There is a telepathy of the guns. This was once shown when Clay Allison—but that comes later; let us return to the Lady Gay. With the first war-shout, the experienced intuition of what portion of the Mobeetie public was then gathered in the Lady Gay, went wholly aware that the feud of Sergeant King was addressed solely to Mr. Masterson. Not a whit behind the public in the feather-edged character of his apprehension, Mr. Masterson was likewise made aware of it. In logical retort and with the promptness of light, he kicked his chair from beneath him and arose to his feet. “I reckon I’m the horse thief you refer to,” said Mr. Masterson, and when he said it his six-shooter was pointing squarely at the plotting head of Sergeant King. You have read of such a commodity as fascination, and that a sure nearness of death induces trance. It is the bird with the serpent, the mouse with the cat. It is also the palsied truth of divers men when brought within touch of cold eternity. Of those who congeal at sight of death was Sergeant King. He had performed with reckless valour, as he would have held it, on twenty smoke-swept fields, and more than once had killed his man. What was it now that froze him motionless? As he looked into the mouth of that Colt’s-45, and beheld the gray fire in the eye beyond, for the earliest time he felt the clutch of the grave upon him. It left him still as stone; his heart became water, his cheek clay. There was a chill pause—a silence as of the tomb! You might have heard the heart-beats of the Mobeetie public as, strung like a bow, it waited on the fatal crash. Four seconds went ticking into the past; their passing was as the passing of four ages. Mr. Masterson, with unwavering muzzle and unblinking eye, began slowly closing in on Sergeant King, who remained as though planet-struck. The slow advance continued until the pistol of Mr. Masterson was within an inch of the transfixed face. Then, with the abruptness of a shot, Mr. Masterson let down the hammer of his weapon, and with it smote the other on the head. It was a downright, crushing blow, and only the good thickness of the skull of Sergeant King saved him from annihilation. He dropped like some log of wood—his pistol falling from his fingers and rattling on the board floor of the Lady Gay. As Mr. Masterson replaced his own weapon in his belt, he kicked that of Sergeant King into a nook of safety. “It’s the notion of Mobeetie,” explained Mr. Dixon to Sergeant King, when thirty minutes later the latter was mentally fit to grasp a warning, “it’s the notion of Mobeetie that you’d better pull your freight. Here’s your gun, thar’s your hoss; an’ if you’ve got a lick of savey, by noon to-morry you’ll be either in Tascosa, Fort Elliot or Fort Sill. Any one of ’em’s a heap healthier than Mobeetie, which for you at least might be deescribed as a mighty sickly camp.”