Lance sighed, turned his face away from the light and slept on, untroubled by the nearing tumult.
Galloping horses came first, ka-lup, ka-lup, ka-lup, a sharp staccato on the frosted earth. The rattle of the wagon ceased, resumed, stopped outside the saloon. Other galloping horsemen came up and stopped. The door was flung open violently, letting in men with unfinished sentences hot on their tongues.
“Next time a Lorrigan dance comes off––”
“What I’d a done, woulda––”
“Fix them damn Lorrigans!”
Detached phrases, no one man troubling to find a listener, the words came jumbled to the ears of Lance, who fancied himself in the bunk-house at home, with the boys just in from a ride somewhere. He was wriggling into a freshly uncomfortable posture on the table when the fur coat was pulled off him, letting the daylight suddenly into his eyes as his brain emerged from the fog of sleep.
“And here’s the––guy that run away from me!” Bill Kennedy jerked off his hat and brought it down with a slap on Lance’s face. “Run off to town, by jiminy, and hid! Run––”
Half asleep as he was––rather, just shocked awake––Lance heaved himself off the table and landed one square blow on Bill Kennedy’s purple jaw. Bill staggered, caught himself and came back, arms up and fists guarding his face. Lance disentangled his feet from the fur coat, kicked it out of his way and struck again just as Kennedy was slugging at him.