Dalhart, following up his quarry, also found the office empty. Hearing footfalls on the floor above, he also ran up the stair, looking for the man whom he knew to be somewhere in the house—the hotel was not yet really fully open for business. He found himself also in the upper hall, a long Marathon course between rows of doors all just alike, leading into rooms all just alike, all furnished just alike and each divided from the others by a shackling raw board partition, of ceiling loosely tongued and grooved. In each room was a single chair, a single washbowl, a single towel, a single bar of soap, a single coat hook on the back of the door. In each room sat a single bed, in each precisely at the same place—against the partition near the single window and facing the single door. Hotel making and hotel keeping still were in their infancy in Kansas.
Seeing no one in the hall, and still seeking for the sound he had heard, Dalhart, moody and blood mad—a more ruthless and dangerous man than Williams—entered one of these rooms to peer about. He found no one, flung himself down upon the bed. He leaned against the partition, causing it to rock somewhat.
Del Williams heard him but did not know who he was. He sat up, listening, his hand on his revolver, for a situation of doubt was usually one of danger in that border country.
The two men now were but a few yards apart, though separated by three of the thin board partitions.
Dalhart called aloud, “You Williams! Where are you? You are hiding, you damned sneak! Come on out if you dare!”
Williams heard his call. He rose eagerly to meet the challenge, fear of any man unknown in his heart, his weapon in his hand ready to meet this man. A swift thought came to him that he had been riding hard, so that the caps on the cylinder tubes might have become disengaged. He pulled up the revolver and overran the cylinder rapidly to see that the piece was in perfect order, as now it needed to be.
Dalhart heard the movement somewhere beyond him. He stepped to his own door just as Williams was about to emerge at his. Then came a report. Immediately upon it came a grunt or groan, the fall of the body of a man upon the floor.
Del Williams was himself in a flash. He fully had intended to shoot Dalhart deliberately. Now he had shot him practically by accident. The barrel, which happened to be just at the level of the man’s body as Williams whirled the cylinder, discharged the heavy ball as fatally as though by intent. The hammer must have been hit with his thumb. He never knew how it happened; no man ever does know how these things happen. The bullet pierced one partition after another. It had force enough left, driven by the heavy charge of fine rifle powder, to penetrate also the chest wall of a man’s body.