“Time!” he shouted, while the buckskin reared to the report. “Hold on—wait a minute. This place is too light to suit. That big light yonder is in my eyes. Look out, I’m going to throw lead.”
A second shot put out the lamp over the musicians’ stand. The assembled guests shrieked, a frantic, shrinking quiver ran through the crowd like the huddling of frightened rabbits in their pen.
Annixter hardly moved. He stood some thirty paces from the buster, his hands still in his coat pockets, his eyes glistening, watchful.
Excitable and turbulent in trifling matters, when actual bodily danger threatened he was of an abnormal quiet.
“I’m watching you,” cried the other. “Don’t make any mistake about that. Keep your hands in your coat pockets, if you’d like to live a little longer, understand? And don’t let me see you make a move toward your hip or your friends will be asked to identify you at the morgue tomorrow morning. When I’m bad, I’m called the Undertaker’s Friend, so I am, and I’m that bad tonight that I’m scared of myself. They’ll have to revise the census returns before I’m done with this place. Come on, now, I’m getting tired waiting. I come to see a dance.”
“Hand over that horse, Delaney,” said Annixter, without raising his voice, “and clear out.”
The other affected to be overwhelmed with infinite astonishment, his eyes staring. He peered down from the saddle.
“Wh‑a‑a‑t!” he exclaimed; “wh‑a‑a‑t did you say? Why, I guess you must be looking for trouble; that’s what I guess.”
“There’s where you’re wrong, m’son,” muttered Annixter, partly to Delaney, partly to himself. “If I was looking for trouble there wouldn’t be any guesswork about it.”
With the words he began firing. Delaney had hardly entered the barn before Annixter’s plan had been formed. Long since his revolver was in the pocket of his coat, and he fired now through the coat itself, without withdrawing his hands.
Until that moment Annixter had not been sure of himself. There was no doubt that for the first few moments of the affair he would have welcomed with joy any reasonable excuse for getting out of the situation. But the sound of his own revolver gave him confidence. He whipped it from his pocket and fired again.
Abruptly the duel began, report following report, spurts of pale blue smoke jetting like the darts of short spears between the two men, expanding to a haze and drifting overhead in wavering strata. It was quite probable that no thought of killing each other suggested itself to either Annixter or Delaney. Both fired without aiming very deliberately. To empty their revolvers and avoid being hit was the desire common to both. They no longer vituperated each other. The revolvers spoke for them.
Long after, Annixter could recall this moment. For years he could with but little effort reconstruct the scene—the densely packed crowd flattened against the sides of the barn, the festoons of lanterns, the mingled smell of evergreens, new wood, sachets, and powder smoke; the vague clamour of distress and terror that rose from the throng of guests, the squealing of the buckskin, the uneven explosions of the revolvers, the reverberation of trampling hoofs, a brief glimpse of Harran Derrick’s excited face at the door of the harness room, and in the open space in the centre of the floor, himself and Delaney, manoeuvring swiftly in a cloud of smoke.
Annixter’s revolver contained but six cartridges. Already it seemed to him as if he had fired twenty times. Without doubt the next shot was his last. Then what? He peered through the blue haze that with every discharge thickened between him and the buster. For his own safety he must “place” at least one shot. Delaney’s chest and shoulders rose suddenly above the smoke close upon him as the distraught buckskin reared again. Annixter, for the first time during the fight, took definite aim, but before he could draw the trigger there was a great shout and he was aware of the buckskin, the bridle trailing, the saddle empty, plunging headlong across the floor, crashing into the line of chairs. Delaney was scrambling off the floor. There was blood on the buster’s wrist and he no longer carried his revolver. Suddenly he turned and ran. The crowd parted right and left before him as he made toward the doorway. He disappeared.
Twenty men promptly sprang to the buckskin’s head, but she broke away, and wild with terror, bewildered, blind, insensate, charged into the corner of the barn by the musicians’ stand. She brought up against the wall with cruel force and with impact of a sack of stones; her head was cut. She turned and charged again, bull-like, the blood streaming from her forehead. The crowd, shrieking, melted before her rush. An old man was thrown down and trampled. The buckskin trod upon the dragging bridle, somersaulted into a confusion of chairs in one corner, and came down with a terrific clatter in a wild disorder of kicking hoofs and splintered wood. But a crowd of men fell upon her, tugging at the bit, sitting on her head, shouting, gesticulating. For five minutes she struggled and fought; then, by degrees, she recovered herself, drawing great sobbing breaths at long intervals that all but burst the girths, rolling her eyes in bewildered, supplicating fashion, trembling in every muscle, and starting and shrinking now and then like a young girl in hysterics. At last she lay quiet. The men allowed her to struggle to her feet. The saddle was removed and she was led to one of the empty stalls, where she remained the rest of the evening, her head low, her pasterns quivering, turning her head apprehensively from time to time, showing the white of one eye and at long intervals heaving a single prolonged sigh.
And an hour later the dance was progressing as evenly as though nothing in the least
