Now,Brick,said Red slowly,this ain't the first time you have proved yourself no man for our business,and I call Kansas to witness you've brought this on yourself--Without finishing his sentence,Red swiftly raised his arm and fired pointblank at Willock's head as it was defined above the sleeping form.Though famed as an orator,Red understood very well that,at times,action is everything,and there is death in long speaking.He was noted as a man who never missed his mark;and in the Cimarron country,which belonged to no state and therefore to no court,extensive and deadly had been his practise,without fear of retribution.
Now,however,his bullet had gone astray.The few words to which he had treated himself as an introduction to the intended deed had proved his undoing.They had been enough to warn Willock of what was coming;and just before Kansas had been called on to witness,that is an instant before Red fired,Willock had sent a bullet through the threatening wrist.The two detonations were almost simultaneous,and Red's roar of pain,as he dropped his weapon,rang out as an accompaniment to the crash of firearms.
The next instant,Willock,with a second shot from his six-shooter,stretched Kansas on the ground;then,rushing forward with reversed weapon,he brought the butt down on Red's head with such force as to deprive him of consciousness.So swift and deadly were his movements,so wild his appearance as,with long locks streaming in the wind and huge black whiskers hiding all but glittering eyes,aquiline nose and a brief space of tough red skin--so much more like a demon than a man,it was no wonder that the child,awakened by the firing,screamed with terror at finding her head pressed to his bosom.
Come!Willock called breathlessly to the prisoner who still stood with his back to the moon,as if horror at what he had just witnessed rendered him as helpless as he had been from sheer terror.Still holding the screaming child,he darted to the ponies that were tied to the projecting logs of the cabin and hastily unfastened two of the fleetest.