The click on the empty shell was heard clearly at the hotel bar, distinctly ahead of the double report that followed.

For, such was the sharpness of this man's mental and muscular action, he had dropped the empty revolver from his right hand and drawn the other with his left hand in time to meet the fire of the sheriff.
The left arm of the sheriff dropped.

The whole body of Ike Anderson, shot low through the trunk, as was the sheriff's invariable custom, melted down and sank into a sitting posture, leaning against the edge of the stoop.

The sheriff with a leap sprang behind the fallen man, not firing again.

Ike Anderson, with a black film now come upon his eyes, raised his revolver and fired once, twice, three times, four times, five times, tapping the space in front of him regularly and carefully with his fire.