impatiently, as a spirited young animal might shake back its flowing mane.
'You're not arresting me?' She seemed startled, thrown into confusion by this unexpected statement.
'No. I just kept you from killin' that girl. If you'd brained her with that billiard ball I'd have had to arrest you.'
'She lied about me!' Her wide eyes flashed, and her breast heaved again.
'That wasn't no excuse for makin' a public show of yourself,' he answered without heat. 'If ladies have got to fight, they ought to do it in private.'
And so saying he turned away. A gusty exhalation of breath seemed to escape the crowd, and the tension vanished, as they turned to the bar. The incident was forgotten, merely a trifling episode in an existence crowded with violent incidents. Jovial masculine voices mingled with the shriller laughter of women, as glasses began to clink along the bar.
Glory hesitated, drawing her torn dress together over her bosom, then darted after Corcoran, who was moving toward the door. When she touched his arm he whipped about as quick as a cat, a hand flashing to a gun. She glimpsed a momentary gleam in his eyes as menacing and predatory as the threat that leaps in a panther's eyes. Then it was gone as he saw whose hand had touched him.
'She lied about me,' Glory said, as if defending herself from a charge of misconduct. 'She's a dirty little cat.'
Corcoran looked her over from head to foot, as if he had not heard her; his blue eyes burned her like a physical fire.
She stammered in confusion. Direct and unveiled admiration was commonplace, but there was an elemental candor about the Texan such as she had never before encountered.
He broke in on her stammerings in a way that showed he had paid no attention to what she was saying.
'Let me buy you a drink. There's a table over there where we can sit down.'
'No. I must go and put on another dress. I just wanted to say that I'm glad you kept me from killing Conchita. She's a slut, but I don't want her blood on my hands.'
'All right.'
She found it hard to make conversation with him, and could not have said why she wished to make conversation.
'McNab arrested me once,' she said, irrelevantly, her eyes dilating as if at the memory of an injustice. 'I slapped him for something he said. He was going to put me in jail for resisting an officer of the law! Middleton made him turn me loose.'
'McNab must be a fool,' said Corcoran slowly.
'He's mean; he's got a nasty temper, and he--what's that?'
Down the street sounded a fusillade of shots, a blurry voice yelling gleefully.
'Some fool shooting up a saloon,' she murmured, and darted a strange glance at her companion, as if a drunk shooting into the air was an unusual occurrence in that wild mining camp.
'Middleton said that's against the law,' he grunted, turning away.
'Wait!' she cried sharply, catching at him. But he was already moving through the door, and Glory stopped short as a hand fell lightly on her shoulder from behind. Turning her head she paled to see the keenly-chiseled face of Ace Brent. His hand lay gently on her shoulder, but there was a command and a blood-chilling threat in its touch. She shivered and stood still as a statue, as Corcoran, unaware of the drama being played behind him, disappeared into the street.
The racket was coming from the Blackfoot Chief Saloon, a few doors down, and on the same side of the street as the Golden Garter. With a few long strides Corcoran reached the door. But he did not rush in. He halted and swept his cool gaze deliberately over the interior. In the center of the saloon a roughly dressed man was reeling about, whooping and discharging a pistol into the ceiling, perilously close to the big oil lamp which hung there. The bar was lined with men, all bearded and uncouthly garbed, so it was impossible to tell which were ruffians and which were honest miners. All the men in the room were at the bar, with the exception of the drunken man.
Corcoran paid little heed to him as he came through the door, though he moved straight toward him, and to the tense watchers it seemed the Texan was looking at no one else. In reality, from the corner of his eye he was watching the men at the bar; and as he moved deliberately from the door, across the room, he distinguished the pose of honest curiosity from the tension of intended murder. He saw the three hands that gripped gun butts.
And as he, apparently ignorant of what was going on at the bar, stepped toward the man reeling in the center of the room, a gun jumped from its scabbard and pointed toward the lamp. And even as it moved, Corcoran moved quicker. His turn was a blur of motion too quick for the eye to follow and even as he turned his gun was burning red.
The man who had drawn died on his feet with his gun still pointed toward the ceiling, unfired. Another stood gaping, stunned, a pistol dangling in his fingers, for that fleeting tick of time; then as he woke and whipped the gun up, hot lead ripped through his brain. A third gun spoke once as the owner fired wildly, and then he went to his knees under the blast of ripping lead, slumped over on the floor and lay twitching.
It was over in a flash, action so blurred with speed that not one of the watchers could ever tell just exactly what had happened. One instant Corcoran had been moving toward the man in the center of the room, the next both guns were blazing and three men were falling from the bar, crashing dead on the floor.
For an instant the scene held, Corcoran half-crouching, guns held at his hips, facing the men who stood stunned along the bar. Wisps of blue smoke drifted from the muzzles of his guns, forming a misty veil through which his grim face looked, implacable and passionless as that of an image carved from granite. But his eyes blazed.
Shakily, moving like puppets on a string, the men at the bar lifted their hands clear of their waistline. Death hung on the crook of a finger for a shuddering tick of time. Then with a choking gasp the man who had played drunk made a stumbling rush toward the door. With a catlike wheel and stroke Corcoran crashed a gun barrel over his head and stretched him stunned and bleeding on the floor.
The Texan was facing the men at the bar again before any of them could have moved. He had not looked at the men on the floor since they had fallen.
'Well, amigos!' His voice was soft, but it was thick with killer's lust. 'Why don't you-all keep the baile goin'? Ain't these hombres got no friends?'
Apparently they had not. No one made a move.
Realizing that the crisis had passed, that there was no more killing to be done just then, Corcoran straightened, shoving his guns back in his scabbards.
'Purty crude,' he criticized. 'I don't see how anybody could fall for a trick that stale. Man plays drunk and starts shootin' at the roof. Officer comes in to arrest him. When the officer's back's turned, somebody shoots out the light, and the drunk falls on the floor to get out of the line of fire. Three or four men planted along the bar start blazin' away in the dark at the place where they know the law's standin', and out of eighteen or twenty-four shots, some's bound to connect.'
With a harsh laugh he stooped, grabbed the 'drunk' by the collar and hauled him upright. The man staggered and stared wildly about him, blood dripping from the gash in his scalp.
'You got to come along to jail,' said Corcoran unemotionally. 'Sheriff says it's against the law to shoot up saloons. I ought to shoot you, but I ain't in the habit of pluggin' men with empty guns. Reckon you'll be more value to the sheriff alive than dead, anyway.'
And propelling his dizzy charge, he strode out into the street. A crowd had gathered about the door, and they gave back suddenly. He saw a supple, feminine figure dart into the circle of light, which illumined the white face and golden hair of the girl Glory.
'Oh!' she exclaimed sharply. 'Oh!' Her exclamation was almost drowned in a sudden clamor of voices as the men in the street realized what had happened in the Blackfoot Chief.
Corcoran felt her pluck at his sleeve as he passed her, heard her tense whisper.
'I was afraid--I tried to warn you--I'm glad they didn't--'
A shadow of a smile touched his hard lips as he glanced down at her. Then he was gone, striding down the street toward the jail, half-pushing, half-dragging his bewildered prisoner.
Chapter 4 The Madness That Blinds Men
Corcoran locked the door on the man who seemed utterly unable to realize just what had happened, and
