I hesitated a second, squinting along the barrel of the carbine;
I wanted him to round the point that jutted out from the other side of
the canyon, so that his partners could not see his finish. If they did
not see him go down, nor observe the puff of smoke from behind the rock,
they might think he had fired a shot himself. And while I waited,
grumbling at the combination of circumstances that made it necessary to
shoot down even a cold-blooded brute like him in such a way, Mac took
the matter out of my hands in his own characteristic fashion.
Lessard turned the point, and as the carbine-hammer clicked back under
the pull of my thumb, MacRae sprang to his feet from behind a squatty
clump of sage, right in Lessard's path. Nervy as men are made, MacRae
worshiped at the shrine of an even break, a square deal for friend or
foe. And Lessard got it. There among the sage-brush he got a fair chance
for his life, according to the code of men who settle their differences
at the business end of a six-shooter. But it wasn't Lessard's hour.
Piegan Smith and I saw his hand flash to his pistol, saw it come to a
level, heard the single report of MacRae's gun. It was a square
deal--which Lessard had not given us. He crumpled in the saddle;
sprawled a moment on the neck of his horse, and dropped to the ground.
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