In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked nervously. His face went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud Smith it was, Bud Smith, five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie wind had made like a lobster display in a cafe window, who had halted at the door, but who now came back, he it was who spoke. "And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested slowly, "you might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by intimatin' that I had cold feet. We'll listen to that, too, any time you see fit to explain, pardner." "You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become normal again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his elbows back against the glass showcase, glancing the while down at the small man, almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your benefit, I was merely observing that you filled the bill of what dad here said a bit ago we all were." He smiled tantalisingly; again showing the vacancy in his dental arch. "You remember what that was, don't you?" "P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin' fer trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit. To be dead sure, I'd like to have you repeat it." Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his place behind the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he moved. In it likewise there was an interruption from without; the subdued clatter of a horse's feet on the packed earth of the street, the straining of leather, as the man, its rider, alighted, a moment later the click of the door latch as the same man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered and halted abruptly at what he saw. But those within did not notice. Silent as the night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete Sweeney, they were staring at those two actors there before them. "I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin' fer trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller of my own age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to hear you say it. I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt Wagner."