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‘Jim, I don’t have anything against you personally…this is what I get paid for, but I just want it understood that if you start across the seven feet between us, I’m going to pull both triggers at once—without first asking you to stop.’

Scallen and Kidd have just settled themselves into Room 207 at the Republic Hotel. Scallen has ordered Kidd to sit down on the bed, while Scallen sits down in the chair opposite him. Scallen quite plainly tells Kidd that he has nothing against Kidd personally, but if Kidd tries to run or attack, Scallen will shoot him. This shows that Scallen is not a man given to excessive passion in his work. He views himself as just a man with a job to do, and Kidd happens to be the prisoner he is assigned to escort as part of that job. Scallen’s warning appears to carry a certain weight in only a few words. All he has to say is that he is going to pull both triggers at once, and the meaning behind that is clear, without any outright mention of killing or wounding. In this, Scallen reveals that he is a calm man with a deadly streak, and that deadly streak only reveals itself when necessary. 

He saw his wife, then, and the three youngsters and he could almost feel the little girl sitting on his lap where she had climbed up to kiss him good-bye, and he had promised to bring her something from Tucson…

At this moment in the story, Scallen realizes that he recognizes the man leaning against the post outside the hotel as the very same man who was asleep in the armchair in the hotel lobby. Moreover, that man has been spying on Scallen and Kidd all the time that they have been in Contention. Scallen realizes in this moment that he is facing an ambush and could very well be killed. This is the moment in the story where he realizes he is not as in control of the situation as he thought. He finds himself thinking of his wife and children, of the last time he saw them, and the fact that he could perhaps never see them again. This scene is a reversal of an earlier scene in which Scallen was the man in charge as he escorted Kidd into Contention. Now, he’s realizing that a lot of things are beyond his control, and that the situation may very well end badly for him. The vividness with which Scallen recalls his family suggests that his love for them is what motivates him to do his job and to stay alive.

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