The meanest negro in the joint would not have stood that, yet Du Sang hesitated. Whispering Smith, mildly surprised, looked up. "Hello, Pearline! You shooting here?" He pushed the dice back toward the outlaw. "Shoot again!"
Du Sang, scowling, snapped the dice and threw badly.
"Up jump the devil, is it? Shoot again!" And, pushing back the dice, Smith moved closer to Du Sang. The two men touched arms. Du Sang, threatened in a way wholly new to him, waited like a snake braved by a mysterious enemy. His eyes blinked like a badger's. He caught up the dice and threw. "Is that the best you can do?" asked Smith. "See here!" He took up the dice. "Shoot with me!" Smith threw the dice up the table toward Du Sang. Once he threw craps, but, reaching directly in front of Du Sang, he picked the dice up and threw eleven. "Shoot with me, Du Sang."
"What's your game?" snapped Du Sang, with an oath.
"What do you care, if I've got the coin? I'll throw you for twenty-dollar gold pieces."
Du Sang's eyes glittered. Unable to understand the reason for the affront, he stood like a cat waiting to spring. "This is my game!" he snarled.
"Look here, what do you want?" he demanded angrily.
Smith stepped closer. "Any game you've got. I'll throw you left-handed, Du Sang." With his right hand he snapped the dice under Du Sang's nose and looked squarely into his eyes. "Got any Sugar Buttes money?"
Du Sang for an instant looked keenly back; his eyes contracted in that time to a mere narrow slit; then, sudden as thought, he sprang back into the corner. He knew now. This was the man who held the aces at the barbecue, the railroad man--Whispering Smith. Kennedy, directly across the table, watched the lightning-like move. For the first time the crap-dealer looked impatiently up.
It was a showdown. No one watching the two men under the window breathed for a moment. Whispering Smith, motionless, only watched the half-closed eyes. "You can't shoot craps," he said coldly. "What can you shoot, Pearline? You can't stop a man on horseback."
Du Sang knew he must try for a quick kill or make a retreat. He took in the field at a glance. Kennedy's teeth gleamed only ten feet away, and with his right hand half under his coat lapel he toyed with his watch-chain. McCloud had moved in from the slot machine and stood at the point of the table, looking at Du Sang and laughing at him. Whispering Smith threw off all pretence. "Take your hand away from your gun, you albino! I'll blow your head off left-handed if you pull! Will you get out of this town to-night? If you can't drop a man in the saddle at two hundred and fifty yards, what do you think you'd look like after a break with me? Go back to the whelp that hired you, and tell him when he wants a friend of mine to send a man that can shoot. If you are within twenty miles of Medicine Bend at daylight I'll rope you like a fat cow and drag you down Front Street!"