like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.
If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
hundred times over and over that second.

Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
better--

But we anticipate.

"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.