In his own heart of hearts he would have given his hope of heaven to meet Barry face to face and hand to hand, and see which was the better man, but Pete Glass owed a duty to his state before he owed a duty to himself.

He stuck by his first plan.

And every day the inhabitants of Rickett gathered at the shooting gallery to watch the tests and wonder at the successes and smile at the failures.
It was a very hard test which the sheriff had imposed.

A man stood to one side of the iron-plate back wall which served as the target.

He stood entirely out of sight and through an aperture in the side wall, at a signal, he tossed a round ball of clay, painted white.