When the
smoke cleared away, there was one dead and six others shot up, and
Little Brownie was out on the desert, riding for the next place, awfully
sore over a hole in his new sombrero. He was a two-gun man from down
near the border. Well, when I arrived in town, I couldn't understand why
every one looked so queerly at my eyes, until Mindle, the mail-driver,
told me they were exactly like the hair-trigger boy's. Cheap and easy
way to get a reputation, isn't it?"
"But you must have something back of it," insisted the girl. "Are you a
good shot?"
"Nothing fancy; there are twenty better in town."
"Yet you pin some faith to your 'gun,'" she pointed out.
He glanced over his shoulder to right and left. Io jumped forward with a
startled cry. So swift and secret had been his motion that she hardly
saw the weapon before--PLACK--PLACK--PLACK--the three shots had sounded.
The smoke drifted around him in a little circle, for the first two shots
had been over his shoulder and the third as he whirled. Walking back, he
carefully examined the trunks of three trees.
"I'd have only barked that fellow, if he'd been a man," he observed,
shaking his head at the second mark.
"You frightened me," complained Io.
"I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to see a little gun-play.
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