For the look
in Rod Norton's eyes was for any man to read.
Jim Galloway was not a coward and Rod Norton knew it. He was
essentially a gambler whose business in life was to take chances. But
he was of that type of gambler who plays not for the love of the game
but to win; who sets a cool brain to study each hand before he lays his
bet; who gauges the strength of that hand not alone upon its intrinsic
value but upon a shrewd guess at the value of the cards out against it.
At that moment he wanted, more than he wanted anything else in the wide
scope of his unleashed desires, to kill Rod Norton; he balanced that
fact with the other fact that less than anything in the world did he
want to be killed himself. The issue was clear cut.
While a watch might have ticked ten times neither man moved. During
that brief time Galloway's jaw muscles corded, his face went a little
white with the strain put upon him. The restive horses, tossing their
heads, making merry music with jingling bridle chains, might have
galloped a moment ago from an old book of fairy-tales, each carrying a
man bewitched, turned to stone.
"If you've got the sand!" Norton taunted him, his blood running hot
with the fierce wish to have done with sidestepping and
procrastination. "If you've got the sand, Jim Galloway!"
"It's better than an even break that I could get you," said Galloway at
last.
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