Freshly barbered, head forward, keen eyes peering from under staring, sandy brows; thumbs stuck in his belt and his face framing a confident leer. Stone sauntering forward, listened to McAlpin. So intent was McAlpin on impressing his hearers that the foreman elbowed his way, before McAlpin saw him, directly to the front. "So you won't name 'em?" grinned Stone, confronting the startled speaker. McAlpin caught his breath. The wiry Scotchman was not a coward, but he knew the merciless cruelty of Stone. Armed, McAlpin would have been no man to affront his deadly skill; he now faced him unarmed. Stone, leaving his right hand hooked by the thumb in his belt, rested his left elbow on the bar. The bartender, Luke, just back of him, leaning forward, mopped the bar more slowly and, listening, moved a little farther down the bar until his fingers rested on an electric button underneath connecting with Tenison's office in the hotel. "Name the two men, McAlpin," said Stone, ominously, "while you're able to talk." McAlpin exhausted his ingenuity in his efforts to evade his danger, but Stone drew the noose about him tighter and tighter. He played the unlucky man with all the malice of an executioner. He baited him and toyed with him. McAlpin, white, stood his ground. His fighting blood was all there and he broke at length into a torrent of abuse of the man that he realized was bent on murdering him. Made eloquent by desperation, McAlpin never rose to greater heights of profane candor. It was as if he were making his last will and testament of hatred and contempt for his murderer, and when he had showered on his enemy every epithet stored in a retentive memory he struck his empty glass on the bar and shouted: "Now, you hellcat, shoot!" It might have been thought Stone would check such a public castigation. He did not. Impervious to abuse, because master of the situation, he seemed to enjoy his victim's fury. "I'm finishing up with your gang around here, McAlpin," he snarled, never losing his grin. "You've run a rustler's barn in Sleepy Cat long enough. I've warned you and I've warned Kitchen. It didn't do no good. Fill up your glass, McAlpin." "Stone, I'd never fill up a glass with you if I was in hell 'n' you could pull me out." Stone's grin deepened: "Fill up your glass, McAlpin." Onlookers, knowing what a refusal would mean, held their breaths. But McAlpin, white and stubborn, with another oath, again refused. "Fill it, McAlpin," urged a quiet voice behind the bar. Looking quickly, like a hunted animal, around, McAlpin saw Harry Tenison, white-faced and cold, pushing the bottle in friendly fashion toward him. Every man, save one, watching, hoped he would humor at least that much his expectant murderer. But the barn-boss had reached a state of fear and anger that inflamed every stubborn drop in his blood. He swore he would not fill his glass.