In the door stood Asa Gregory, his hands hanging at his sides with a studied inertness as his eyes travelled slowly, appraisingly, about the place. His attitude and expression alike were schooled into passiveness, but as he saw another figure rise from just in front of the stage and stand in momentary irresolution, the muscles of his jaw hardened and into his eyes flashed a defiant gleam. His lids contracted to the narrowness of slits, as though struggling to shut out some sudden and insufferable glare. His chest heaved in a gasp-like breath and the hands which he sought to keep hanging, slowly closed and clenched as muscles tauten under an electric shock. Then, as if in obedience to impulses beyond volition, the right hand came upward toward the left armpit--where his pistol holster should have been. At the sight of his enemy rising there before him, Asa Gregory had seen red, and the length of the aisle away, Tom Carr stood struggling with an identical transport of reeling self-control. Like a reflection in a mirror his face too blackened in sinister hatred and his hand too moved toward the empty holster. The strained tableau held only for a breathing space, but it was long enough for acceptance as a signal. It was long enough to afford the orator of the evening a swift, photographic impression of flambeaux giving back the glint of drawn pistols to right and left of the aisle; of the ducking of timid heads; of a crowd holding a pose as tense and ready as runners set on their marks--yet breathlessly awaiting the overt signal. It was long enough, too, for Boone Wellver, crouched in the rafters, to close one eye and sight his rifle on the back of Tom Carr--and to draw a shallow breath of nerve-tension and resolution as his finger balanced the trigger--a finger which sheer strain was perilously contracting. In that same instant Asa Gregory and Tom Carr were brought back to themselves by the feel of emptiness where there should have been the bulge of concealed weapons--and by all the resolution for which that disarmament stood. With a convulsive bracing of his shoulders, Gregory relaxed again, throwing out his arms wide of his body, and Carr echoed the peace gesture. As his deep-held breath came with long exhalation from his chest, Asa walked steadily down the aisle--while Tom Carr went to meet him half way. Standing face to face, the two enemies lifted stubbornly unwilling hands for the consummation of the peace-pact. Their palms touched and fell swiftly apart as though each had been scorched. Their faces were the stoic faces of two men undergoing a necessary torture. But the thing was done and the rafters rocked with an uproar of applause.