But Longhorn’s soul held no reverence for goatskin and he cursed harder when Red’s compliments struck his ear about the time one of Cassidy’s struck his shoulder. He was firing hastily against a man who shot as though the devil had been his teacher. The man from the Bar-20 used two guns and they roared like the roll of a drum and flashed through the heavy, low-lying cloud of swirling smoke like the darting tongue of an angry snake. Longhorn, enveloped in the acrid smoke of his own gun, which wrapped him like a gaseous shroud, knew that his end had come. He was being shot to pieces by a two-gun man, the like of whose skill he had never before seen or heard of. As the last note of the short, five second, cracking tattoo died away Mr. Cassidy slipped his empty guns in their holsters and turned his pony’s head toward the fascinated spectator, whose mouth offered easy entry to smoke and dust. As Cassidy glanced carelessly back at the late rustler Jimmy shut his mouth, gulped, opened it to speak, shut it again and cleared his dry throat. Looking from Cassidy to Longhorn and back again, he opened his mouth once more. "You—you—what’d’ju pay for them chaps?" he blurted, idiotically. IV JIMMY VISITS SHARPSVILLE Bill Cassidy rode slowly into Sharpsville and dismounted in front of Carter’s Emporium, nodding carelessly to the loungers hugging the shade of the store. "Howd’y," he said. "Seen anything of Jimmy Price—a kid, but about my height, with brown hair and a devilish disposition?" Carter stretched and yawned, a signal for a salvo of yawns. "Nope, thank God. You need n’t describe nothin’ about that Price cub to none of us. _We_ know him. He spent three days here about a year ago, an’ th’ town ’s been sorta restin’ up ever since. You don’t mean for to tell us he ’s comin’ here again!" he exclaimed, sitting up with a jerk. Bill laughed at the expression. "As long as you yearn for him so powerful hard, why I gotta tell you he ’s on his way, anyhow. I had to go east for a day’s ride an’ he headed this way. He ’s to meet me here." Carter turned and looked at the others blankly. Old Dad Johnson nervously stroked his chin. "Well, then he ’ll git here, all right," he prophesied pessimistically. "He usually gets where he starts for; an’ I ’m plumb glad I ’m goin’ on to-morrow." "Ha, ha!" laughed George Bruce. "So ’m I goin’ on, by Scott!" Grunts and envious looks came from the group and Carter squirmed uneasily. "That’s just like you fellers, runnin’ away an’ leavin’ me to face it. An’ it was you fellers what played most of th’ tricks on him last time he was here. Huh! now I gotta pay for ’em," he growled. Bill glanced over the gloomy circle and laughed heartily. Two faces out of seven were bright, Dad’s particularly so. "Well, he seems to be quite a favorite around here," he grinned. Carter snorted. "Huh! Seems to be nothin’."