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still a few hours before dawn when Brady Waits made his move. Inflamed by the whiskey he had consumed, and backed into a corner by boasts he had made to his drinking partners, he was determined to extract his revenge for his loss of face at the hands of Cade Hunter.
    His brain dulled somewhat by the evening of drinking—although he had not reached the level of impairment attained by Luke—Cade’s normal sense of danger failed to alert him. Consequently, he was not aware of the threat to his life until he was awakened from a sound sleep with Brady Waits standing straddle-legged over him. When Cade’s eyes flickered open, Brady reached down and grabbed him by his hair with one hand and pressed his long skinning knife against Cade’s throat with the other. “Now, Mr. Big Shot,” he uttered in a drunken drawl, “I’m fixin’ to slice you from ear to ear.”
    Fully alert by then, Cade immediately raised his arm from under the blanket and jammed his Colt .45 hard up into the crotch of Brady’s trousers. The big man grunted with the sudden shock. “Cut away, you son of a bitch,” Cade growled. “I’ll turn you into a gelding before you get halfway across.”
    Stunned, Brady staggered backward and, tripping over Cade’s leg, sat down hard on the ground. Reaching for his pistol, he was stopped cold by a sharp rap against the back of his skull, leaving him momentarily senseless. “Hardheaded bastard,” Luke complained, “I hope he ain’t bent my rifle barrel.” With his foot, he rolled Cade’s would-be assailant over on his side. “You all right, partner?” he asked Cade before prodding Brady with his rifle.
    â€œYeah, I’m dandy,” Cade replied, getting to his feet, “but I’ve had about enough of Mr. Waits here, so I’m thinkin’ I might as well shoot him and be done with it.”
    â€œI expect that would be doin’ the world a favor at that,” Luke replied. He wasn’t certain whether or not Cade was japing the bully, but he played along anyway.
    Still trying to clear his head, and gazing drunkenly at two guns pointed at him, Brady made an unashamed plea for mercy. “Ah, boys,” he begged, “there ain’t no use in that. I wasn’t really gonna cut you. I was just foolin’ with you, that’s all. You don’t wanna go shootin’ somebody over a joke, do ya?”
    â€œI’d just as soon,” Luke said with a shrug.
    â€œI don’t like jokes,” Cade said, his tone suddenly deadly serious. Looking Brady straight in the eye, he said, “Get up from there and get outta my sight. I don’t plan on seein’ you after today, but if I do, I swear I’ll kill you.” He stood back to give Brady room to get to his feet.
    This was the third time the dull-witted brute had suffered humiliation at the hand of the soft-spoken man from Texas. It was a hard bite of gristle to swallow, and Cade could see that Brady was struggling with a decision—to yield or fight. Cade didn’t care which way Brady decided. He just wanted to be done with the man.
    Suddenly the air between the two men seemed to become still and vacant, like the dead atmosphere an instant before a lightning strike. Luke sensed it, and one glance into Cade’s eyes told him that Brady Waits was a dead man. He decided he’d better step in before it was too late. “Brady, don’t make the mistake that’s gonna cost you your life,” he said. “Get on outta here before you do somethin’ stupid. We’ll just call it a draw and go our separate ways.” Without taking his eyes off the still-hesitating bully, he asked, “That’s all right with you, ain’t it, Cade?”
    There was a long pause before Cade answered. “Yeah, I reckon.”
    Realizing that Luke had probably just done him a favor, Brady got to his feet. “Yeah,