Free the Night Horseman (1920) by Max Brand

for the man was smiling. It was his eyes which held them. Behind the brown a light was growing, a yellow and unearthly glimmer which one felt might be seen on the darkest night.
    There was none of the coward in Jerry Strann. He looked full into that yellow, glimmering, changing light-he looked steadily-and a strange feeling swept over him. No, it was not fear. Long experience had taught him that there was not another man in the Three B's, with the exception of his own terrible brother, who could get a gun out of the leather faster than he, but now it seemed to Jerry Strann that he was facing something more than mortal speed and human strength and surety. He could not tell in what the feeling was based. But it was a giant, dim foreboding holding dominion over other men's lives, and it sent a train of chilly weakness through his blood.
    "It's a habit of mine," said Jerry Strann, "to kill mad dogs when I see 'em." And he smiled again.
    They stood for another long instant, facing each other. It was plain that every muscle in Strann's body was growing tense; the very smile was frozen on his lips. When he moved, at last, it was a convulsive jerk of his arm, and it was said, afterward, that his gun was all clear of the leather before the calm stranger stirred. No eye followed what happened. Can the eye follow such speed as the cracking lash of a whip?
    There was only one report. The forefinger of Strann did not touch his trigger, but the gun slipped down and dangled loosely from his hand. He made a pace forward with his smile grown to an idiotic thing and a patch of red sprang out in the center of his breast. Then he lurched headlong to the floor.

    Chapter 10. "SWEET ADELINE"
    FATTY MATTHEWS came panting through the doors. He was one of those men who have a leisurely build and a purely American desire for action; so that he was always hurrying and always puffing. If he mounted a horse, sweat started out from every pore; if he swallowed a glass of redeye he breathed hard thereafter. Yet he was capable of great and sustained exertions, as many and many a man in the Three B's could testify. He was ashamed of his fat. Imagine the soul of a Bald Eagle in the body of a Poland China sow and you begin to have some idea of Fatty Matthews. Fat filled his boots as with water and he made a "squinching" sound when he walked; fat rolled along his jowls; fat made his very forehead flabby; fat almost buried his eyes. But nothing could conceal the hawk-line of his nose or the gleam of those half-buried eyes. His hair was short-cropped, gray, and stood on end like bristles, and he was in the habit of using his panting breath in humming-for that concealed the puffing. So Fatty Matthews came through the doors and his little, concealed eyes darted from face to face. Then he kneeled beside Strann.
    He was humming as he opened Jerry's shirt; he was humming as he pulled from his bag-for Fatty was almost as much doctor as he was marshal, cowpuncher, miner, and gambler-a roll of cotton and another roll of bandages. The crowd grouped around him, fascinated, and at his directions some of them brought water and others raised and turned the body while the marshal made the bandages; Jerry Strann was unconscious. Fatty Matthews began to intersperse talk in his humming.
    "You was plugged from in front-my beauty-was you?" grunted Fatty, and then running the roll of bandage around the wounded man's chest he hummed a bar of:
    "Sweet Adeline, my Adeline, At night, dear heart, for you I pine."
    "Was Jerry lookin' the other way when he was potted?" asked Fatty of the bystanders. "O'Brien, you seen it?"
    O'Brien cleared his throat.
    "I didn't see nothin'," he said mildly, and began to mop his bar, which was already polished beyond belief.
    "Well," muttered Fatty Matthews, "all these birds get it. And Jerry was some overdue. Lew, you seen it?"
    "Yep."
    "Some drunken bum do it?"
    Lew leaned to the ear of the kneeling marshal and whispered briefly. Fatty opened his eyes and