Lingeringly Taggart drew forth the heavy side-arms dragging at his holsters; all the while he was tempted almost beyond resistance to avail himself of his opportunity and of that quick sure skill of his; to shoot from the hip, as he could do with the swiftness of a flash of the wrist; he could shoot and kill. And within his heart, knowing Bruce Standing as he did, he knew, too, that though he shot true to a hair line, none the less, Bruce Standing would kill him.... He gave a gun into Standing's left hand and saw it thrust into his belt. Then was Taggart's time to snatch out his other weapon and drill that hole through the big body in front of him which would surely let the life run out; now was his chance, while for an instant one of Standing's hands was busy at his belt!... If it had been any other man in the world there confronting him! Any man but Bruce Standing! Jim Taggart was near weeping. But he drew out his second revolver and saw it bestowed as its fellow had been. "Four times you've said it, plainer than words!" cried Standing ringingly. "Gallup will never forget; and he'll tell the tale! Shipton will remember and will blab! And, what's worse for the soul of a man, Jim Taggart, you'll remember to the last day you live!... And now you three can consider yourselves as so many mongrel curs whose back-biting teeth I've knocked down your throats for you! I'll leave you to your growlings and whinings!" He swung about and went out. He knew both Gallup and Shipton, knew them and their habits well, and knew that neither man had the habit of carrying a pistol. Further, their coats were off, and he had seen that neither had a holster at his belt. So he turned his back on them to emphasize his contempt and did not turn his head as he plunged into the outside night and into the thick dark under the trees, going back to his hidden cabin and Lynette and Thor. He realized that he himself, despite a herculean physique, was near the tether's end of his endurance; he realized that Lynette was also heavily borne down by all that she, a girl, had gone through and that he had left her overlong with his wolfish dog. What he could not know was that a revolver which had once already shot him in the back had followed him all these miles through the wilderness and was now lying on the bunk in the cabin he had just quitted; he could not know how, at the Gallup House after Babe Deveril had flung it in Taggart's face, Lynette's pistol had lain there on the floor until Taggart had been aroused to consciousness; nor how Gallup had picked it up, nor how Taggart had muttered: "Save it, Young. It may come in handy for evidence in court." Gallup had stuck it into his pocket; he had brought it with him; he had tossed it down among the blankets....