Danby, after several times moistening his pallid lips, found his voice.

"Do you mean to give me a chance, or are you going to murder me?"

"I am going to murder you."

Danby closed his eyes, let his hands drop to his sides, and swayed
gently from side to side as a man does on the scaffold just before the
bolt is drawn. Strong lowered his revolver and fired, shattering one
knee of the doomed man. Danby dropped with a cry that was drowned by
the second report. The second bullet put out his left eye, and the
murdered man lay with his mutilated face turned up to the blue sky.

A revolver report on the prairies is short, sharp, and echoless. The
silence that followed seemed intense and boundless, as if nowhere on
earth there was such a thing as sound. The man on his back gave an
awesome touch of the eternal to the stillness.

Strong, now that it was all over, began to realise his position. Texas,
perhaps, paid too little heed to life lost in fair fight, but she had
an uncomfortable habit of putting a rope round the neck of a cowardly
murderer. Strong was an inventor by nature. He proceeded to invent his
justification. He took one of Danby's revolvers and fired two shots out
of it into the empty air. This would show that the dead man had
defended himself at least, and it would be difficult to prove that he
had not been the first to fire. He placed the other pistol and the
knife in their places in Danby's belt. He took Danby's right hand while
it was still warm and closed the fingers around the butt of the
revolver from which he had fired, placing the forefinger on the trigger