Nor did he. If he could have foreseen the manner and necessity of his departure, he might not have entered the place. And again he might have braved fate, even with certain knowledge, since he was not by nature inclined to dodge issues either present or potential. A man on the frontier seldom got anywhere if he were always counting costs. If Rock had not got anywhere, he was at least on his way.
They walked over to the bar and stood near the farther end from the main entrance. Rock was not a tall man, perhaps a little over medium height. Even so he towered over his companion. Kerr barely reached his shoulder. He was a little wisp of a man, with a gnomelike face. Small bodied, but big-hearted, full of humorous quips and kindly impulses, Al Kerr was the type of Texas cowman who never figures in song and story. He had never killed any one. He had never found it necessary. Probably he had not exchanged a dozen harsh sentences with another man in his life. Yet he was a successful man. He had cattle scattered over the length of three States. He had fifty riders on his pay roll. And for every rider he had a score of friends. Rock happened to be one of them. And Rock looked down on the little, middle-aged man, whose hair was thin, but whose blue eyes were merry, and he wondered what it was that made some men succeed in whatever they undertook. It wasn’t size, it wasn’t blatant force, and it wasn’t always the power of possessions. What was it, Rock wondered?
A dance had just ended. Several lusty, perspiring young trail hands had led their ladies to the bar to liquidate the Terpsichorean debt, after the custom of such places. They were lined up twenty in a row. As they stood there, glass in hand, some in the act of pouring their drink, the door of the Odeon flew open, and a man swaggered in.
He stood a moment staring with eyes a trifle reddened. He was a mountain of a man, well over six feet, and thick in proportion. He wore a rider’s usual costume. Like most of those who trafficked across the plains, he was armed. He took two quick strides from the door to the bar end and, picking up the nearest glass of whisky, drank it at a gulp. Then he stood, towering above the man whose drink he had taken, grinning, as if at a capital joke.
“Well, well,” Kerr murmured. “The village cut-up is with us again. He was around here this afternoon raisin’ Cain. He aims to be bad, it looks like. Wonder where he escaped from?”
Rock smiled. He knew the man. He watched with a detached sort of interest to see what would happen. For a second nothing happened. A quick-witted bartender hastily set up another glass, thus stifling the protest that was evidently on tap by the man whose drink had been taken. That, to Rock, was an indication of how far Mark Duffy’s size and disposition had carried him in Clark’s Ford. But he was hardly prepared for the big man’s next action. Considering the time and place, it seemed suicidal.
Duffy walked right down the bar, shouldering all and sundry out of his way. His big red face was wreathed in a sardonic grin, and his bellowing voice uttered a warning to all in his path:
“Make room for a man. I’m goin’ to drink, an’ when I drink I need lots of room.”
He seemed in a fair way to get all the room he desired without opposition. Probably any other man would have been smelling powder before he got halfway, Rock reflected. But Duffy looked neither to right nor left nor hesitated in his ponderous stride, nor heeded the curses that were hurled at him. He was asserting himself, he wanted room, and he got it—a clear path, until he came to Al Kerr and Rock Holloway.