"Have to play the cards as they run," Tony warned them, pausing with one foot on the platform. "Make it look stagey, and my idee's plumb wrecked. Come awn in—like you hated to but had to. And we'll keep together right at first, hunh?"
"Shore. I wish't Jelly was here, and Bud." Bob cleared his throat, hitched up his belt and lounged in, the other three at his heels.
The four drank together, inviting the bartender to join them. Other occupants of the room may have noticed that they held their beer mugs in their left hands, and that they drank with their faces half turned to the room. Tony it was who paid in silver. They talked afterward among themselves in tones slightly lowered. Had they been men burdened with too much knowledge of evil, on guard against some overt move of an enemy, they would have worn that same air of aloofness, that faint challenge to the world hidden under the guise of careless ease. The dozen men lounging within knew without being told that the Meadowlark men were aware of the talk about them and felt themselves observed with suspicion. Indeed, every one must have seen how these four watched the room in the mirror of the back bar, and how they studiously kept their right hands free and hovering near their belts.
It was the bad-man attitude, beautifully done. Had the Meadowlark boys murdered three men and robbed a dozen banks they could scarcely have been more careful. And they had the attention of every man there, thinly disguised, but all the keener for that. Bat Johnson, playing pool at the far end, lifted his lip in a sneer while he deliberately chalked his cue and raised a leg to rest it on the corner of the table for a difficult shot. But he did not make any audible remarks about the Meadowlark men, and he did pocket four balls in succession to show how steady were his nerves. In the back-bar mirror Tony saw that only two men were playing and that the game had just started. Bat would be occupied for the next half-hour, so there was plenty of time for certain necessary preliminaries.
Jack Rosen bought a bottle of whisky and paid for it with a ten-dollar gold piece. Bob Leverett watched the transaction and decided that he too wanted to drink out of a bottle and stop when he pleased. Bob fumbled in his pockets, looked uneasily over his shoulder and pushed a double eagle across the bar as if he were ashamed of having it. Indeed, Tony gave him a frown of disapproval and a shake of the head, and this was not lost upon the bartender nor upon others who were covertly watching the quartet.
"Well, gimme a bottle too. It's cheaper that way." Mark Hanley also paid with gold, explaining behind his hand to the others that he just had to have change, and he guessed it was all right. And thereupon Tony borrowed the price of a bottle from Mark, and they went clanking out and across to the stable, leaving tongues tickling to talk behind their backs, and a thoughtful look on the face of Bat Johnson.
In the far corner of the corral Tony was carefully spilling whisky on his undershirt and emptying the remainder of the quart on the ground.
"This is a hell of a way to get a jag on," he mourned, "but we got to stay sober and act drunk. Keep 'er on the outside, boys, till we put over this play. Actin's an art, and you can't be too clear-headed fer the parts you got."
"Ah, gwan!" Jack Rosen pulled the cork from his bottle and took a long, rapturous sniff. "Only way to act drunk is to git drunk. Me, I always git a glassy look in my eyes, and my face gits redder 'n hell. I can't git that way by pourin' three drops on my shirt front like it was perfumery. If I'm goin' to play drunken cowboy with no brains atall, I gotta put at least a pint under m' belt."
"Rosy, you can't! When you're drunk you wanta fight and beller out everything you know. We gotta play this thing fine." The anxious author of the idea snatched the bottle and broke it against the manger. "Say, you can git soused to the eyebrows when this play-actin's over. We'll all git drunker'n fools. Ain't that enough to make a man stay sober, if he's got to, in order to block their play? Come alive here, boys. We got a good chance t' make Palmer's gang show their hands. Do we go after 'em, or do we belly up to the bar and make hawgs of ourselves?"