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 to the delay in his coming back with a gang of cowhands. Withers was not going to come. If he had not been certain in his own mind of that, Windy never would have left that boy alone down at the stock yards.

That was the way the whole situation sized up, said Windy. Withers was too wise a guy to run against him. He had seen that this poor simple cow jerry was standing in the shadow of a friend who would pitch a little hot lead around if anybody tried to take them cows away from him. And that wasn't no dream. Withers had seen enough to know the business was blocked for him, and he had thrown down his hand. Might as well go to sleep, all McPacken might as well go to sleep and put up its guns. Cal Withers was buffaloed; he never would come back.

It was a noisomely repellant shame, said Windy, in his usual elegant diction, that he hadn't been given a chance to use that old bulldog, which he believed to be a most faithful and efficient weapon, although neither its loyalty nor its efficiency ever had been tested, except in shooting at a telegraph pole. He took the gun out of his pocket, for it was not comfortable there when a man was sitting in a chair, and fondled it, holding it at half-cock, turning the cylinder caressingly with his thumb.

It was a double-action weapon, short, like a water moccasin, its parts oiled and limber, needing only a little pressure on the trigger with the finger to make it lift its head like the uncomely reptile after which it seemed patterned, and blow out its venom with a roar. Windy