too late. When Dunham fired, the lanky man's gun-hand jerked up, the shot going wide and wild. Dunham had heard a chicken make the same sharp little gasping cluck when its head was whipped off quickly with an ax as the tall flat man made in his throat when that bullet cut through his heart.