"I'm going to your camp with you, whether you need an escort or not," said the latter.
Without a word Johnny walked away down the street, very straight. We hurried to catch up with him; and just as we did so he collapsed to the ground and was suddenly and violently sick. As I helped him to his feet, I could feel that his arm was trembling violently.
"Lord, fellows! I'm ashamed," he gasped a little hysterically. "I didn't know I had so little nerve!"
"Nerve!" suddenly roared Danny Randall; "confound your confounded impudence! If I ever hear you say another word like that, I'll put a head on you, if it's the last act of my life! You're the gamest little chicken in this roost, and I'll make you beg like a hound if you say you aren't!"
Johnny laughed a little uncertainly over this contradiction.
"No, worse luck; just bored him through the collarbone. That heavy little derringer ball knocked him out."
"Which I am _not_," stated Danny Randall with emphasis. "You ought to have killed him."
"Thanks to you I wasn't killed myself. I couldn't have hoped to get the draw on him with my holster gun. He is as quick as a snake."
"I thought you were going to bungle it," said Randall. "What was the matter?"
"Front sight caught at the edge of my sleeve. I had to tear it loose by main strength. I'm going to file it off. What's the use of a front sight at close range?"
"Well, I don't want ever to be so scared again," I confessed. "Will you tell me, by all that's holy, _why_ you turned your back on the door?"
"Well," said Johnny seriously, "I wanted to get him close to me. If I had shown him that I'd seen him when he first came in the door, he'd have opened fire at once. And I'm a rotten shot. But I figured that if he thought I didn't see him, he'd come across the room to me."
"Oh, no," said Johnny; "I saw him all the time. I got his reflection from the glass over that picture of the beautiful lady sitting on the Old Crow Whiskey barrel. That's why I picked out that table."
"My son," cried Danny Randall delightedly, "you're a true sport. You've got a head, you have!"
"Well," said Johnny, "I figured I'd have to do _something_; I'm such a rotten shot."
We slept late the following morning, and awoke tired, as though we had been on a long journey.