"Oh, I've been cutting little circles over the prairie between here and the British line for five years now, Claib," Mason answered; "ever since the last time I saw you in Rawlins, just before you shot Rufe. I always wanted to ask you about that. How did you come to shoot him? You didn't have any quarrel with him, so far as I heard." "Say, now, what's the matter with you, Jack?" exclaimed Claib. "Are you looking for some of the medicine that Rufe got?" Mason laughed merrily. "Not a bit, Claib. I'm not looking for anything, without it's a little information. Of course I've heard of bad men that would shoot a fellow down just for meanness; but I never saw one, and I was wondering if you were that kind of man. I was wondering, for example, if I were to turn around and walk to the door here, whether you would plug me before I got there? Now, I don't know anybody who can tell me about that as well as you." Claib's eyes were bloodshot from his excesses of the night before, and as Mason talked to him an ugly light seemed to glow in them and the sneer of his face grew more pronounced. The two men were standing face to face rather close together. Claib's right hand and Mason's left hand toward the bar. "See here, Jack," said Wood, "it looks to me like you're hunting for trouble and trying to pick a quarrel with me, and I don't want nothing of the kind. I come in here to attend to my own business, and I reckon you'd better clear out and attend to yours, if you've got any." "Sure, I've got some," replied Mason; "but when I saw you in here, I thought we could have a little friendly talk, and maybe you'd tell me why it was that you shot Rufe in Rawlins. As I say, I never could hear that you had any quarrel." "Well," said Claib--and his hand with a swiftness that the eye could hardly follow, flew around to his hip; but it never reached the butt of his pistol; for Mason with lightning speed shot forward his left hand and caught Claib by the wrist, while with his right hand he seized the glass of liquor resting on the bar and dashed it into Claib's face. Then he wrapped both arms around him, and called to Ross who had just stepped into the door. "Take this man's gun and mine and keep them! This isn't going to be a shooting-match." Ross snatched both pistols from their holsters and stood back. For a moment the men whirled around over the bare floor in a rapid dance, and then Mason suddenly lifted Claib off the floor, held him for an instant in the air above his head, and then threw him an astonishing distance. The man's head and shoulder coming in contact with the plastered wall burst a large hole in it and loosened some of the weather-boarding on the outside of the building.