to cover that X or are you goin' to crawfish?"

"Back down? You peevish little sawed-off runt!" yelped Jim. "I been
lettin' you shoot off your head so's you'll be good and sore afterward.
I always wanted a piece of paper money any way--for a keepsake. You
wait!"

He went into the cabin and returned with a tarnished gold piece and a box
of forty-five cartridges.

"Here, stakeholder!" he said to Johnson.

Then, to Bill: "Now, then, old Californy--you been all swelled-up and
stumping me for quite some time. Show us what you got!"

It was an uncanny exhibition of skill that followed. These men knew
how to handle a sixshooter. They began with tin cans at ten yards,
thirty, fifty--and hit them. They shot at rolling cans, and hit them;
at high-thrown cans, and hit them; at cards nailed to hitching-posts;
then at the pips of cards. Neither man could boast of any advantage. The
few and hairbreadth misses of the card pips, the few blanks at the longer
ranges, fairly offset each other. The California man took a slightly
crouching attitude, his knees a little bent; held his gun at his knee;
raising an extended and rigid arm to fire. The Texan stood erect, almost
on tiptoe, bareheaded; he swung his gun ear-high above his shoulder,
looking at his mark alone, and fired as the gun flashed down. The little
California man made the cleaner score at the very long shots and in
clipping the pips of the playing cards; the Texan had a shade the better
at the flying targets, his bullets ranging full-center where the other
barely grazed the cans.